Mick Lenane, stand allocation manager, Dublin Airport
You don't have to love aeroplanes to do my job, but it helps. As stand-allocation manager at Dublin Airport I work Monday to Friday, managing a team of 17 officers whose job it is to figure out where planes have to park when they land.
I'm up every morning at 7.20am on the dot. I've got three schoolgoing kids to organise, so it's normally just after 9am when I get here, but it depends entirely on what has happened on the M50.
It is probably to my shame that I drive. I'd happily take public transport if the bus from Skerries, where I live, didn't go all around the world - and up the main street in Swords - to get me here.
Ostensibly Dublin Airport has 73 stands, but the true number varies when you consider that you can park two small Boeing 737-800s for every one big 747. It's tricky work, too, given that a 747 takes up quarter of a football pitch.
Also, there's a massive amount of construction going on here at the moment while we build the new passenger terminal, which means we have to close some stands off temporarily.
There is huge competition among operators to get "contact stands", which leave passengers right to the building, rather than "remote stands", where everybody has to get on a bus.
For us, however, the main considerations are the size of the aircraft and what it's expected to do next, such as fly out again.
First up in the morning is checking and responding to e-mails. I get a number of reports overnight by e-mail, such as the updated schedule for Dublin Airport, so I go through them, too.
After that it's meetings pretty much all morning. I'm very much of the mind that if something can be sorted over the phone, or with a note, then it should be.
Aircraft movements are up 10 per cent at the airport, which is a challenge in itself. Then again, like most managers, I no longer have challenges; I have "opportunities to excel". Lunch is a sandwich at my desk. The afternoon is spent answering queries. Today there was an issue with the technical interface between Ryanair's system and ours, so that had to be sorted. Having an IT background is a big help.
It was a big day recently for our "aerosexuals" - the plane spotters who throng the airport. We were expecting an Antonov An-124, a massive Russian plane, to carry Irish military equipment to Chad and its movements were generating a lot of excitement. It's quite rare to have one here.
I'm normally finished up by 5.15pm. I spend the evening picking up or dropping off kids to various training classes. After dinner, and a brief flake-out with The Simpsons in the background, my wife and I will get in a walk by the sea.
Then it's back to get clothes, uniforms and sandwiches ready for the next day, and bed by 11.30pm. I must get enough of them during the day, because I never dream of aeroplanes.
In conversation with Sandra O'Connell