How do you get to do that job....?

Well, apparently having a job as a pet food taster pays well

I think a lot of it was chance, one school seemed to have much more ambition for all its pupils, I think it would be hard to find a school with lower ambitions than mine though.

TheCatWoman said:

I mean how do you get to become a perfumier, a wine taster, paint colour designer.

Others have talked about how some trades are passed from parent to offspring - this covers many that are less "skilled", but the ones that require a lot of specialised skill and knowledge are often roles that you grow into.

The perfumier probably started as a chemist or healthcare worker, found an interest in the field and worked towards this and over time their employer saw potential in their skills and they evolved into a specialist role.

I have had the opportunity to specialise in certain aspects of IT over the years but after trying one or two, found them too narrow and boring to keep my attention. I suspect the sort of specialists you allude to here are able to have a very narrow field of expertise and a high boredom threshold.

Some elements of this would work well for many autists in their area of "special interests" but my worry is that when it becomes a full time job then it loses a lot of its allure to us, and once that allure has gone it becomes painful to have to work in a field you don't enjoy.

Good grief! I think I fell into a different educational world by chance.

I don't think my school had anyone go to university, I remember it being announced in assembly when one girl got to college.

TheCatWoman said:

All that was expected of us was to get a job for a couple of years before marriage and babies, one teacher even said there was no point educating girls as we'd just go off and have babies.

My first Saturday job at the age of 15, back in the late 60s, was in a high-street bakery shop. The manager expressed this view to myself and the other Saturday assistant, and I was shocked by it. It seemed hopelessly outdated to me, even then, but that might have been because I hadn't come across it, either in school or at home. It wasn't that my parents were progressive, just that they never treated me as a sex.

The biggest threat to us was 'you'll end up selling spuds in Woollies'! 

All that was expected of us was to get a job for a couple of years before marriage and babies, one teacher even said there was no point educating girls as we'd just go off and have babies. Our careers advice was an afternoon, after we'd made our CSE/O Level choices, so we were stuck with whatever we'd "chosen", although it didn't feel like a choice when parents and teachers overrode whatever you'd decided. I wanted to be a beautician when I was 14, the careers advisor had never heard of it.

I'm sure it was already decided for us regardless of how good or bad we turned out to be, I think it got decided by our secondary school choice, although that wasn't always guaranteed that you go to the place you wanted. Most us choose the school our friends were going to. I was the first year not to have to do the 11+, teachers didn't like it, snobbery was baked into the system, as was favouritism, if the teacher liked you you did well, got good marks, if they didn't you got marked down. Pretty much anything you liked doing, you would be allowed to do and would be made to do something you hated and were bad at.

School was more like a warehouse for adolescent girls than an educational estabilshment.

TheCatWoman said:

our sensitivites with smells, hearing, colour vision

I was going to write a reply late last night but couldn’t see my phone, a neighbour two houses away was smoking weed in his garden. My bedroom window was open and the smell caused my eyes to stream with tears that felt like acid. So I don’t think our amplified senses would help with certain jobs, but I do a job that requires great attention to detail.

I went to a boys school, we had a careers officer but nothing was expected of us, the town had a lot of factories when I was young. the biggest was a glue factory that took up an entire road. Teachers would comment that we would end up working in the glue factory or be in prison.

It was quite normal to end up in your fathers trade, if your father was a builder then you would leave school and end up on the shovel. Window cleaner, plumber, some followed fathers as bin men. Many companies ran a ‘closed shop.’ Employment had to be offered to family of employees first.

My wife went to the girls school in the same town, the girls who the teachers liked were allowed to take a typing class, it was expected the rest would end up working in factories until they became baby factories.

In the last year of school I wasn’t allowed to do a day release to the local college for a motor vehicle course , I was in the top sets for English and Maths, It was thought I wouldn’t benefit from the course . I was the only one to go into the motor industry and left school with very low grades. I had to start as a YTS apprentice, I couldn’t get a normal apprenticeship as I hadn’t done the school access course. £25  for a 40 hour week and loads of stigma.

Someone mentioned undertakers, my late father worked as a collector and pallbearer when he was young, his mother laid the bodies out before collection. The management of the companies was very much a family affair, the next generation would be expected to take over.

There's a few jobs that I either wonder how did you get into that or what made you want to get into that.

I kind of get wine taster - I would assume you would already work in that industry and realise that is a strength of yours and go from there. But paint colour designer is rather specific, I have no idea how you actually end up there.

Did you know that a dice quality inspector is an actual thing? They inspect and roll dice in casinos etc to ensure that it isn't biased. How does one get into a job like that? Careers adviser would definitely think you were having them on for that one.

But I also wonder about people that work in funeral homes and that kind of thing. Absolutely no disrespect to anyone that does, it's an important job but it intrigues me. Did they just need a job and take it? Is it a family business? Or was that something they really wanted to do? I can't imagine being 15/16 and thinking yes that is what I want to do but maybe that's just me.

B said:

I remember The Goons on my mother's radio.

Heh. My aunt's husband was a good friend of Secombe. He was asked to join him and Spike in a new venture called "The Goons". He turned it down on the grounds it would never work.

My late father had the Goon Shows on cassette tape, I knew how to retention a cassette with a pencil. I watched Spike on a program of his called ‘Q’

Roy said:

It comes from growing up listening to Spike Milligan.

I remember The Goons on my mother's radio.

I just looked at the dates it was aired and I wasn't born then so they must have been repeats.

It comes from growing up listening to Spike Milligan.

I knew you would say that, nobody loves a smart ***!

Roy said:

My wife said exactly the same

Your wife doesn't know me?

My wife said exactly the same. 

Alexa said:

That's awful! I had no idea there was a time limit. 

16 years.

B said:

I did a few courses on the understanding that it was 'lifetime' study but when I tried to pick back up on it I was out of time (over the time limit) and I had wasted a lot of money.

That's awful! I had no idea there was a time limit. 

B said:

I found it exhausting on top of work.

Studying was one of my special interests. It was a pain and I wouldn't be able to do it now, I think. It transformed into all the research I had to do for my books.

Alexa said:

studied for a degree in my spare time through the Open University.

I did a few courses on the understanding that it was 'lifetime' study but when I tried to pick back up on it I was out of time (over the time limit) and I had wasted a lot of money.

It must be easier these days with computers.

I found it exhausting on top of work.