My God, those poor people. I repent of every time I advocated tax rises for them.
Has CareerBliss ever even heard of sample size?
CareerBliss pretty much had to after it became impossible to take an airplane with a giant bottle of shampoo.
I'm used to the "business section" being intended only for rich people, but the "career section" too?
According to Norm MacDonald Many years ago, the worst possible job is "assistant crack whore".
Peons, such as myself, consider themselves lucky, if they have a job.
Law clerk? Law clerk? No one's making you be a law clerk -- it's a one or two year gig that teaches you a lot and makes your resume wildly more impressive. If law clerks are bitching about working conditions, something's really really wrong with the survey.
No. 7 really is the 13th chime of the clock here.
Any job that doesn't significantly diminish your odds of living to the modal age at death of your compatriots in reasonably good health shouldn't even be in consideration. That still leaves plenty for a top ten.
10: I'm telling you, it sound much better if you think of "crack" as meaning "expert."
Cue the action movie profile:
Name: Jeff Strykkyr
Alias: The Kid
Speciality: Getting blown by dudes who insist they are straight.
Dun dun dundundun. Dun dun dundundun.
Well, presumably it is just what is self-reported by the folks in the survey--I have no reason to think that there is necessarily poor sample size or anything else (although I would like to see the data it is based on). But what really does not mesh with the results are these words, CareerBliss found that limited growth opportunities and lack of reward drove the misery index up more than anything else. Hate the surveyed not the surveyor.
Although I guess it is the choice of headline that is most despicable. Should be "Looking for the Biggest Fucking Whiners?"
You know, if they are using 'wants a new job' as a synonym for 'hates current job' then these all make sense. Most of the positions are the kind of thing where you really do have to move to get promoted, and hordes of law clerks are looking for a new given moment.
So the question is, could the CareerBliss people and the CBNC journalist really be stupid enough to confuse what it going on?
17: The law clerk thing makes me blame the instrument/surveyor. I'd believe that there are questions you could ask law clerks that would get whiny answers: it is a 'dumped in over your head' kind of situation. But it has to be the case that most law clerks know they're terribly lucky to be where there are (depending on how ghastly they are personally, they may not think of themselves as lucky rather than deserving, but they have to know they're well off.) So if law clerk popped up as a bad job, there's something screwy about the assessment.
I love this detail under Law Clerk:
and those looking for advancement within the position simply will not find it.
Pity the law clerks trapped looking for advancement within the position.
19: Right. There's no chance at all of 'advancement' as a law clerk -- you don't get promoted, you move to a new employer. If the people doing the survey can't correct for the fact that this is an excellent deal for the clerks, they're idiots. It's like penalizing a school because a large percentage of a given cohort will no longer be enrolled next year, and ignoring the fact that they're graduating seniors.
15
Topper--the guy who cuts the tops of trees for logging. Average life expectancy? 5 years.
On terrible jobs of people I knew about, back in my HS days I was active in the Young People's Socialist League (there were a whole 3 of us!), and one fellow member worked at a nickel factory. Basically, he had to work around toxic chemicals with no safety precautions (like masks or goggles). He had a hacking cough, and at some point he got fired for trying to unionize. But I'm sure he woke up every morning thanking God he didn't have to be a law clerk.
You know, if they are using 'wants a new job' as a synonym for 'hates current job' then these all make sense.
Yep.
Most of the positions are the kind of thing where you really do have to move to get promoted
And in many cases, might have to make a lateral move that results in a pay cut in order to get anywhere.
nickel factory
It took me a minute to get this right.
Talking about terrible (although not generally life threatening) jobs that people take because they can potentially lead to good things: tech in an animal lab.
So the question is, could the CareerBliss people and the CBNC journalist really be stupid enough to confuse what it going on?
Great rhetorical questions of our age, #1.
I would even believe that there are a significant number of law clerks who in fact are miserable in their jobs for the reasons suggested in the OP. Some judges are just abusive personalities, and it would be unpleasant to be in the power of a person like that for a one to two year fixed term under the threat of serious long-term career damage if you quit.
But the idea that the job is fairly described as one of the worst you can have remains absurd and I agree that it must be some kind of problem with the survey.
It takes a lot to make LizardBreath turn on the italics of disbelief and the bold of disdain.
What about serial killer? I feel like that would not be a lot of fun. But not as bad as "Marketing Manager," I grant.
26 -- I had a friend whose first post-college job was traveling to chicken farms to collect houseflies from the chicken shit for the housefly lab.
Are those really houseflies, rather than the closely related and almost indistinguishable coopfly?
There's an annual science version of this. Forensic entomologist comes up quite often.
But having read that huge and terrifying article on pig farming a while back, I've got to go with the people who work around the shit lagoons.
Widget:
Exactly. I mean, in many ways, grad student is a crappy job. Psychologically/emotionally abusive advisors, low pay, general feeling of stress, grants and funding disappearing every time congress meets, thankless undergrads, uncertain job market, etc. All of it deserves regular commiseration/bitching sessions at the local pub. BUT, compared to trafficked underage Russian prostitute, or non-unionized slaughterhouse worker, or even call center employee or fast food worker, or even Walmart employee? There's no comparison.
In the legal field, family court judge has to be pretty bad. Just utterly soul destroying cases, day in, day out, and you with the responsibility for all of them.
How about child welfare caseworker. Terribly overworked, undersupplied with resources, and generally given impossible tasks. If you screw up, or even if you don't, kids die. And if they die and you've done anything wrong in how you've handled the case, you can go to jail.
Well, presumably it is just what is self-reported by the folks in the survey--I have no reason to think that there is necessarily poor sample size or anything else (although I would like to see the data it is based on).
I strongly suspect sample size is an issue for #1. How many Directors of Information Technology are there going to be in a career community?
And for that matter, how many sewage workers and pig slaughterers?
I can't believe Chareece Bell isn't indemnified somehow. I get the policy reasons a caseworker shouldn't be immune from criminal charges brought against him or her for negligence. But I simultaneously can't believe they're not. I can't imagine going near that job if "going to jail" is a possible outcome for overwork.
Here's CareerBliss's Top 20 Hot Jobs for New Grads. At least two of them are also on this "most hated" list, assuming "Sales Manager" is the same thing as "Director of Sales and Marketing". Particularly silly since the "Hot Jobs" on this website are supposed to be entirely ranked by happiness of employees rather than material factors.
Also, why does "Loan Officer" merit being on the blissful list? And it must be EXTREMELY blissful with such a low salary compared to all the other HJ4NG.
35: Those are horrible jobs. It's also my impression it's work that pays quite badly. Add to this that everyone you are assigned to work with hates you. If there is an upside to the job, I don't know it.
I can't imagine going near that job if "going to jail" is a possible outcome for overwork.
I almost wonder if that possibility selects for people who aren't only self-sacrificing, but systematically too incautious to worry about the possible personal outcomes for themselves. Which seems like the wrong sort of person to be doing that sort of thing.
Possibly they're surveying people who have the title law clerk but aren't clerks for federal or state judges and then misdescribing the people they surveyed as federal law clerks.
But the idea that the job is fairly described as one of the worst you can have remains absurd and I agree that it must be some kind of problem with the survey.
It could easily be one of the worst jobs you can have while also being an active member of a career-building website that caters exclusively to white-collar college graduates.
39: Well, on some level you're doing vitally necessary work and saving lives. If that's something you have a jones for, I could see getting into being a caseworker on that basis. But I agree that the downside wildly outweighs the upside.
41: The only other kind of 'law clerk' I know is that some firms call unadmitted associates law clerks. Is there another kind?
40: Well, they're fundamentally optimists, if they can withstand the daily misery they see and know they're helping.
It's not a title you see often, but yeah, there are some places calling paralegal-ish jobs law clerks. See, e.g..
Some courts also have "career" law clerks which aren't the one or two year gigs we were discussing above. Basically the same job that's sometimes called "staff attorney," I think (though perhaps some places distinguish those two positions, too!). I've heard the short-term clerks called "elbow" clerks (i.e., the clerk who's in close proximity to the judge) to distinguish them from the career personnel.
the italics of disbelief and the bold of disdain
I like the cut of your jib, Smearcase.
You know who would have made these people appreciate their jobs? Pol Pot.
Isn't "dictator" on HJ4NG list? No? Maybe "brutal dictator" is.
Well, they're fundamentally optimists, if they can withstand the daily misery they see and know they're helping.
I am a pretty big optimist, but I actively work to shield myself from more than I can handle of people's misery.
23: one fellow member worked at a nickel factory
Certainly the worst job I've ever known anyone in my social circle to have was the former housemate who was temping in a chrome-plating factory, also with no protective gear. I saw him a few years later though, and he was still alive.
A current housemate sells Medicare supplemental insurance. It sounds pretty lousy. I mean, indoor work, no heavy lifting at least, but everyone else there is a fascist asshole, and the job itself is borderline unethical.
Through radical connections, I know quite a few Starbux workers. It sounds like what used to be a halfway decent casual job has become worse and worse, at least here in the states. Not as bad as the plating factory, sure, but still not very fun.
The caseworkers at that agency seem to be mostly people from the sort of rough neighborhood that they operate in. When you think about it, it's one of extremely few jobs you can get, coming out of that kind of background, that
- is prestigious in any way
and
- doesn't require you to abandon the community you came from and move to an unfamiliar milieu.
And then there's the moral aspect - helping people, making a difference in people's lives, giving back to the community, all those things people intend to have a job doing until they declare a major.
It sounds like what used to be a halfway decent casual job has become worse and worse, at least here in the states.
I don't doubt it, but how has this happened? Speed-up? Skimping on H&S? It had always struck me as the kind of job that was fairly stably 'meh', because what you see is pretty much what you get. Interesting to discover that they've found ways of fucking over even that.
55: In the states, one way a service job can get worse and worse is that it goes from being "40 hours a week, sign up for your shift a month ahead of time, opportunity for overtime" to "you need to be available all the time, we'll call you when we need you, and what is really the point of having 'full-time employees' anyway?". It's called "increased productivity".
Heebie, that's how I describe myself and my strategy as well. The risk of jail isn't really the reason I could never be a caseworker.
56. Yes, that's another way to make it worse. In Britain it's described as "call off", which is, I suppose, at least more honest than "increased productivity", but no better in practice.
I don't know why I said "In the states" there. I thought you had said "In the states" in your question. Obviously this can happen anywhere, although there's more of an incentive when the employer doesn't want "full-time employees" because then there's some pressure to give them health insurance.
In Britain it's described as "call off", which is, I suppose, at least more honest than "increased productivity", but no better in practice.
No, it actually is increased productivity, right? If you don't need somebody, send them home. If you need somebody, tell them to show up. Like just-in-time shipping.
I've got to go with the people who work around the shit lagoons.
Hog confinement operations are very unpleasant places to work. I was only in a working one briefly (I spent time building them, but never saw them occupied), but it was a vivid experience that would have made me a vegetarian if I had any ability to relate to a pig in an empathetic way.
55, 56: That's a big part of it, certainly. Of course, one of the big ways that SBUX made a name for itself as an employer was by offering healthcare benefits. Now, it's become increasingly hard to stay on the health plan, as they have started giving people 1 less hour per month than the minimum qualifying time.
Additionally, there's a huge amount of labor discipline around counting your till, upselling, breaks, etc. etc. Basically every way there is to make a food service job shittier, they do.
Starbucks (like, about 10 years ago) used to provide pretty decent health insurance, and pay above minimum wage (not by much, but most coffee shops don't). Maybe they've cut back on that? Also, I can't remember if they had benefits for part time employees, but the "3/4 time employee so we don't have you provide you with full time benefits" is frequently a crappy move pulled on service employees. Also, there could be a decrease in the pleasantness of the vibe--i.e., nickel and diming employees for formerly free perks, treating them like potential criminals/children, etc. People will put up with a lot if the work environment is pleasant and they're treated with respect.
For the full story:
http://www.starbucksunion.org/
ha! Apparently great minds think alike (or, mediocre minds are all the same), Natilo and I posted the same comment at almost the same time.
I am a pretty big optimist, but I actively work to shield myself from more than I can handle of people's misery.
All the ones I'd describe that way were way young. I don't know if some of these lines of work can be tolerated long term without a certain level of callousness. It's certainly true of my cohort.
65: It wasn't almost the same time. You were pwned. He gets the bonus. And the donuts are for closers only.
A always
B be
C commenting
Always. Be. Commenting.
I would think the fulfillment of doing something good might wilt fairly quickly in the face of the fact that your clients openly and universally despise you. Nobody is happy to answer the door to ACS.
Also this is just an impression based on not much, but I think how the job has gotten worse is that each time a kid dies, it makes the news, people blame ACS for the fact that they can't fix everything in the world, and in order to look like they're making sure no child will ever die again, they do things like double the paperwork.
I should maybe RTFA.
I don't know why Senior Web Developer is on there. I've had that title, and its a good gig. It pays well, and you can fuck around on the internet all day.
Other than LizardB's point about caseworkers, being on your feet for a significant portion of the day should be a prerequisite to qualify for the list.
71: I don't see why. Having to stand still behind a counter is horrible for me. Even in my twenties it caused me horrible back pain (I packed orders for CompUSA back when I was young and CompUSA existed). But, being on your feet walking around is nice.
I had a job lined up as a gandydancer, but the afternoon before what was to be my first day, got an offer to be a surveyor for the forest service, and went with that. Either beats the crap out of a lot of sitting in a cubicle talking on the phone jobs.
I perfected leaning without seeming to lean when I worked at a CompUSA.
Literally walking around, in the sense of going from one place to another is nice. But as you say, standing around is murder, and while I've never really waitressed, I've heard that's murder as well.
I compulsively think "Com-pusa" in my head whenever I see CompUSA.
72: The idea of doing something like restocking shelves seems much worse than having to sit all day, even if you're doing something mind-numbing like data entry. Not to mention jobs like Britta mentions about toppers having a life expectancy of five years. Couldn't you just get a better chair or stretch more?
72: And are you saying that standing still is excluded from the category of being on your feet? Because I meant quite literally that anything involving standing is awful. Not just jobs where you walk around.
74: I was in the main warehouse, as a temp.
75: I've waited tables and it is hard, but it isn't painful the way standing nearly still for a whole shift is.
Now I'm trying to design an ideal job -- varied light exercise, some kind of intellectual challenge or at least use of serious skills, autonomy... Are plumbers really happy?
Moby is right - standing still is much more tiring than walking around.
78: No. I'm saying that standing still is horrible but that walking around is better than sitting all day. I sit most of the day at my current job and it drove me to get a standing desk.
For over fifteen years, most of my jobs have been sitting jobs, but in previous offices I had to walk around more just because of the layout or not having a printer or frequent meetings with people in other buildings or because I had to walk a hundred yards to where I could smoke. Now, none of those apply and I have to deliberately remind myself to go walk about. If I wait until the pain starts, it is too late.
80 -- It's said that gandydancers are chick magnets.
Until the chicks get somewhere they can look up what the word means. ("I thought you were in show business!")
But it does sound like a pleasant job, if I understand the duties correctly -- stroll down train tracks looking for problems, and fixing them when they're found?
Are plumbers really happy?
"Shopcraft as soulcraft"
I knew I was only doing the work for a few months, so it may be different for me. However, I enjoyed construction work for the reasons mentioned in 80. Of course, this is only true if you can ignore the frequent occasions where I was afraid of falling from great heights or being sucked into a pile of grain.
Being an actuary is supposedly a really nice job. I know an actuary, maybe I should ask her.
My sister had a blast working as a laborer for a contractor back in college, but like you, I don't think she'd have wanted to do it for more than a summer -- she was coming home from work tired as anything.
88: Within the legal profession, I've heard that tax attorneys are happy. It's less pressured than a lot of other specializations -- more about sitting back and inventing cunning plans without a hard deadline. Socially counterproductive, of course, but that's par for the course.
I just opened Shopcraft as Soulcraft last night. I've read the intro.
My 16 year old brother wrote to me and my Dad yesterday, forwarding an article in Forbes saying that college doesn't guarantee a lucrative job any more. I told him he'd better learn a real skill. Carpentry, electrician, plumbing. Those'd be fine.
I will repeat my usual prediction that redesigning factories to use less process water is going to boom for at least two decades and I'd recommend learning some aspect of that job to anyone looking for professional security. Doing the initial audit, replumbing, designing machines, being the bigwig engineer onthe retrofit. There will be work doing all of that.
I don't think she'd have wanted to do it for more than a summer
Three summers doing fieldwork led me to believe it has a six-week arc. For two weeks, it is exhilarating, because the learning curve is so steep. For two more weeks, it is excellent, because you're getting the hang of it and feeling satisfied with real work and you can't believe you're getting paid to be outdoors. Two more weeks and it is boring as fuck and you can't wait to get back to a desk. Then school starts.
I told him he'd better learn a real skill. Carpentry, electrician, plumbing. Those'd be fine.
JRoth would know more about this than I, but I have the impression that there's a fair amount of space for arcanely skilled artisans. Back when my dad was doing expensive office spaces, there was a fair amount of chasing down the one guy left who could do the wrought iron/stonework/ornamental plastering they wanted, because the thirty competing artisans had retired without training anyone. If he can apprentice himself to someone like that, and he's got a knack for it, I think that's a living.
Looking at the CareerBliss site, I think this is merely them sorting their general "survey" questions (per CN from their community) by "job type". Categories of questions are here, if not the actual questions and they may have selected only a subset for their "dissatisfaction" score (they have no press release that I saw on it, so don;t know if it was them or CNBC who came up with the "most hated" characterization--Heebie is the one who characterized them as the "worst"). Per CN, I suspect the sampling issue would be massive under-representation (or in many cases complete absence) of non-professional jobs.
Are plumbers really happy?
A mate of mine who used to be freelance IT retrained as a plumber. He's much, much happier.
My cousin, who comes from a resolutely UMC New York school-and-professions-obsessed family (doctors, lawyers, Ivy League grads all), dropped out of college and became a carpenter who specializes in building high-end lighting displays for places like casinos. He has a fun job, travels, gets to do both design and technical stuff, and earns substantially more than his lawyer spouse. Sounds like a good life!
A woman in a hip warehouse-y type work space near my house sews corsets. Seems to do well.
Also, there were more jobs for irrigation engineers than people graduating from my irrigation engineering program every year. The oddest job announcement was for fountain designers. Guess fountain designers have to come from somewhere.
there's a fair amount of space for arcanely skilled artisans
I know of at least two people in the area who make their living repairing stained glass.
94: Isn't this called, like, the ecological fallacy or something like that?
Quick googling suggests the answer to 100 is no. But I thought there was a term to describe not merely a too small sample, but a sample that was too skewed. Maybe it's just "sampling bias".
Our social worker announced last night that she's started a Master's program. She'll spend two years working full-time (on a mandatory furlough schedule) and going to school, then two years working full-time to pay back the state for its investment in her education, and then she's going to try to become a school guidance counselor so that she can have a job with less stress and more regular hours. I totally understand that and also suspect that in four years we'll no longer need a social worker, but she's been fantastic and I hate that the job will be losing her.
Are plumbers really happy?
For now(ish). In Britain supply is beginning to outstrip demand in some parts of the country* as i. more or less qualified immigrants and ii. people who would have otherwise gone to college but have made the calculation discussed here, saturate it. There's still work to be had in less fashionable parts, but the end is in sight.
I see no reason why the same dynamic shouldn't apply in America, given the economic drivers.
* Kent (South East, includes masses of wealthy London commuters and also significant underclass): pop. 1,250,000; registered plumbers 2,000+
Sheffield (North, much like Pittsburgh): pop. 450,000; registered plumbers c. 160.
104. If you're question is really whether plumbers are contented cows, there's one sitting across the room from me at the moment and I'll ask him if the chance presents itself. But right now I ought to stop bs-ing here and socialise.
Actually, I know a fair number of my friends from UMC/MC backgrounds who graduated from elite liberal arts schools (like, seven sisters) who drifted around after college doing the non-profit circuit or other white collar jobs and now are all learning trades--one's a carpenter, one's an electrician, one's thinking of becoming a plumber. They all seem to be reasonably happy, or happier to have somewhat interesting, decent paying work rather than a crappy but respectable on paper poorly paid salaried job.
90: I've found that patent attorneys (prosecution, not litigation) are generally happy. We have deadlines, but we also get to learn about really cool technology and pick apart arguments all day. My husband is also a patent attorney and he doesn't like it, but I suspect he'd like it a lot better if he were in-house and therefore had fewer bosses. I think it's the best job in the world.
Mining sulfer from a live volcano is the worst job.
There are people who can say "I work in Hell" and be fairly accurate.
A more "realistic list" although once again no methodology other than it comes from "Career Cast". (And much room for debate of course).
10. Mail carrier
9. Meter reader
8. Construction worker
7. Taxi driver
6. Garbage collector
5. Welder
4. Dairy farmer
3. Iron worker
2. Lumberjack
1. Roustabout
112 for US. Things like Brazilian freelance gold miner and Indian ship-taker-aparter etc. are at whole a different level.
Roustabout is a great name for lousy work.
Some type of manual labor involving toxic substances?
I've worked as a chemical plant operator (more or less); it can be fun, but it can really, really suck, too. Pay ranges from ok to good. Also, you take long showers before/right after you get home when you have kids around.
Honestly all of the things listed in 112 look kinda fun to me. (I did a "ride along" with meter readers once, don't ask why, and it was totally exciting -- you break into people's homes and avoid pit bulls!).
It is possible I am suffering a severe case of grass is greeneritis.
112.6 -- I was the garbage man for a small resort town one summer. It was excellent. Got neat stuff, drove a bulldozer, took girls out to the dump to watch the moon rise.
Didn't make a career of it, obviously.
Union organizer is a truly terrible job for someone not cut out to be a union organizer. You're miserable and you're very probably making other people struggle with much less likelihood of winning.
Granted, x for someone not cut out for x is a very portable formula for misery.
Granted, x for someone not cut out for x is a very portable formula for misery.
I often say to people, after commenting on how much I like my job, "of course, most people would probably hate this sort of work."
35: I have a coworker who used to work for the department of children's services. He said it was a much better job than the one we have now. They had a pension too.
118: I spent three weeks as a union organizer one summer. The first week was propaganda, which I mean in a basically positive way...we watched Harlan County USA and stuff. It would have been fun actually if the trainer hadn't been this completely insufferable guy in his early 20s.
Then for two weeks I drove around parts of Chicago I didn't know, first in really poor neighborhoods on the south side with an experienced organizer, then on my own in, oddly, Ravenswood, a fairly UMC neighborhood.* It was by turns boring and stressful and I got maybe three people to sign up and then one evening my friends asked if I wanted to go see the second Charlie's Angels movie and I went in and turned in my clipboard and quit, because that's pretty much how much I was enjoying it.
I wasn't expecting how "turn that NO into a YES!" it would be. The assumption was that everyone wanted to be in a union, whether they knew it or not. It seems to me I might have felt better about the whole thing if the trainer hadn't been so intolerable. Things like that can color an entire experience for me.
After we watched Harlan County, he went around and asked everyone to comment on it. I didn't have anything to say, so I just without a lot of thought said "It seems like southern, working class people were a lot more progressive back then, I guess." This was the wrong answer. He got sort of puffed up and said "oh really? When was the last time you spent any time in Kentucky?" and to my great satisfaction I got to say "well, I grew up there."
So yeah. Better if that work is done by people who are really cut out for it.
*Also the name of the estate in The Bride of Lammermoor!
Forbes has a list of the 10 best jobs. #2 on the worst list looks pretty similar to #9 on the best list, except that the best list qualifies it as financial sales and the worst list mentions being the director.
I'm having trouble reconciling 72,75,78 with the fact that everyone at work is switching to standing desks, probably because of those recent reports that sitting at your desk all day will kill you.
I work with the elderly at a 4-physician medical practice. There are days where I swear if I see one more walker, one more wheelchair, or have to wait 15 minutes for one more curmudgeon to teeter down the hallway to the exam room, I'll kill myself. It's a dumbar's struggle, daily. I'm a patient person, but even I have my limits with the elderly. They can't see, they can't hear, they can't walk, et al. Lord help me. Thankfully, I have my blog outlet for complaining about them on occasion at http://www.theoffbeatdrummer.blogspot.com. Feel free to visit!
104: Is plumbing all mobbed up in the UK like it is here? Like, you basically have to be someone's cousin to get a union apprenticeship, and the non-union trade school classes are kept artificially small?
I have a friend who temped as a roustabout for Cirque du S. and she thought it was pretty fun. Might be less so if you were more of a full-time, traveling carnie type roustabout, but then most people who drift into that work are drifters anyway, it seems to me.
All through high school, I was a janitor in a huge warehouse. Ipushed a broom for three hours after school 3 days/week, wearing a Walkman the whole time, often very stoned. It was a union shop, so I became a Teamster. By the end of my first year there, I was making $18/hr. and often ended up with time and a half (when one person on a shift went over the limit, everyone else did, too). I was able to pay all of my non-tuition expenses during college and also bought myself a couple of cheap cars. There were ways that it sucked -- it was very, very dirty work -- but I didn't mind it much at all. And I was certainly overpaid, so that helped.
125: lovely comment. Stop spamming your goddamned blog. 1) everybody knows now and 2) it isn't 2005. Thanks!