25th September 2010, 10:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 25th September 2010, 10:15 PM by trainedchimp.)
Quote:Unless you're an unemployed Archaeologist. In which case it isn't.
I think that was covered in the last point I made, a sting in the tail...
on a corporate/professional level, as long as units get people falling over themselves to work for frankly sh1te money and conditions (er, read as willing to work for the going wage), that's all they'll ever offer. As long as there are more people frankly desperate to become or remain archaeologists that they'll take aforesaid sh1te, conditions will never get better. The only thing that will help pay, conditions and retention is a skill shortage - i.e. too few diggers for the jobs. The only two ways of creating this skill shortage are either by digging lots more stuff, or by enough diggers leaving the 'profession'. The simple fact that pay and conditions haven't improved at all (actually, much, to be fair) over the past 20 years, despite the volume of work multiplying several times over in that period is that the supply of willing diggers has overreached the demand.
No consolation if you're now doing something else and wishing you were still digging, or are out of work altogether. I'll admit that, and apologies for the depressing and fascistic world view....
On a personal level, I asked myself whether I lived to dig or dug to live, and came down just about in the second camp. I figured that if you live to dig, you've got to accept the sh1te and take the meagre crumbs of work as it's own reward, as it's never been any secret that pay and conditions are appalling. If you dig to live, you've got three options - put up and shut up, get out and do something about it or just get out. Logic about as brutal as the profession I'm afraid.