Are there any occupations you uniquely oppose the existence of?
I did retirement home training and used to think it was a sweet job. Then I got in the business and underestimated how demoralizing it was as they give you the easy elders in training while the others make you, or at least me, really think of the fact the job just amounts to an unkarmic freebie.
Private equity/venture capitalists - they acquire unique brands and then extract all the value and enshitify them into the ground
One of the reasons Boeing sucks is this. First reason is McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeings money, hallowed out the soul that built the world’s greatest aircraft, then sold what was left off to the big investment funds. Then the investment funds were like “look at all this money Boeing is spending on safety and suppliers” so they cut out the safety and bought out the suppliers. The horror stories of quality control at some of the suppliers is just as bad if not worse than some of the horror stories of quality control at Boeing. What if I told you Boeing fought to have ECS (environmental control systems) software that was written by third world “programmers” that didn’t speak English to remain on their aircraft illegally, claiming it didn’t pose a threat to safety, you know those systems that determine if there is enough oxygen to breath at altitude and whether the temperature inside the plane is survivable…
Vulture capitalists.
Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.
Mitt Romney says "Hi."
I'm morbidly curious at how that happens/works
Ctrl + F Landlord
Yall disappoint me.
Landlord is an occupation? Not familiar with any labor they do
Do you have any idea how hard it is to sit on your ass until the end of the month and then carry all those checks to the bank and sign them all? Think of the poor landlords and their signing hands! 😢
It did use to be when rent was low and tenants had stronger rights. When things broke, you'd have to fix it yourself or hire someone to do it. When a tenant was making everyone else in the building feel unsafe it was up to you to drag them out.
When rent went up and tenants rights were thrown out of the window, it became easy street. You hire someone to take care of it all, and sip your coffee in the morning.
It genuinely used to be a high risk, low reward venture. The shortage of housing skyrocketed it into an occupation for rich dullards to sit on their ass all day.
Landlord isn't an occupation, any more than 'white collar criminal'
There's another comment that mentioned a landlord that was published exactly 30 seconds before yours. :P
(Please keep in mind that I'm just teasing you. Obviously, there's no way you could have known.)
Literally anyone who works in health insurance.
Currently work in biotech, and have worked in medtech; I have had to integrate systems with insurers (payors is the industry term). I know exactly how fucked it is on a statistical level.
I used to work for an insurer. Our entire health system is just a steaming pile of crap. Providers will double or triple bill. Hospitals raise their rates through the absolute roof so they have room for negotiations. The uninsured people more often than not get billed at the unnegotiated rate which is many times what it should be. If the insurers are short on money or profit margins are down and their stockholders are angry they end up turning down shitloads of procedures looking at the statistics for what's least likely to cause lawsuits and death. Medicare requires you to go and recertify every patient every year, Mr Johnson's an amputee, well you better get him back in to make sure he still is or you're not going to pay for DME. Half the big insurers are still running on Big iron of one form or another, FTP over SSL coming hot off of mainframe.
It's not a good look.
Lobbyists
Well, lobbyists work not only for evil corpos, but also for NGOs and movements... Lobbyism is the process to sway politics to a direction through interpersonal meetings, and is necessarily in a democracy.
However, one thing that would benefit the US is transparency around lobbyists; who they are, how they are funded, their agenda etc. The EU has a database on registered lobbyists and the transparency helps with parts of the problem.
Lobbying is a good concept corrupted by greed, as are many things in the US.
This needs higher up. Lobbyists are a cancer
Software Patent Attorney
Any sort of high pressure sales sucks.
How much do you hate them?
Name a number!
How about if I drop that hatred by 22% with a 2.1% financing? And throw in a free coupon to Chili's if you verify within the next 45 minutes! Hurry act now we're running low on coupons. And you don't want to go home empty handed, do you?
I'm not sure I do, but one thing I haven't seen mentioned here yet is consumer psychologists. I once read an argument that they could be improving people's mental health, instead they are working on manipulating people into buying more.
Time for a rewatch of The Century Of Self.
Human Cannonball
Hear me out: Many circus performers are multi disciplined, or put on an incredible display of training and talent. The last big top I went to had a knife throwing couple who also did a fantastic roller skating routine, a few very talented clowns/jugglers, and a bike troupe in a ball of death. Just to name a few. These people have devoted days or years of their lives to their craft. Do you know how hard it is to ride a bicycle across a tight rope with someone on your shoulders?
The Human Cannonball? He got launched out of the cannon and did one flip before getting caught by the net. That's all he did that night, yet he came out and bowed with the rest of the performers like he was an equal contributor.
The Human Cannonball? He got launched out of the cannon and did one flip before getting caught by the net.
That's what it looks like to the untrained eye. But they're not really going to fire a person out of a cannon. That's not safe. So he just huddles in the cannon, they light a decoy fuse, it makes a bang (with no projectile), and he spring out and jumps that distance by himself. Requires a lot of core and leg strength.
Advertiser
This. "Marketing" is just a euphemism for "propaganda" -- it is inherently manipulative and therefore evil.
That shit should be illegal, with, like, a living whitelist so you can still put out a sandwich board in front of your restaurant.
Yes, I know that will implode entire sectors. They deserve it.
There's a city in France - Toulouse, IIRC EDIT: Correction: it is Grenoble - where the mayor ran on a promise that "if you elect me, I'll remove all the billboards." Turns out that was really popular, so now that city does not have any billboards.
ETA: A video about it. (Dutch, but it has (auto-generated) English subtitles)
Mad Men was hard for me to keep up with because I just hated everyone and it made me angry
I once saw a video report on bullshit jobs, where they also interviewed a researcher into how much value is gained or destroyed by various professions.
They said that for every £1 (the researchers worked in the UK) given to marketing executives, that society suffered £11 in lost value.
ETA: The video in question (Dutch, with a few local English bits)
private equity investment firms
And vulture hedge funds.
Read up on the shit people like Eric Hermann has done buying up debt from distressed countries, then siphoning off their aid money to cover those debts. Zero humanity.
HR. Have never met anyone in HR who contributed to the good.
HR only contributes to the good of the business, which is owned by the capitalist class. It’s a class war, and HR is not on the side of the working class. Which makes HR employees—witting or not—class traitors, something they have in common with cops.
Somewhat agree. The good ones you'd never know exist until you need help. They are a god send. Fuck the rest of them
That's because you only ever dealt with them from the employee's side. They contribute to the good of the company/organization. Sometimes that also means good for the employee, but that's just coincidence.
I think it's because they use their position to professionalise a bullshit job, presenting it as a field (HR Management), when their skills are rather ordinary. Really, they should be doing payroll and employment admin, not setting the tone for the organisation or being seen as specialists in any meaningful way. Also, job competencies and profiles disproportionality reward the "skills" found in HR, which i think reflects their input in designing these tools and templates.
Further, i find people who work in this field to have quite a high opinion of themselves and their usefulness.
Especially Toby
Company stooges seems a more appropriate department title than human resources, also who the fuck wants to be called a resource I'm a human being not a number.
I'd say landlords but it doesn't count as an occupation
"Influencers"
infuencers are just rebranded shills
What gets me is how transparent the term is, and people still act like its a good thing.
This. They were the first thing I thought of when thinking of useless.
I have ad-blockers to filter out crap. Now I need influence-blockers.
Guidance counselors. One of them tried to convince my parents that I was on drugs...in 4th grade. Turned out that I had an undiagnosed mental disorder.
I had similar experiences. It's like there's a small but noticeable subset of the population that wants to pin "drug user" on any person they meet and think is weird. Meanwhile, actual drug users are everywhere and mostly manage to act normal.
The number of times I've been told I'm high just because I have a schizospectrum disorder is too damn high.
Chiropractors. It's pseudoscience. Maybe it's not the most unique opposition from me as I know some others dislike chiropractors, but I think it's backwards that medical aids or health insurance will literally pay for their client's appointments with these modern day charlatans, while denying payment of scientifically proven treatment options.
Gas-filler. There's a couple states in the US where you aren't allowed to pump your own gas, someone else has to do it for you, and you're expected to then tip them.
The job is essentially getting me to pay to be inconvenienced. I'd prefer to pay to let me pump my own gas.
Oregon let's you pump your own gas now, so it's just New Jersey afaik
The first time I crossed the border into Oregon years ago and started pumping my own gas, the attendant came out shouting "Hey! What are you doing?" As someone that had never heard of this law in either state, I was about as confused as you could possibly be, because this obviously seemed like a trick question.
Those people deserve a tip, alright. The tip of my middle finger. Pouring fossil fuels into people's cars is evil.
Naturopaths.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's folks doing sane, evidence-based care in this area. But I've seen so much bullshit from practitioners, ranging from the grossly unethical to the blatantly dangerous, that I find them hard to trust about anything as a group.
Besides, we already have health professionals that can provide good, evidence-based care (issues like ego v. evidence/new findings to improve care notwithstanding - but there's crappy people in all fields) - we call them doctors and nurse practitioners. And we need more of those.
Local natural food store sells Homeopathic medicines. We're talking water selling at the same price as ink jet printer ink.
Let's throw our morals away and sell homeopathic meals. Like "this is a cheeseburger diluted 10c" and slap a picture of a burger on a water bottle.
Telemarketers
Cop
Time share salesman
Cold callers for: Solar panel, and Business loans
Maybe not unique in my opposition…but…
CEOs. (Especially of large companies)
They rarely know what they’re doing, are guessing 90% of the time, bandwagon anything they think will make them more money or notoriety, and get paid exorbitant amounts of money doing nearly nothing to actually earn it.
Israel
Wall Street. Shorts, bulls, bears, options, it is all euphemisms for gambling and everyone else suffers for it.
Any sanitation worker, sewage diver, drain block remover, in most of the third-world countries.
We need city drainages to be repaired, cleaned, maintained, and managed with draconian safety, extremely well-compensated, hazardpay up the wazoo workers comp and complete-healthcare all covered for life. So many workers are just abused for the lifeline work that keep a city's arteries from getting clogged and flowing smoothly.
I saw how Korean drain-workers do it with high-pressure water jets and incredible efficiency and knowhow talent of their vital job. I wish we didnt have the corruption that prevents this type of training, trained worker, worker pride in the essential labour that they do.
Same goes for recycling and reducing waste. We humans don't do nearly enough and the Top-20 major corporations that cause 80% of worldwide pollutants go unchecked and unpunished.
Telephone sanitizers
Found the Golgafrincham.
You'll be sorry when they're gone!
Come on now. We all know it is a euphemism.
If you’re saying that you uniquely oppose the existence of elder care as an occupation, then that is a very strange, and frankly worrisome example. Am I misinterpreting what you meant? Also, I don’t know what to make of “unkarmic freebie.”
Having known some people in elder care, the reality is that some old people are nasty, brutish, mean, racist, misogynist, creepy, violent, you fucking name it, there's some old person you're going to have to take care of who matches that horrible personality. You're paid the same whether you're helping someone you like or someone who is rude and assaults you every time you enter the room.
I agree with you, elder care should still exist, but I can see why some people get tired of taking care of terrible old people who were likely terrible people all their lives and who are just allowed abuse you. Why are they allowed to abuse you? Because most people who do elder care and underpaid, overworked, and don't have a lot of other options that pay nearly as well. Basically you're accepting middling but better than fast-food pay to have abuse dumped on you. I can see how someone feels like its a karmic freebie because there's no responsibility in any of it, generally management won't do anything about "problem elders." Get to be a fucking asshole your whole life and then get to be a fucking asshole to the person wiping your ass before you die.
I have a similar story from another friend who ended up at a mental health hospital in a violent youth ward. He was underpaid, overworked, and responsible for about 30 violent and dangerous kids with unstable mental health issues that made them difficult to approach. If he was busy helping one kid take their meds, and another kid on the ward was in the same moment trying to take their own life and succeeded, he would be the one responsible. He was not being paid enough or had enough support to justify taking full responsibility for things that are outside his control when he cannot magically manage 30 dangerous cases at once. He left the job after two months of assaults and scares. I don't blame him, and he doesn't blame himself, and we also understand that those 30 cases deserve better care than they're getting but it's not his responsibility as an individual to make up for the shortcomings of government funding for this.
Same with people who work elder care. It's not their individual responsibility to make up for the fact that these companies don't give a damn about the people they're caring for, and each elder is just an income stream in a database. The number of people I know in elder care who now have permanent back problems because they're being expected to lift 300lb old people off their beds and they're not being given proper equipment for it is too damn high. These people do not deserve to have their bodies broken and paid pennies on the dollar to be abused by the elders in their care, not given the right tools to do the job, with a prevailing attitude of "they're just old people, how bad can they hurt you really?" Pretty fucking bad, shockingly.
Elder care needs to exist. Does it need to exist as it exists now in the USA? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
In the kids case, that’s a staffing issue. Most lockdown mental health facilities have a tech/CNA whose sole job it is to walk around and log the location and state of every patient every 9-15min, depending on policy. In addition to the techs/CNAs who herd everyone to group, meals, and all the rest. In addition to mental health staff that run the groups. In addition to nurses who do meds and assessments. In addition to “orderlies”, not big men in white like in movies, who tackle people these days, but people with intense training in deescalation.
.
In the elder case, that is often a staffing issue. If it’s day shift and you have more than 6 residents assigned to you, that’s a staffing and/or state level regulation issue. If it’s evening shift and you have more than 8 residents assigned to you, that’s a staffing and/or state regulation issue. But yes, declining mental health (dementia) and brain deterioration (Alzheimer’s) is part of elder care. Sometimes it’s the sole reason they’re placed in a home, because that decline in brain capacity requires 24h care.
.
A lot of health care jobs would be absolutely ok if they were actually safe for both patients and staff. But corporate greed often doesn’t allow for that.
Staffing matters. And it often will be ignored until the state mandates a law that requires the corporate owners to do better.
Dementia often causes personality changes. It can make really nice people into assholes, and it can turn people who were real bastards into the reverse.
All of them. Abolish occupations.
Why?
For most people, having an occupation means giving up roughly half of your waking hours, as well as a toll on your body and mind, to the minority class that happens to own the things needed to do this occupation in exchange for wages. These wages are required to buy the necessities for the rest of your life from this same minority class. Getting rid of occupations means ending this relationship so that we no longer have to support the exorbitant lifestyles and cruel whims of this minority class. It means putting us in control of the value we create with our labor and not wasting it on the likes of telemarketing, car dealing, or denying health insurance claims.
Kudos to the people who actually adhered to the "unique" part of this. No, you're not unusual for hating money men. It's only a matter of time until someone posts "cops".
The entire entertainment industry is gross and depressing seen from anywhere close to the inside, but I'm not sure I'd really say I oppose it in concept.
Yes, it was poorly worded, that's fair. In the context of OP's other simultaneous post, and in the context that it's typical to ask for "unpopular" responses it's a bit clearer.
The jerking off thing is a definite projection. No u.
Whoever is in charge o blackrock
Off-topic: Lemmy really needs better crosspost functionality.
Lemmy is a small group of people, let's not divide it further by having the exact same conversation in two (or more) places.
edit: Fixed the link.
no, it's a feature, not a bug, that we can have more than one community for discussing the same topic here; makes it harder to censor
There has to be a better way to keep the strengths of federating without partitioning the community smaller and smaller until there is no community left.
Can you imagine Lemmy with a similar amount of Reddit users? Anytime you'd post, you'd have to replicate it between X number of instances (for visibility). Conversations would be fragemented and duplicated, votes would be duplicated. To me this almost sounds like "work"...
There has to be something better.
For example, instead of "every instance is an island". Meaning the current hierarchy is "instance" - > "community" - > "post" - > "threads". We could instead have "community (ie: asklemmy)" - > "post (ie: this post)" - > "instance (Lemmy.ml, Lemmy.world, etc)" - > "threads (this comment)".
From a technical perspective, it would mean that each instance would replicate the community names and posts. Which is already beginning done (this post is a perfect example), but as long as each instance would share a unique identifier to associate the two communities/posts as "the same thing" (and this could simply be the hash of the community /post name). Everything else would be UX. Each instance would take ownership of the copy of the community and post, which means they could moderate it according to their standards.
Especially given that the above link points to lemmy.ml, an instance notorious for harbouring tankies & amplifying pro-authoritarian talking points.
The link is .ml but points to a thread in .world. My bad 😅
Recruiters.
100 percent agree. Recruiters are a waste of oxygen. Back when I was in school I attended this massive recruiting meet and greet. Head hunters from the largest firms in the area attended and talked with the students about career prospects. A recruiter from a big firm was there bragging about her arbitrary strict screening process for resumes. This Karen, a failed elementary school teacher, gloated about how she required a full page cover letter, and a full page resume. There could not be any blank space. She would measure the margins and if not exactly I inch she would throw the applicant in the reject pile. The cover letter would have to be a full page long. If any length less than 1 full page straight to reject pile. However she stated would never actually read the cover letter.
A week later I attended a Q and A with several partners from the biggest firms in the area. They all talked about how they hated absolutely HATED cover letters and bloated resumes. All they looked for was prior experience, grade point average, and whether the applicant is licensed or not. Funny enough the partner from the same firm as the Karen recruiter had a 2 minute rant on why he hated cover letters.
ACAB.
West bank
The town west of Kelowna?
Middle manager.
At least in my current job. There are nice AND useful ones out there, but in my dept., there's positively neither.
The "management" should be seen as positions to help the employees to do their work properly, not to rule over them (but helping would necesarily need to include some level of reviewing the work and if really necesary organize disciplinary measures).
From my personal experience I defintly conclude that a company where the management serves the employees get better results than companies where managment are little wannabee generals.
(I am also currently middle management and hope I do this right.)
Plenty, lobbyists, health insurance industry, and advertisers would be a few off top of my head.
Realtors.
I don't know of a job more pointless. And I worked (reception) at a realty office and still didn't see the value.
Seems useful to me. If I'm selling my house I don't want to spend a bunch of my own time setting up all the showings and being there for each one. And if I have to trust someone else to do it, they should be licensed and trackable in case something goes wrong.
It does seem like a job that attracts lazy people though, and it also seems like there are way too many agents in general.
I just bought a house, and having someone to coordinate all the paperwork thoroughly and promptly was definitely valuable to me.
Realtors are fucking useless, they provide none of the information you actually need but you have to go through them to figure out what the deal is with a space.
corporate lawyer and politician. sleaziest of them all
Being rich
Car sales person.
Only about 60-70% of them.
Hedge Funds and Short Sellers.
why should you only be allowed to bet that a stock will go up?
Real estate agent. Car sales people.
Bankers, lawyers, marketers, police, military, landlords if that was a job, politicians.
I oppose the occupation of gaza by Israel !
But fr, anything position that gives one power and a feeling of superiority : magistrate, judge, police officer, military, ...
You may not understand this, but humans are selfish and immoral and need rules. without all those jobs you mentioned, the rules are meaningless.
Parking enforcement?
Deleted
I thought you meant military occupations and I was so confused. Like asking what's the one military occupation you oppose (you aren't allowed to oppose any others)
All of them.
Landlords. Do I think it's terrible for some nice old person to rent their basement to students for a good price for a bit of income in retirement? No. But corporate landlords and people hoarding housing can fuck off.
Taxi/uber driver / chauffeur
Rancher
Slaughterhouse worker
Insurance claim assessor
Animal breeder
Fossil fuel miner/minesite worker
Gas station attendant
Propane salesman
