Take These Jobs and Shove 'Em!

I assure you, I'm miserable.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my career.  I finally, for the first time since I was working up in the woods for the Forest Service in high school, have a job I actually like.  I get to write all day, which is awesome.  I like my boss and the other folks I work with.  Trouble is, I'm not making much money doing it, and that's in direct conflict with my goals, namely the one to get the hell outta my parents' basement.  So, I've been thinking about stuff I could do that would help me make a bit more cash while not making me wanna set myself on fire and step in front of a moving bus.

That's a taller order than you might think.  The local job market doesn't offer much to someone with my skill set.  Looking for work around here always makes me miserable and I start daydreaming about the perfect job.  More often than not, I'm doing something in my daydreams that I saw someone else doing in the movies.  Everybody has a cool job in pop culture, unless the creative team behind the property is using the character's job as part of their critique of society or whatever.

Even at that, a lot of jobs people do in pop culture look like they suck.  Here's a list of jobs from movies, TV, and comics that they couldn't pay me enough to do.  Some of them you've actually seen, and some are jobs that I just know some poor schmuck has to do behind the scenes.

• Buy More employee (from Chuck) - Incompetent, annoying bosses.  Plus, working with Jeff and Lester.  Plus, selling electronics sucks in and of itself.
• Klokateer at Mordehaus (from Metalocalypse) - A short term of employment is almost guaranteed, cuz these guys die like mayflies.
• Drummer for Spinal Tap (from This is Spinal Tap) - Drumming for a rock band: Good.  Dying in some bizarrely grotesque manner: Bad.
• Black Market Kaiju Parts Collector - Something tells me Hannibal Chau doesn't share the wealth.  I mean, just look at his shoes.  Plus, all that walking around inside giant dead alien beasts? Nasty.
• Working anywhere near Dr. Sheldon Cooper (from The Big Bang Theory) - How has nobody strangled his smarmy, narcissistic ass yet?
• Herald for Galactus (from Marvel comics) - A giant douche in a pink antler hat who's constantly whining about being hungry?  Worst.  Boss.  Ever.
• Screenwriter (from any movie or TV show that features a character that's a screenwriter) - Cuz screenwriters are constantly watching directors, producers, and actors ruin what they write.  No wonder they all go nuts and start drinking
• Q (from the 007 movies) - James Bond is always smashing up his shit.
• Inventory worker at Research Technical Institute (from Creature Tech) - Cuz you'd have to spend all day working in a warehouse full of supernatural relics and alien artifacts that are scheming out how to kill you.
• Redshirt (from Star Trek) - See "Klokateer"
• The guy who boxes up Wile E. Coyote's ACME orders (from Looney Toons) - That coyote orders a metric shit ton of stuff from ACME.  Must be quite the chore pack it all in those crates.  No thanks.
• Sterling Archer's valet (from Archer) - Look how he treats poor Woodhouse.  Come to think of it, anyone who has to work within close proximity of Archer looks pretty damn miserable.
• Clerk at the Quick Stop (from Clerks) - That job would be great if it wasn't for the frakking customers.  Unfortunately, the customers all seem to be complete nutballs.
• Peter Gibbons' job at Initech (from Office Space) - The bosses suck, the co-workers suck (for the most part), and the job sucks.  Let's talk about those TPS reports...
• Alliance Fed (from Firefly) - Because your job sucks if people call you "Purple Belly".
• Any bad guy-assisting scientist (any movie featuring a bad guy-assisting scientist) - Don't these guys know they're gonna wind up dead?  Do they not let them watch movies at Bad Guy-Assisting Scientist University?
• Doug Fargo's personal assistant (from Eureka) - Assisting Fargo has to be a never-ending slog of trying to talk Fargo out of doing something stupid then watching him do that something stupid anyway.
• Employee at The Fashionable Male (from Mallrats) - Cuz your boss would be Shannon Hamilton.  Also, Fashionable Male is like the least masculine name for a men's store since The Lovely Lad's Emporium.
• Whoever polishes the wood paneling at the X-Mansion (from the X-Men movies) - Cuz every wall in the joint seems to be covered in wood paneling, so it's a never-ending tedium-type thing.  Plus, what if Prof. X decides to mess with your mind, convincing you you've missed the same spot over and over and over?...
• Employee at the mall (from The Blues Brothers) - One minute your helping a customer find a stuffed Miss Piggy, the next, you're running for your life as a car chase trashes everything in sight.  Plus, I doubt mall employees get hazard pay for incidents like that.
• The guy who oils the joints in Doctor Doom's suit (from Marvel comics) - That just doesn't sound pleasant.  Being that close to Doom.  Yeah.  I'll pass.