The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As A

Roofer

Roofer, huh? I've known a few over the years. You might want to think about this one...

After high school you'll go to work for some roofing company doing whatever job is the worst they have to offer--the junior employee's life isn't easy most places. Chances are you'll be the one who has to hike shingles up a ladder, or try to avoid being overcome by fumes as you tend the tar machine.

As you work your way "up the ladder", so to speak. you'll realize that crappy as that entry level job was, most of the other jobs aren't much better--save one. The job that all of your crew will secretly aspire to is that of the foreman. He gets to drive from jobsite to jobsite in the clean company vehicle, stopping by homes to smilingly deliver an estimate, or visiting your crew to hand back paperwork refusing some lackey a day off to attend the birth of his child.

You'll learn that whatever the summer temperature, the roof is always about 20 degrees hotter, and there'e no shade to hide behind. At first you'll try covering up to protect your skin, but you sweat off 10 pounds before the morning is over, so you become just another guy on the roof with his shirt off. Of course, you slather yourself with sunscreen the first few days, but the constant teasing of your crew mates--"lovely cold cream you use on that pasty white skin, sissy boy" eventually forces you to sacrifice your body to the unrelenting glare from above. You realize that in spite of their coarseness, you like many of your coworkers, and you feel sad as each year one or two more succumb to the ravages of skin cancer.

The heat and the stink of the tar lower any resistance to joining the others in their daily pilgrimage to the strip bar once your work is done. You already suffer from an almost constant low grade sunstroke, and a half-dozen pints of beer on top of that make you drop off to sleep as soon as you stumble home--ideally without having risked lives by getting behind the wheel of your car. You get used to waking up in a groggy haze each evening around 10 and gulping down a couple of quickly-prepared hot dogs before falling, unshowered once more, into your tar-stained bed.

The cold wet days are perhaps even more deadly than the scorchers. You find the steep roofs a constant danger as the water slickens the moss which covers them--you'll be lucky to attend your retirement dinner without needing a wheelchair ramp to enter.

Besides the carcinogenic ultraviolet rays of the sun, the toxic fumes from the tar, and the ever present risk of falling, you also inhale buckets of fiberglass from the shingles you work with each day.

One day the bitter wet, cold weather, coupled with your unhealthy lifestyle, makes you susceptible to a nasty virus that eventually plugs your sinuses and messes up your inner ear. You go to work feeling wobbly, and a few beer with lunch does nothing to improve the situation. When your foreman comes up the ladder to explain something to you, you slip and as you start to tumble you knock your supervisor off the roof.

His family doesn't acknowledge your flowers, which arrive a few hours after they take him off life support. The other workers know you were ambitious, and a nasty suspicion spreads among them that the accident might have been more by design than they first realized. When the owner of the company names you the next foreman, their suspicions are confirmed. Macbeth had nothing on you when it came to the ruthless pursuit of goals, they decide.

They do little to mask their hatred of you when you talk to them on the jobsite. You feel their hate and suspicion, and try to compensate for it by being overly kind to them--which they perceive as weakness and futher proof of your guilt.

One day they arrange for you to "accidentally" fall off a roof. Will you survive? Hey kid--I'm no pyschic; I'm just a guidance counsellor.

See you later. Oh, sorry, that mat's a bit slippery. Are you okay?