Fuckit Friday: Which profession do you appreciate PMTYS?
1There are certain jobs that people do that open them up to a disproportionate volume of loathing and lame jokes and general discourtesy.
I have a special place in my heart for these hated multitudes. I'm just wondering if anyone else is with me. My answers with brief explanations below.
But on a general note, I think that many of these professions are either intrinsically necessary or necessary by virtue of the behavior and desires of the people who bitch about them.
Also, I was prompted to ask this by the thread in which we're discussing what we'd do if we could get paid for it, where I listed two of the following.
- 15 comments, 32 replies
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PMTYS? Please Make This Yutz Stop?
@carl669 Oh, I see what you did there. I'm a yutz, huh? ;-p "Probably (Possibly?) More Than You Should." Irk speak. keep the fuck up. and, yeah, keep the fuckup. Because who else will take me?
@joelmw i wish i could paid to decrypt acronyms. t'would be a worthwhile endeavor. t'would.
Lawyers
The lawyers I've known personally have mostly been great human beings. Not to mention the fact that they are way more knowledgeable (and broadly), articulate, verbal (verbose even), rational and open-minded than the general population. And they tend to have awesome senses of humor.
And the Law is a glorious and complex beast and I just have mad respect for those who can run with her.
Also, judges are lawyers and many of my favorite sources of wisdom are judges (especially of the SCOTUS).
@joelmw Lawyers are okay as long as they are drafting up a lease agreement or creating your will; however, the ones that advertise on TV searching for accident victims where they will send them to their special doctor that will make up problems that don't really exist just to get a large percentage of the settlement -- those lawyers are the scum of the earth.
@cengland0 I have to agree with you on that.
Politicians
Yep. Again, many are lawyers. And I'd say that politicians these days are way worse than the politicians of my youth, who generally knew what the fuck they were doing, and more often did something, and knew how to compromise.
Politics is a necessary human function. Yes, it does tend to corruption, but it doesn't have to. Those who do it well are truly worthy of our admiration.
@joelmw I think that if you truly look back at the commentary of the day - politicians are always hated and considered sneaky, vile scumbags. Political cartoons, LFTE, etc. all portray current politicians as such - dating back to the early days of the Union.
@Thumperchick I don't dispute that. I'm just saying that there's something particularly and uniquely vile about a large chunk of the people that Americans are electing these days. And it's not that their class has never existed or that it's ever gone away, but the regression is singular and stunning.
@joelmw you're on your own with this one. And almost all of them.
@JonT Sigh. Just call me Quixote.
TSA Agents
My experience of these folks is that they're patient and courteous. And they put up with a lot of unnecessary rudeness. For the record, I think the whole apparatus is way overgrown. But I blame that on demagogues and the fearful mASSES they pander to--the same fearful mASSES that bitch when they're even minimally inconvenienced.
@joelmw Nope. I think the culture within this particular organization has trained its employees to view the human beings they deal with as objects. This attitude is a big part of why people are so prone to annoyance at them. Then, you can add in the theft, the proven image uploads of the body scanners, and several other issues that are never really addressed and the TSA becomes the absolute beacon of government inefficiency and the dehumanization of our population.
There are some in that system that treat people like people, but the system itself is designed to strip that away. So no, I can't go with you on this one.
@joelmw I like the TSA agents and appreciate the job they do.
I heard someone say once that we should create an airline called "Freedom Air" and let anyone fly without any security checks. The government will have the ability to shoot it down at any time if they fly close to restricted airspace. Let's see how many people would be interested in flying that airline.
It's funny because people want a secure airline but they don't want to go through a security check themselves.
@Thumperchick What you're saying may be true somehow, but it hasn't been my experience. And as a government worker, I know the shit that government agencies and government employees get accused of, so I'm especially leery of the claim that their being trained to "view the human beings they deal with as objects."
@cengland0 Exactly.
@Thumperchick @cengland0 I'd go another step and say that I'd be content if we didn't have a TSA. People want to be safe. More than that, they want to feel safe; they want the perception of safety. They also don't want to be slowed down. They bitch at the TSA for slowing them down and they bitch at the TSA for being invasive. And yet they also bitch at the TSA if anything happens on an airplane that could have conceivably--with the "appropriate" level of ridiculous screening--been caught and prevented.
@cengland0 i think Freedom Air should be free to have whatever security checks it wants, not necessarily no security checks, and implement security how it sees fit. I'd fly that airline.
@katylava I'd fly it as well.
@joelmw Federal Air Marshals. I did manage to sit by one on a flight from Beijing to SFO. Of course they do not identify themselves, and I certainly did not let on I was on to him. But all the signs pointed to that conclusion: he was on the plane before I boarded and I was one of the first to board, he had three 1.5 liter bottles of water when Beijing confiscates bottles of water as you board, he had closed the overhead bin and looked kind of nonplussed when I opened it to put my stuff in, he did not sleep during the entire flight, he did not eat until the last hour of the flight, he tensed up every time somebody approached the stairs up to the upper level (where the pilots are), he had a small tablet set up on his tray but never actually used it, he had in-ear headphones on but not connected to the computer, he never tucked in his shirt and I glimpsed something on the small of his back when he got up at the end of the flight, when disembarking he met someone else on the plane, and they both went through the diplomat line at immigration. Not something I'd ever want to do; hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror (hopefully none of the latter)
Professions I secretly admire?
Second-story men. Takes some stealth and climbing ability not usual in the general run of thieves. Of course, my house is one story, in the country, and I don't have anything worth breaking in to steal. And I shoot intruders.
Pimps. Hey, it's a management job! And who else is going to buy the gold and purple tailored suits with bling? (Okay, maybe a few Elvis impersonators ..)
Elvis Impersonators. Just because.
Dominatrices. Women are underrepresented in positions of authority. And we need something to counter all of those "Fifty Shades" fangirls.
But as for lawyers, lobbyists, professional politicians, Uber drivers, lying journalists and talking heads, members of ISIL, fake Princes from Nigeria who want to send me money and Kardashians : nope. Can't find much good to say about any of them.
@rockblossom how do you know real Princes from Nigeria are any better?
@carl669 Actually, I would assume they are worse, but unlikely to have my e-mail address.
@rockblossom We have an Elvis impersonator who works the streets near where I work. He's an interesting and likable guy.
Firemen (and women)
Cleaning personnel in large buildings
@mikibell I would never lump firemen in with lawyers and politicians.
@pitamuffin Oh, me neither, I have never wanted a lawyer or a politician to rock my socks off!!!
@mikibell Totally with you on the cleaning personnel. I don't know that I think firemen are underappreciated, but I certainly think they should be appreciated.
Garbage Workers and People who sort recycling. These are the people who have to pick out your greasy pizza boxes you insist on putting in the recycling even though you're not supposed to. They have to load a million bags of leaves into their truck and dump them in a landfill even though leaves just biodegrade and it's pointless to bag them in the first place. They do their best to put labels of do and don'ts on your bins but they will never come to your door and chastise you or complain if you completely screw up. My neighbors are a prime example so by I spend over an hour preparing my recycling and trash for pickup day. They are, in my opinion, doing God's work.
@chillface Those are the same workers that remove my #1 and #2 recyclable containers because they don't look like bottles? They are just as recyclable and fit within the rules.
Another issue I have is when I squeeze the oranges from my tree and have a lot of leftover orange peels. I dehydrate pineapples in large quantities. There is a separate truck that picks up organic trash (what we call yard debris) and they refuse to take the orange and pineapple pieces. Then the next day the regular trash guy comes and they refuse to take it too because it should have been picked up by the yard trash guys. I do not want to say what I eventually do with the trash when that happens because it may not be 100% legal but I have to take care of it myself.
@chillface Oh, one more thing. I shred all my mail and put it out with the rest of the recyclables and it's a hit or miss if they take it or not. The instructions say to put your shredded papers in a trash bag and that's exactly what I do but they usually only take what is physically in the recycle bin and even take out the garbage bag if I put it in it's own bin.
@cengland0 Where I live, they do not take shredded paper, as they shouldn't, because it can get caught easily in the machinery they typically use. We compost all organic material as there is no organics program, so I haven't had any experience with that. As for your #1 and #2 plastics, are they take-out containers? They're forbidden for some of the same reasons that plastic bags are...
Train conductors and clercks are good examples of people I think should be getting honored more han they do. Every day they get up to new problems - conducters get up to trains being late, people who argue about whether or not they have a valid ticket, the train conducters sometimes have to throw someone off the trin if they don't have a valid ticket - and they are really angry. And then they just go to the next person like nothing happened, smiling.
Clerks get up to discounts that don't register correctly, things that are sold out, people who complain about the queue being too long, and when the stores are closing there are often a customer or 2 who are late.
Now, I'm by no means saying that they are better than the rest of the world or perfect, just that they get too little credit for what they actually do.
@lakridserne Wait staff and bus drivers.
@joelmw You're absolutely correct, they are awesome as well
This thread reminds me of Mike Rowe's Ted Talk about "the nature of hard work, and how its been unjustifiably degraded in society today".
@The_Baron Yep. A lot of it boils down to people complaining about someone who's doing a job that the complainers want done but wouldn't ever be willing to do themselves.
Exotic dancers, professional sex workers - adult entertainers of all types.
Most of Europe, Canada and Australia "get it" - and get it right.
Quality Assurance Engineers (or, good ones at least)
Because I used to be one and now I am a dev and I realize how much it sucks when you don't have enough/any good ones.
@meh I used to run a testing department. I considered it my (and my staff's) responsibility to make things break. I got along well with our developers, but I had more than one of them say on multiple occasions, "but the user shouldn't ever do that." Of course, having worked in tech support and implementation, I knew for a fact that "should' didn't enter into it.
@joelmw Our software is used by temporary employees in offices all over the world. They're often faced with high pressure situations where stuff needs to get done yesterday. Thankfully, everyone on my team is now aware that they WILL do EVERYTHING to our software. But now we're seriously short staffed on people to find those things and break it before it ships.
Government employees
(This is admittedly self-serving.)
With the caveat that some of the people who stay here do get lazy and/or end up feeding the system instead of keeping the end in mind. Most of the people I work with actually take the idea of public service seriously--and for many, maybe most, of them, it was one of the main reasons that they went this direction with their careers.
And, it might surprise you to know that there are many of us who try extremely hard to push positive change (e.g., efficiencies, cutting edge technology). You wouldn't believe the variety and degrees of resistance--including especially from the public. The budget process is particularly cumbersome and can be very counter-productive; and you can count on the fact that someone (a scorned contractor, a "watchdog" citizen, local media) will be all over the slightest irregularity, even if it's innocent and/or motivated by integrity and intelligence. And I believe strongly in the need for oversight, scrutiny and accountability; it's just that it's more difficult to operate in that environment than those who've never done it realize.
Network Engineers
These sorry saps get no credit for when their shit works. The moment it goes down all hell breaks lose and they are the worst people ever.
Seriously, Network engineers have a true thankless job.
This really goes for almost all people that work behind the scenes in the service industry, though.
@Bogie Ha. You just reminded me: the sound guy. Nobody gives a shit until shit goes wrong.
So, really, yaknow, part of what I'm saying is that if you have a shit job and people give you shit about it, I'm sorry.
Unless you're a telemarketer or you do phone collections for one of those places that 1) buys bad credit at a discount and then tries to collect the original debt plus fees; 2) is otherwise ripping people off and/or 3) pressures people to put some shit debt above feeding their kids or paying the rent or going to the doctor.
Still, I have to give you credit: you're trying.
But collections. Damn. I think I'd be homeless and feel better about it before I'd work high-pressure collections (yeah, I don't count if you're just collecting a debt and you're being a decent persona about it).
I'm pretty much on the fence about telemarketers. Though mostly I'm on the fence shouting LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
I do feel bad for anyone who has to do one of these jobs, but not bad enough that I can appreciate them for what they do. And I especially don't appreciate them if they like what they do. Because, yeah, fuck you too if you wanna call me on the phone and harass me.
@joelmw this is why we have a PBX for our house with an auto attendent. auto dialers can't navigate it...
Debt Collections people get a bad rap but they do an important job to help honest people get paid for the goods and services they provide to society. I also think collection agencies fall into the category of "necessary by virtue of the behavior and desires of the people who bitch about them."