Security Or Enjoyable: The Eternal Employment Dilemma

        Last week, I mentioned people who taste cat-food for a living, as well as people who climb 1,700ft poles to fix a flashing light without any safety ropes. I mentioned these because I thought they were the oddest jobs I could imagine. Well, it turns out I was wrong! Ever fancied being a hair boiler? No; how about the person who makes sure that shoes coming off a production line have no wrinkles in them? Don't think that'll be a good talking point at a party? How about the endless excitement and daily challenge of being a furniture tester? Why not be adventurous and dive for golf balls at the local golf course? It turns out that there's tons of crazy jobs out there, all as interesting, mind-numbing or socially awkward as each other. But, someone's got to do them, right? And considering golfball-man can make somewhere around £60,000-£70,000 a year, I bet there's a few people working in awful jobs who would happily hold their breath in return for being a higher-rate taxpayer. Possibly more if you decide to move to Florida and enjoy an added perk of the job: avoiding alligators. 

        But the thing is; these jobs are pretty necessary. I mean, how else would we know if my new sofa will feel like sitting on a bed of hugs as it suggests, rather than like sitting on a land-mine. If someone spends a month's salary on a pair of Jimmy Choo's, they want them to look neat and uncreased, rather than Dot Cotton's upper lip. I've yet to work out the benefit to boiling hair, but no doubt there's someone who regularly thanks their lucky stars for this. The people who make Asda Own-brand microwave-meals, probably (they've got to get their produce from somewhere). Thing is, I can't imagine any of these jobs being mentioned in rounds of "when I grow up, I want to be.....". They sure don't seem interesting or exhilarating in the way as, say, being a fighter pilot would be? Plus, it makes for awkward dinner-party conversations: "well, funny you should ask. I actually spend my days swimming in murky ponds to fish out golf balls to sell to men who look like they're wearing Rupert Bear's trousers. Where are you going? Hello?.....". I can't imagine the person who spends all day checking for the slightest imperfection in a pair of £9.99 school shoes can be on a wage that makes The Guardian come over all envious. So it can only be one thing: it's the sort of job that you fall into, or you take because you really need a job, what with you needing food to live and all. The sort of jobs where everyone has that same defeated face from clocking-in to clocking-out.

        Now, I'd like to point out that this is not a criticism of those who do these jobs. It's at least admirable that they'd do these jobs, completely aware that they've now got to come up with an elaborate way of explaining what they do without coming across as that weird guy who mutters to himself in the Supermarket, because it's preferable to, you know, not being able to eat. The ones that I don't understand at all, are those who work as a Doctor/Dentist/Manager/pretty much anything despite hating every moment. It's not just senior folk, or people who prod around other's bodies looking for anything amiss, it's anyone who "lives for the weekend", or who spends any time counting the minutes until 5pm on Friday, when they can be "free". It's those who wake up on a Monday morning with a heavy-hearted sigh and would rather have anything, up to and including herpes, than have to go into work. Do you book holidays years in advance, just so you have something to look forward to? Ever stared out of the window and dreamed about winning the Lottery, just so you could tell your boss what you think of him and his ideas as you sail into the sunset and a life that you can start to enjoy? Well congratulations! You're a contestant for "Why Am I Wasting My Life Doing This Job!". 

        Here's the thing: you're going to be working anywhere between 40 and 50 years of your life. If it's in an office, you'll spend so much time there, you'll end up allocating a toilet stall as your "favourite". You're going to spend (probably) five days out of seven doing whatever it is you do. So if you've always wanted to be a Policeman, or a Carpenter, or even a Circus Clown, why would you ignore that to spend half a century toiling under Jenkins in Accounting, worrying if you correctly cross-referenced the Bloomington's report against the profit/loss figures of Aceta Capital's international........zzzzzzzzz? I simply cannot fathom why someone would willingly do a job that they clearly hate for so long? Unless that job happens to pay you so much that you can retire at 40, safe in the knowledge that you can go and juggle bowling pins while riding a hippo in front of a confused yet amused crowd without worrying about income. Surely it makes sense that, if you really want to work in the hip world of Advertising, with promises of "doing" lunch as well as attractive colleagues meeting up in a trendy-wine-bar-that-used-to-be-a-bank after work for a spot liver damage and one-night stands, then you'd go into Advertising rather than, say, anything else in the world. This is pretty straightforward, and if this is too hard to understand then I suspect your choice of career isn't your biggest worry.

        However the people who I do feel a lot of sympathy for, are those who truly dream about entering a career without a regular salary attached: performers, freelance writers, any authors in fact, seasonal workers (hey, some people have always wanted to run a Blackpool amusement arcade, I think). This isn't as simple as merely getting a job in advertising. They've got a real dilemma on their hands: the choice between nice comfy security (and a regular salary) in a job you hate, or the daunting fear of failure in an unsafe and risky career you love. It's the sort of thing that, if you've always aspired to a job that's always in demand, you'll never really understand. You've got to weigh up the odds of either getting to 35-40 (when it's too late to meaningfully change careers and get far for most people) and bitterly regret not going for it and "taking a shot", or of trying hard at succeeding and simply not being able to, and having to skulk off to a new line of work, having found yourself years behind everyone else (plus the aforementioned counting of minutes until Friday).

        Hopefully, you're not someone who has to face an awkward dilemma like that, and for those that do face this and choose the "safe" option, then I understand. For those who do choose the risky path to follow their dreams, I wish you luck. You'll probably need it!

        But if it does work out, you've got something that 50 years of a regular salary will never buy: being able to go to bed every Sunday night, looking forward to the next day! In my mind, that beats the security, the salary and doing all the "lunches" in the world, many times over.

(photo's credited to Ambrose and Federico Stevanin)

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