What else would I be doing ??

[DREAMGLASS]

Like most people that work from home, I tend to live in an isolated environment during the daytime. Apart from the trips to the Post Office for the items I can't wedge into the post box, it tends to be just me and my two dogs in the daytime.

As with all small enterprises, I am totally responsible for creating new designs, marketing, web site maintenance, ordering of stock, creation of finished items, packaging, email communications, resolving technical issues and constantly evaluating the direction the business moves in. Guess that sounds familiar to many people running businesses.

There are some days it can seem a bit daunting and overwhelming, especially at this time of year when sales will soon shoot through the roof and there never seems to be enough hours in the day. Last Xmas I was starting work at 5am and finishing at 11pm some days.

Sitting here today waiting for one of my presses to warm up, the thought came across as to what else I would possibly be doing with regards to earning an income. I decided to have a quick look at the jobs on offer via the Jobcentre web site. I could have had a job delivering kebabs but having to use my own car. Man, what would my car have smelt like after a week of that? I could have been a domestic energy sales executive, which would have been a role reversal as I could have been the annoying runt disturbing someone else's day. Alternatively I could have been a packer lifting weights of up to 25kgs. How many times has that particular job been re-advertised.

It is reality checks like that which puts into perspective how lucky I am to be my own person, not having to jump through other people's hoops and having some choice as to what I do in life. I create original products which people comment on favourably and I have an element of control I simply wouldn't have in someone else's enterprise. The buck may well stop and end with me, but I am an independent person, that has some level of control over his own destiny.

Out of curiosity, does anyone else have these reflections on working for themselves?

[Justin]

I had to close my full-time business a few years back now, went to work for a large format printer unitl being made redundent...long story. I had to return to my backup job as an HGV driver, something I got into following 2 previous redundencies.

It pays well, the hours are very long, 6 days a week every week and involves very heavy lifting all the time. I managed to get back up and running part-time with the sublimation but I really miss working on it full-time You do what you have to to put food on the table but life's so much easier if you can enjoy your work.

I'm hoping to turn it into full-time business again one day otherwise I'll go back and re-train, maybe pick up on what I started years ago and get into IT......hindsight is a wonderful thing

[DREAMGLASS]

I've had a HGV license for over twenty years Justin, but haven't used it in a very long time. Don't know about the Shetlands, but the cops are always on trucker's backs in Staffordshire Multi agency stops with cops checking your licenses, dept of transport checking weights, customs dipping your diesel tank, someone from council checking what you're carrying and the final indignity is someone from the benefits office checking you're not signing on. Foreign drivers often have their trucks impounded until the ability to pay fines is confirmed. Really gets beyond a joke.

By trade I am an electrical engineer, but one day decided I wanted to do my own thing and be free of the office politics and dancing to other's tunes. I'm not sure I could ever return to paid employment, other than working on short term agency contracts as I'd really struggle to feign interest in someone else's business nowadays.

[Ian M]

I do like working for myself as it gives me so much freedom on how I plan my days. Although just now I've gone a bit quiet with orders & I also seem to be chasing money more & more from certain customers.

As a few on here know I used to work for two major banks & I do miss working there at times. I miss some of the other members of staff who I was friends with & I do miss a lot of my regular customers too. One of the banks a lot of my customers were the rich & famous & I would chat more about the projects they had going which I used to find very fascinating most of the time. One of my customers was a top racing car designer & we'd spend most of the time discussing racing cars past & present.

Before I worked in the banks the job I trained for was an automotive power train engineer & I really loved that job & would still be doing it now. I was made redundant like the rest of the workforce there as we were taken over by an American company who then moved all our jobs over to Poland. The company I worked for produced pistons for vehicle engines & we were getting right on top of making engines greener & more fuel efficient. In fact we had just helped produce a diesel engine that was a certain car manufacturers first ever diesel engine & the revies were amazing praising how good the engine was. We were then rewarded with loosing our jobs the following week when the contract was awarded to us. Also when working there our shift patterns meant we worked 12 hour shifts over a three week period both days & nights mixed. Then we would have 15 days off to do what we wanted. If I worked just 3 shifts in my days off my wage would go up to just under £1,000 per week & that is over 10 years ago now.

So, yes I miss the jobs I had & would still love to be doing them now but, as always thanks to the bosses I'm now working for myself. I really do like working for myself but, just wish I could earn the kind of money I used to all those years ago. Oh by the way when working for my last bank my monthly take home pay was around what I could earn in a week as an engineer.

Ian

[DREAMGLASS]

I doubt if you'd enjoy working in the banks so much nowadays Ian. I know someone that has just retired from one after thirty years service. She has been really down the last two or three years as the bank kept introducing targets and putting pressure on her to sell services to customers. When she joined up all those years ago, it was to let customers pay money in and draw money out, which is all most of us actually want out of a bank.

The engineering jobs are relatively thin on the ground, certainly in this part of the world and to be realistic I don't see that changing much in the next twelve months. I have lived through three previous recessions, but this one just seems to be going on forever with no real end in sight. I guess it would be interesting to know how much all of our sales would go up if the recession wasn't about?

[Ian M]

Will, I was the same as your friend at the first bank I worked for which was RBS. I just got so fed up of having to hit targets that seemed to be going up each month. I had five seperate sales targets I had to hit but, one month I was down by just three leads on one of my five targets yet the other four I was well over target. My manager then said she would have to put me on an action contract for the following month where I would have to hit all five targets & if I didn't well I'd be out of work. This was on top of a warning for being off ill as I had to have three months off work as I had cancer at the time. I like many more there was fed up of our new senior managers whohad come from outside banking & didn't have a clue about people but they knew everything about sales targets. I began to loose count at how many staff who had worked for the bank for between 20 to 30 years from leaving school. I thought if they are leaving things must be pretty bad. The old managers we had there were just amazing people who you could approach anytime about anything & they always encouraged you to go forward in your job. The new managers just wanted 18 to 22 year olds who were prepared to sell anything to anyone to hit sales targets. I was once told off because I refused to try to sell a credit card to a pensioner who was trying to survive on just a state pension.

The next bank I went to was Barclays in the mortgage department & the managers there were even worse. I found that if we tried to help customers they took a rather dim view of it & they wanted you to handle any call in a maximum of just 132 seconds which was just impossible at times. Whilst I was there I for one could see what was on its way as the USA was already heading for melt down. Some of our customers were already finding things getting a bit difficult & how on earth do you say to someone that if they don't make a payment before the end of the month then you will have to start the repossesion process? I found out whilst I was there that if a customer just pays the interest on their mortgage each month then they can't start a repossesion as a judge will just throw the case out. I told a couple of customers that & boy was I in a lot of trouble. I decided just to get out straight away as I just couldn't be around when the recession hit like it did.

Just one last thing though, everything is pointing to another dip coming this autumn & that why there has been so much panic at what happend in Ireland last week. Some of the experts who predicted the last recession are saying things could get a lot worse very soon so we all should brace ourselves for what could happen.

Ian

[DREAMGLASS]

Just one last thing though, everything is pointing to another dip coming this autumn & that why there has been so much panic at what happend in Ireland last week. Some of the experts who predicted the last recession are saying things could get a lot worse very soon so we all should brace ourselves for what could happen.

Sadly all any of us can do is just keep plugging away at things and looking for that elusive sunshine on the distant horizon. I just have the underlying feeling that if it goes on for much longer, we will start to see violent disorder like we did in the 1980's. Having a temporary 'blip' on someone's life is one thing, but excluding huge swathes of society by economic means has never been good news in any past society.

[mrs maggot]

it might be worth registering for work on the census next year - its ideally suited to people who work from home,

https://censusjobs.co.uk/fe/tpl_census0 ... ewms=info1

money is not too bad either, you can register for different job types, and look at areas in your local vicinity as well as how far you are willing to travel - might help with mortgage payments after the long winter

[DREAMGLASS]

I must admit that I do have concerns about some of the people they could potentially employ on those census duties. For those groups that partake in identity theft, having access to that sort of detailed information about individuals would be an absolute goldmine (for them).

I also have legitimate concerns about how some of that information is used by government nowadays, especially in the light of the impending cutbacks. Town A has 7% less registered disabled than town B, therefore the people in town B must be workshy!! All figures and data can be manipulated in that way to suit political needs of the time.

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Running a business from home can seriously limit the opportunities to take on paid employment to subsidise your own ventures. You need to find hours that would still allow you to get to the Post Office every day if needed, you would have to find someone willing to take in your heavy parcels containing your supplies and you also have to think about replying to enquiries and order processing within a reasonable timescale.

I tried doing some contract work last year, which working a two shift system gave me some flexibility, but diminished the opportunity to create any new designs for over three months, which in turn retarded the growth of the business. The classic catch 22 situation.

[mrs maggot]

Yes i was sceptical, but i filled in the form, which then leads to other forms, and eventually your NI number etc, so they do seem to be taking things seriously, figures can always be manipulated (look at our tax returns lol)

most of my work is in the summer months, and the run up to xmas, the first 3 months of the year as quite flat for me, so i need to think of other things to keep the mortgage paid, this is not my hobby its my job, my husband also runs his own small motorcycle repair business, so again the winter months are his quiet time.