I do political work for a union now-- meaning, in an office, and without customers

[NoodleBoy]

And, I've got to tell you--

I miss working in retail/food. I'm the only person my age in the entire office (they might just call it Union Hall), and everyone I work with was in construction for years before they were elected to the positions they now hold, meaning just about the only interests we have in common are a good cigar and a good plate of food.

So it's just made me appreciate when I had customers, because that also meant I had a bunch of coworkers, and, hence, a social life, both with coworkers and with the rare occasion a nice person has been a customer.

So after an absence of a couple months, this is my emo return. I'm going to go listen to The Cure now and ponder.

[AirHostess]

I do kind of miss my passengers since I quit flying.

Only slightly. Working in a small office with the same people everyday is boring!

I do have sexy doctors popping in though cos I work in medical staffing in a hospital. Much to my dismay it is nothing like Scrubs/ER/Gray's Anatomy.

[TNT]

I know the feeling... I've not communicated with an actual customer in just about a month, and I miss it. I even had a quiet conversation with my boss about the possibility of my returning to tech support in some function.

It's not going to actually happen... I may miss the customers, but I'll never miss life in the call center.

[BookstoreEscapee]

You get used to it...I like my office, but then most of us are around the same age and we all eat lunch together most days (there are only 8 of us plus my boss, who is himself only a year older than me). There are things I miss about being in the stores, some days that even includes the customers. I like being able to track down an elusive book for people who are nice about the fact that the book is being elusive. The bitchy ones I don't miss. I miss going out for drinks after closing sometimes, too. But the fact that I only work until 4:30 every day makes up for that. The thing I really miss is seeing all the new releases and being able to borrow books. Can't do that now

[upsidedown_orchid]

I can sympathise, the no customers, quiet office thing gets boring after awhile.

I love having the best of both worlds at my theatre.

We have customers in only about 40% of the time we are working, so there is lots of non customer time we can just do our work and socialize.

It's a nice balance.

[Ringtail Z28]

I totally understand.

An office is a totally different world from a retail store. One that I know I really don't belong in.

[Naaman]

I dunno. I moved to a nice office job, medium sized 60-70 people, and whilst I can see why you guys miss 'the 'floor' I wouldn't go back.

When I was a techie approx 40% of people were SCs, 55% were average, forgettable customers and 5% were a treat to deal with.

When I was retail SCs dropped to about 15%, 75% were normal and 10% were people you got to know well enough to stand and chat and save stuff behind the counter without them asking. For those 10%, once I knew them, I could tell them exactly what games they'd like - I was right often to get compliments

What I got fed up with was the lottery of "Who do I get today and in what proportion". Now I turn up, hook up the headphones for Digital radio or MP3s and grind away. There's occasional sneaky surfing or wandering off from my desk to chat but I think what I like most about it is the stability; no random rushes, no slackers (at least in our team) or "summer job" co-workers, no random spot-checks from DMs and definitely no kids.

Do I miss customers? - only the good ones and there weren't enough of them to go around