Saturday, February 11, 2012

The Top 10 Useless Professions


It's funny how despite all of the official denials about the state of the economy, there are plenty of references as to how badly it still sucks even in media sources that don't normally cover such issues. Case in point is this witty and yet biting article from humor website The Shark Guys naming the Top 10 Most Useless Professions:
In times of plenty, an economy can sustain countless jobs that contribute little to society and that would fuel third world anger against us should they find out what these jobs pay, or even that they exist at all—pet groomer/psychoanalyst, for instance. But when companies are taking a bonsai tree approach to staffing, it is natural for the rest of the job market to shrink to the bare essentials — think human fluid mopping specialist.

Some jobs are just more important than others and we include ourselves in that assessment. Writers give people things to read in the bathroom and balance out the pictures in pornography, but they cannot be called upon to, say, remove a gall bladder (posthumously doesn’t count). Writers block means insomnia and Exedrine hangovers — surgeon’s block means a malpractice suit.

Here we offer 10 professions that could be eliminated and the aftereffects would be less severe than a night on non-alcoholic beer. These are our Top 10 Useless Jobs!
Each of the 10 gets its own funny write up, which you can read at the link, but here is the list:
10. Life Coach

9. Nutritionist

8. Chiropractor

7. Travel Agent

6. The Guy who Holds the Stop Sign to Indicate Construction

5. Gym Teacher

4. Librarian

3. Postal Worker

2. Futurist

1. Personal Trainer
Notice that somehow "Blogger" didn't make the list!


Bonus: "I'm a genius of...useless stuff"

4 comments:

  1. “Number 4—Librarian” Wow, that is definitely a sign of the times.

    Who needs a “liberry,” “liberrian” and those stinkin books, when we got twitter and facebook?

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  2. I love it that futurist made the list.

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  3. @Crash_Watcher - they should swap 'Teacher' with 'Librarian' if you ask me. I've dated women who are teachers and have degrees in education (one with two master's). They seem to be unaware of critical thinking. As we understand, one cannot transmit something one does not know. At least the Dewey Decimal system promotes critical thinking at a fundamental level.

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    1. True story: two decades ago when I was living in Chicago and conducting housing fraud investigations for a living I had a strawbuyer case in which the subject was a real estate agent. It is complicated to explain, but basically part of the scam was to pay a nominal amount of money (usually around $1000) to people who would pretend to be buyers, then he would extract the equity from the financially stressed original owners. When the properties were inevitably foreclosed on, the sucker strawbuyers would be on the hook and their credit would be destroyed.

      You guessed it--most of this guy's strawbuyers that he conned were Chicago public schoolteachers who couldn't grasp that he was quite obviously setting them up.

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