I am leaving out the standbys (of which of course over the winters there were many) which were spent at home or at the gym or having coffees with friends or playing golf etc etc - hardly a difficult life.
I do, however, understand being on standby if you happen to be based far from home is not a good situation.
A major criticism I have of Ryanair is that the basing policy needs to be clear rather than this random chance of getting your base of preference which is wholly unsatisfactory.
Ryanair are far far far from perfect. But posting on here accusing cadets of stealing jobs and inaccurate postings about base captains shouting at FOs are just nonsense so I came on here to offer a more balanced view.