I think it’s the same in any business, not just aviation. The original poster mentioned things like management getting on your nerves all the time and not seeming to have any idea of the job the front line troops perform, Health and Safety and Security going over the top, Inadequate numbers of indians and far too many Little Hitlers, etc.. these things can exist from small family owned business to the largest multi-national corporations.
I wanted to get into aviation when I first left school I didn’t really know how, I started off washing planes and general chores at my local flying school.. a friend of a friend introduced me to the world of airline operations (OCC, flight planning, crewing) - not something I even knew existed.... off I popped back to college (evening classes) for a C&G course in flight ops and thanks to the same friend, I found myself as an ops assistant! Yeah, used to love the early years, dogsbodying around - ops, crewing, flightplanning, crew bus driving, out on the ramp, in the terminal, being pushed from pillar to post, 16 hour days but the people and the environment were second to none - I was thriving, getting stuck into everything. 10 years later, I'm managing a small department with a new carrier and brand new aeroplanes. Still love the environment, still get out on the ramp, still get the occasional trip away but more importantly I'm passing the knowledge I learned at the beginning to my fresh faced new joiners, I have few stories to tell and have seem some parts of the world that many havn't. Still friends with the same people (after all, this is aviation - the same faces keep popping up) and even working with a few I havn’t seen for 6 years +. I guess, as you get older and start to climb the ladder, you take a step back and maybe things arn't exciting as they were back in the day... although now primarily a mon-fri 9-5er things have calmed down a bit, now my life consists of a lot of meetings, emails , paperwork and conference calls... I still get out on the ramp, I can peer out of my office window which is parallel to RWY26 and watch the planes flying by, I'll pop down to the hangar to see the techies and climb all over a nice shiny jet.... yeah, it's a bit different now but I wouldn’t change a thing.