Working For A Living

Today is kind of a special day. It marks my 10 year anniversary as an Ameriprise financial advisor. With the ongoing market turmoil my job has become more stressful than ever the past few months at the same time my income has been plummeting. In honor of my 10 years on the job here are a few careers that I could never stomach. Just something about them that rubs me the wrong way.

1) Water Boy - at pretty much every major sporting event there are people on the sidelines with water bottles at the ready to service the players as they come off the field, court, ice or what have you. A water boy (or girl I suppose) is responsible for squirting water or Gatorade or something (could be steroids for all we know) into the players' mouths when they come to the sidelines. They may also have the extra special task of wiping the sweat off the athletes. Nope, can't do it.

2) Realtor - this one may surprise you since a Realtor is a fairly nice, cushy professional job with solid earnings potential. Sell one $500,000 house in greater DC and your commission is $15,000. Certainly the housing slump has made this career a challenge but that is not the reason for my disdain of it. Realtors have to work Sundays and show houses. There is no way I could ever bring myself to have an open house on Super Bowl Sunday as I saw many Realtors doing just a few weeks ago.

3) Special Interest Lobbyist - Certainly DC is packed with associations for everything under the sun and they all have lobbyists. That is all well and good to a degree but it is not a career my conscious would allow me to pursue. Trying to persuade Congress that cigarette taxes should be lowered or that we should repeal the Clean Air Act is just not in my soul.

4) Commercial Actor - while I wouldn't be opposed to fame and money the path to reaching that nirvana does this career in for me. You have to start out at the bottom, in commercials. You have to feign excitement for a sale at Kia Motors or dance around like a spaz because you ate some Jello Pudding. No thanks. There are some really lousy commercials on the airwaves and I am very glad you will never see me in one.

5) Sweat Boy - This is perhaps the next step up from water boy in the NBA. At each end of the court there is a guy (never seen a girl) with a big mop and his job is to mop up the sweat the basketball players leave on the court. Once upon a time this was a very respected profession. Sweat boy would mop up the sweat after a collision or foul when players would end up on the floor. It was a valuable service and only performed when needed. That is not the case anymore. Sweat boys are whoring themselves out between every possession mopping up even the tiniest beads of perspiration on the court or perhaps mopping up nothing at all. Sweat boy, you have lost your soul for all eternity, pfffftttttt.

Someone told me they thought it would be fun to be a water boy because you could pretend that the players are your pets. You pat them on the head, squirt some water in their mouth and send them on their way. Unfortunately, that would only work until payday when you realize you get $8.50 per hour and they get $8.5 million per season.

Mood: Jovial

Song of the Day:

"I'm taking what their giving, cause I'm working for a living."

- Working For A Living

Huey Lewis and The News