Second Job?

I'm an IT Professional fulltime. I put myself through school working as a DJ and when I went fulltime IT Geek back in Jan. 2004, I kept DJing 1 or 2nights a week.

Now, I work fulltime, DJ in a club on friday nights and do photography on the side. People at work know what I do and don't have an issue.

Find a PT job that gives perks. If you do retail, work at CC or Bestbuy so you get discounts on stuff. My brother wants to do PT at Lowes so he gets their perks.

John

I work IT full time and I'm a diesel mechanic part time. I also do websites for small businesses in the area looking to just get an online presence. Neither job is a conflict of interest, unless of course the the business I do diesel work for picks up a contract with my full-time employer. Then there might be an issue.

So far though, no problems. I'm on call for my full-time job so my part-time employer knows that if things are bad enough at the full time job, I gotta bolt on him for a little while. He's OK with it and as long as my work at my full-time job gets done, they don't care.

I'm going to have to agree with schwarcw. I did retail and the only way I will do retail again is if I go back to Pep Boys and work the parts counter. Retail sucks because every yahoo that gets ragged on at their job comes in to your store at the end of the day and for some reason thinks they can treat you like dirt 'cause you're just a lowly store clerk. No one gets paid enough to deal with that. Otherwise, retail is a breeze but the work is easy and it will likely not pay better than minimum wage.

I would find something where you don't really have to interact with people. It'll just add stress. I got lucky and the diesel shop I work at is managed by a friend of mine. So when I go there, it's more along the lines of getting paid to hang out with the guys than it is to do work. We still work and get the job done but it's a stress reliever to an extent. If I'm not doing that though, I'm driving to some race track somewhere with friends from the shop next door to go racing. I realize that not everybody is in to what I'm in to but I found work doing something I like to do. I can apply the disgusting amount of knowledge I have about automotive stuff and internal combustion engines and I can make pretty good money doing it.

The best thing to do IMO is to find a job that lets you do something you enjoy. Like maybe a sales guy at an electronics store. Or a clerk in a music store. Or, if you like cars, go find a shop that needs some shop help. I've filled in at my friend's shop when he's short-handed and backed-up on work and just spent the day doing oil changes and swapping out tires so he can concentrate on the bigger jobs. You could always drive a delivery vehicle of some sort. If pizza is not your thing, there are plenty of places looking for part-time drives for things like car-parts delivery. You could drive for a florist. Even most supermarkets have delivery services for the elderly and disabled, you can drive for that too. You could even do a bakery truck run. They usually operate early in the morning though. There are tons of part-time jobs out there that don't have you being a slave to the general public and getting paid menial wages to boot. Don't go grabbing a part-time job that doesn't pay enough to make it worth while.

Definitely some good advice already posted ... I'll add my thoughts as well to hopefully help provide some more food for thought.

The first thing I would ask you is: What's your end goal? Is it to earn just enough money to pay off your current debt, and then stop working at the PT job? Or is it to generate more income overall and continue to stay out of debt after your current debt is paid off?

From your post it sounds like it is non-permanent thing (one or two years), but even that sounds like a real long time period to me... For that amount of time, I would suggest that it might make more sense to try to focus on getting a promotion / pay increase at your current FT job. Maybe even looking for a new FT job at another company.

My rationale is that a long term improvement in your current FT position will be more valuable, overall, than just working a 2nd PT job. If you do take on more responsibility at your current FT job, take some training classes to improve your skill set, etc. and are able to make yourself a more valuable employee in your current FT position, you can use that to get a raise or get a promotion. That approach will obviously take more time before you see results, but overall I think you will make yourself a more valuable asset. If your company doesn't recognize that, you can always look for another company that does recognize that.

A PT job will obviously provide more immediate results ... but I don't think that it will help as much in the long term. If you think about your resume, your experience and about your skill set in general, there are very few PT jobs that will add much of anything in that respect.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

Check out being a telephone operator at your local hospital or messenging service. You sit on your butt & forward calls or take messages.

Good luck with your search. I breed dogs as a hobby which also brings in a second income. The pups (Great Pyrenees) go for about $500-$600 each and come in litters of 7-10. You have to love this sort of thing for more than the money or it's not worth it, but the $5000 or so each season sure is nice. Not recommended to everyone, but worth consideration for true dog lovers.

I work a lot of OT and off duty now but before that I worked at a bank and moonlit briefly from time to time. It's easy to get burnt out quickly but the money is nice.

wingnut4772 wrote: »

I work a lot of OT and off duty now but before that I worked at a bank and moonlit briefly from time to time. It's easy to get burnt out quickly but the money is nice.

You should move to Mass. All road work requires a police detail, and all detail officers are paid TRIPLE TIME.

MrNightly wrote: »

You guys really got me thinking, that if you are gonna take a second job, it best be something you enjoy! Something I hadn't really thought to much about... Since this will most likely be a max of 20hrs a week, why not make it something I enjoy?!

Exactly! If it's not something you find interesting or enjoyable, you'll just be misirable and your first job will suffer. Good luck!

You know, that's a good point that a few people have made already.

When I worked at Pep Boys, we got a steep discount on everything. It was variable depending on what you bought but it made up for the lackluster pay. We could get as much as a 40% discount on special ordered parts which basically meant we got them at jobber cost. In stock parts were 15-20% off. Also, we found ways to get breaks ourselves with "customer satisfaction" price adjustments. Overall though, those discounts made a big difference. I had about $9,000 in parts on my Thunderbird that I special ordered through Pep Boys and I probably paid around $5,000 for them because of employee discounts. I also had alot of work done for peanuts because I was good friends with the service manager.

When I worked at Bradlees, a local, now defunct department store, we got a 15% employee discount on anything in the store and every month, the first paycheck of the month came with a $50 gift certificate for clothing. They also have several Employee Appreciation nights where they would close down the store and open the doors to employees and their families only. Then we'd get our discount plus an extra 30% off of anything in the store.

At my full-time job, we are a large company and they use our vast numbers as leverage to get larger companies to give some pretty steep discounts. We have discount programs with car companies, hotel chains, rental car companies, insurance companies, financial organizations for mortgages, investments and so on and the list goes on. If you want a part-time job, the perks are a thing to look for.

My current part-time job doesn't offer many perks except the fact that I can work when ever I want to and my schedule is flexible. The trucks go out after 11pm and are back in the yard by 11 am. So I can work at night when the weather isn't so hot and nobody is around to bother me. We do get some "perks" in that we give business for parts, shop supplies, tires and so on to the same people consistently so when we need a part or tire or something for a personal vehicle, we call our suppliers first and they'll bend over backwards to get what we need and I don't think I've ever paid full price for anything from them for myself. I've also had my truck towed to the a dealer free of charge because I called the guy who is usually recovering one of our fleet trucks when it's down. It's kind of a "good 'ole boy" thing but hey, it works! That and I ALWAYS get invited to the trade shows and customer appreciation nights for all the vendors! Can't complain about free food and booze and lots free junk!

So yeah, if you're gonna get a part time job, don't overlook benefits, perks and discounts. Some companies like UPS and FedEx have more PT'ers than FT'ers and they offer full medical benefits to all employees, FT and PT alike. I have a friend who works for a lawyer and his bennies aren't so great so he has a PT job working a customer service counter for UPS and he gets better benefits through them. Most of his PT paycheck goes to paying the benefits but that's the reason he's there. He makes plenty of cash at the lawyer's office and his boss there is OK with it. He says he likes the UPS job, they treat him well, the work is mindlessly simple and the people he works with are nice and generally happy people. That's a good deal IMO!

Jstas wrote: »

When I worked at Bradlees, a local, now defunct department store, we got a 15% employee discount on anything in the store and every month, the first paycheck of the month came with a $50 gift certificate for clothing. They also have several Employee Appreciation nights where they would close down the store and open the doors to employees and their families only. Then we'd get our discount plus an extra 30% off of anything in the store

Bradlees, wow thats old school. I remember that store. It's been years since they were around.

The only one we didn't get down here in the Southern NJ, greater Philly area was Lechmere.

Yeah Fireman32, I'm dating myself. I worked at Bradlees When I was in high school. Got stuck in that job for 3 years until Pep Boys came along for me. Then I got a job at my current full-time job and kept Pep Boys for another year but quit when regional shafted our store manager and brought in another guy who insisted on cleaning house but cutting people's hours until they quit. He was a spineless weenie. Bradlees though, they've been gone for like 7 or 8 years now I think.

bobman, did you guys have Caldor up there too? How about Jamesway? Both of those bit the dust down here when WAL*MART moved in. WAL*MART killed Bradlees, Jamesway, Ames, Caldor, Zares and even Mr. Goodbuys in this area. The only ones that survived were K-mart and Target but only because those two are retail juggenaughts almost as big as WAL*MART. Actually, now that K-mart is part of the Sears, Roebuck and Co, I think they are pretty close to the WAL*MART size.

How many of you Jersey guys remember "Two Guys" or "Great Eastern"?