The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

An Antique Dealer

Antiques, eh? Well, I'm not an expert by any means when it comes to collectibles and such--five minutes of that "Antiques Road Show" and I want to put a bullet in my head--but it might go like this:

You'll do like all the wannabe antique dealers--you'll become the hated "early bird" who cruises around the night before garage sales, harassing people into letting you see their stuff before the rest of the public gets a look. Some will refuse, of course, while some may even hit you--have a good lawyer prepared to make some money there--but many will let you look. You'll keep your real feelings hidden as you dismiss their junk as trash, then pause as you're about to get to your car, and halfheartedly offer them a fraction of what the Chippendale cabinet is worth.

Finds like that will be rare, and once you open your shop, you want to cultivate a refined image--so you'll hire a team of garage sale sharks who do the hunting for you--your training gives them an eye for the good stuff.

You build your business, but slowly--there's too much competition and not enough good pieces around. Then you hit upon a brainstorm. The retirement homes/extended care hospitals in your community are sorely underfunded. These are the holding pens for the soon to be dead--to you, the soon to be estate sales. Your competition also read the obits--but then it's a battle to scoop the best pieces from the bereaved while they haven't time to check values. But at the care home you can make a connection first.

You sponsor the small buses that ferry the codgers to their weekly outings--making sure your support is acknowledged. You and your staff start paying visits and holding small social gatherings where you figure out whose places will hold the best loot. Rather than keep all that stuff in storage, you tell them, and their beneficiaries, why not sell it ahead of time and enjoy the cash in this life?

Your technique is a great success--you avoid bothering with the estates of the middle class, and get the inside track on those whose furniture will allow you the most markup.

Your ambition, however, remains without bounds--you borrow way too much to build a new store, and when the bank threatens to foreclose, you turn to organized crime for a quick but expensive loan. A few months later, when you can't pay them back, the mafioso offer you an alternative to crushed fingers and eventual death--counterfeit antiques.

You know how to recognize the real thing by this time better than anyone in your town. You figure, then, that you can create faux antiques good enough to fool the philistines that surround you.

Your arrogance gets you caught sooner than you'd hoped, and you plead ignorance as to the origin of the fake--but it's too hot to keep trying that game, so the mob offers you another chance. This time you'll have to ship furniture all over the globe--they finance your new internet antique company--but you'll have found ways to ingeniously hide drugs and all manner of other contraband in the pieces you send away.

It's probably enough to keep you successful and alive for at least three or four years--but eventually, prison cell chic will be your only decor.

Hey--whaddya think this desk is worth?