The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Gardener

Hi--so, you're the kid who wants to be a gardener. Well, I hope you're ready for what's ahead:

You should try to apprentice with another gardener, and learn all about the chemicals that make things look natural--of course, then you'll have to learn how to pretend you don't use chemicals so the enviro-hippies think their apartment building grows organic daisies.

Once you're ready to go on your own, you'll need a truck--choose a comfortable one, even if the payments mean living in your parents' basement for a few years--after all, day after dreary day, it's likely the cab of your truck where you will be spending all your coffee and lunch breaks. Oh, you may dream of somehow becoming head gardener at the Arlington National Cemetary, or Kew Gardens, but the fact is, you're going to be the grubby guy pruning the hedge to most people. You think you're going to stomp across their carpet to go pee? Even with your boots off, it just isn't right, so you'll perfect the art of urinating in an old peanut butter jar in your vehicle.

It's at times like that you'll realize you inhabit a plane a little lower than your customers, and it will be reinforced when your wife asks you to hide your hands at your kids' parent-teacher interviews--the ground in dirt on your fingers is a little too embarassingly blue collar on occasion. You won't make enough money, either, because if you charge what your work is really worth, your customers are free to go to the next guy who's got a truck, a wheelbarrow and a rake and who's happy just to make enough to get by while his refugee status is sorted out.

The weather won't be your friend, either. If you end up in a northern clime, then your knees, followed by other joints, will be arthritic from the damp and the constant kneeling--don't think those little strap-on kneepads will help. If you work further south, you'll have regular trips to the plastic surgeon to get those bothersome melanomas excised from your forehead. With the damage your skin will take, coupled with the arthritis, people who meet you at 35 will swear you're 15 years older.

If you work in a city, perhaps doing apartments and strip malls, you'll encounter the twin biohazards of used condoms and hypodermic needles. And eventually--it's only a matter of time--a news report on a murder investigation will link your name and the words "grisly discovery", which at least will mean the forensics team will cultivate the rest of the soil around those rhododendrons for you...

The rest of the Cynical Career Counsellor posts can be found here.