The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

An Aircraft Mechanic (by request)

An aircraft mechanic? You're the kid who put that lawnmower engine on the skateboard, right? Well, it's probably not a bad career, if you can hack it--it will probably work out like this:

You'll have to do all the basic grease monkey wannabe stuff--put in the hours during high school and go for apprenticeships right after--you'll have to work in a regular garage for a little while you wait to hear, but eventually, maybe you'll get in if your grades, references and bribes all fall within the acceptable range. It won't be easy--there's way more parts on a 747 than on your average Hyundai, and if you botch up the car, it doesn't plunge 350 people to a fiery death.

The social life isn't that great--you think you'll have prestige, but the first time you get brushed off by a stewardess will teach you otherwise--heck, you put Brad Pitt in a set of blue coveralls with his name in the little red oval on the front and they wouldn't even give him the time of day. It's okay--you'll spend so much time logging overtime that you'll get to know all the concession ladies well--and when their marriages collapse, you'll pick up the crumbs that fall off the table.

You'll never be truly "comfortable" in your job--even your basic Cessna is a delicate instrument--so you never get to have an "off" day. You will need to learn everything there is to know about simple prop engines and advanced jet aircraft. Then, if you are fortunate enough to work your way from the hellhole bush plane outposts into a major commercial airport, you'll also have to learn to play amateur secret agent--you see, you are one of the last lines of defense against the terrorists' plots to blow planes out of the sky. You must be able to look at an engine and tell if something doesn't look quite right.

You're also going to be the scapegoat if something awful happens--and at some point in your career, it probably will. Face it, they aren't going to insult the pilot's memory and offend his family by publishing the discovery that he had 6 martinis before he crashed the plane full of orphans into the side of the mountain--it will be blamed on "mechanical error"--that's you, bucko. When that happens, you'll be out of a job, and eventually the military will find you--they'll know the real story, and make you an offer you'll be desperate enough to take--fixing helicopters and transport planes in some crappy desert airbase until some would be martyr blows up enough of your anatomy to qualify you for a disability pension.

Still--you get to drink lots of $8 cups of coffee along the way...

Lighter recollections...

More from the trip home:

At church on Easter Sunday a friend introduced me to someone I hadn't seen since junior high--this guy seemed so... quiet, settled--yet all I could think of was that he was the psycho who came home with me in grade 2 and busted all the windows in our playhouse. Must learn to let it go...

Wandering around the mall I realized that everyone--or at least 80% of the population of my home town is fat. I'm not judging them; there's not much else to do there but eat and drink and ride around in your big 4 wheel drive truck.

Took a photo just down the hill from my parents' house--they've clearcut the hillside above my school--not Weyerhaeuser but just a greedy school board this time--and it's now possible to get a picture of both my elementary school and my senior high in the same shot. Here's the picture; click on it for a larger version. If you want waay to much information, there's a link below to a large annotated pic.



The sad thing is that the elementary school--which had 800 kids when I was in grade 4--is now just being rented out to a couple of small private schools, and the high school is closing this June.

Annotated Photo Here (Warning: It's big)

The Kid Who Sit Behind You Explains

The Picture of Dorian Gray

So, like Oscar Wilde was gay and they didn't like it back in the day so he went to prison and then France and I'm not sure which would be worse. Anyway, Oscar Wilde wrote this book before they got him in court for being gay. I think maybe they read this book.

You see, it's all about this young hottie guy (Yeah, not that I think any guys are hot, dude) and his name is Dorian and this painter dude is like all in love with him and then this Lord Henry guy shows up and he's all kind of low key lusting for him too but since it's back in the day they go on for pages and pages and then throw in the whole "oh yeah I'm married to a chick" line in but it's not foolin' anyone, Oscar.

Then the painter gives Dorian the painting of him and Dorian wishes the painting would get old instead of him and it happens and then he falls for this actress chick and she's all "Dorian you're wonderful" and then he's all "No, forget what I said, you suck" and she kills herself and Dorian is all "I'm such a jerk"

Lord Henry comes over and says "cool, like no chick ever offed herself for me" and then Dorian is all "yeah, true dat" and then he starts to party and slut around and get with all sorts of people of all genders and he never looks like he's older than when it starts but the picture gets all old and gross. Then Dorian offs his buddy the painter and blackmails another buddy into mushing up the body and making it disappear--kinda like my friend Todd did when he made me do his homework or he'd tell my mom what really happened to her left headlight that time I snuck out with her car.

Then Dorian's picture gets more old and has blood on it and Dorian's all freaking out and then he destroys the painting and then you'll have to read to see what happens next--but I kinda imagined it like that scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the ark gets opened and all the nazis get turned to dust.

But Oscar--no way anyone's not guessing your secret after they read this book.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Doctor

Hi--a doctor, you say? Let me look up your grades... Let's see now--wow--mid to high 90s across the board--especially in all those science courses. What kind of cars do your parents drive? A Neon and a Volvo? What year's the Volvo? Oh. Hmm... That's not so good. You got any rich grandparents? Scholarships? Maybe, but still... I think it might work out something like this.

First of all, you'll be looking at either staying in Canada, in which case when you graduate you have to do the whole "where will the government let me practice" thing, or you go to the states, where it's all about huge amounts of money up front to make big bucks later. Either way, it's expensive and a hellish grind--your little high school success will give you small comfort in the big show....

You'll do the premed stuff without too much trouble; I'm guessing you're smart with a good work ethic, and then you'll find out that med school is built on a rather unusual fallacy--that the day consists of 36 hours rather than 24. There is no magic time portal that will save you from the hell that your schedule will put you though, but there is one thing you'll learn quickly: pharmaceutical support. You see, you absolutely can't afford to lie awake waiting to fall asleep, nor can you dare be less than fully alert in your classes and lab work. It's just not good form to fall asleep face down in the open belly of a cadaver.

Of course, the schedule won't keep you from helping the other med students live out the "work hard, play hard" philosophy that stretch your body and your credit to the limit. One might think that a bunch of future doctors would buy the "body is a temple" thing more than most--but the rampant pursuit of pleasure and altered states of consciousness are what will make your few moments of freedom worthwhile.

You'll also discover that delicious irony that while med students are especially popular in the dating game, you never really have much time to take advantage of it. The few times you do drop the "I'm a med student" line, you realize it's always doubted; not until your dishevelled apartment evidences a variety of medical texts and a stethoscope does your companionship become a valued commodity. This discovery, though, will be a valuable one.

You see, you're going to find the financial pressures of med school tough--it's not like a sociology degree where you can work 30 hours a week at a restaurant and still maintain your GPA. No, an outside job just isn't going to work--that's why you'll start selling medical paraphenalia to friends and friends of friends who want to pull the "I'm a doctor" schtick believably.

When you get caught--only so many old textbooks and stethoscopes can go missing without anyone noticing--you'll explain that you've really been collecting them for third world countries--an even more successful approach than "I'm a doctor", you'll share with your friends who are quickly becoming your disciples.

Upon graduation, you'll have a choice to make--family physician with the comfortable social position it offers, or head towards a specialization, which allows you to become truly wealthy while your interpersonal skills shrivel to nothing.

Either way, it's good--hey--you're pretty up on biology; could you tell me, does this look infected?

Get me some buckshot

I could've slept a little late today--my wife's working but all I've got ahead is my kids' swimming lessons this morning. But no--bizarre noise wakes us up at 6:30. My wife actually guessed what it was--a woodpecker working on the metal cap of our chimney. There's a reason she guessed it so quickly...

Flashback to before our kids were born: We'd been married about six months, in our first house about a month, and we came home from work together. We walk in and flip on the lights--I go one direction, while my wife heads into the dining room--then I hear her scream.

I run in to see blood all over our dining room window and the vertical blinds. There are no windows or doors open in the house--yet there's the blood. I go into the living room, and notice the blood on the window and blinds there as well. I flip on a light and immediately something begins noisy movement on the floor behind the couch.

It's a woodpecker--a big one. It was tangled in the chains of the vertical blinds. Between the two of us, my wife and I managed to get the bird untangled, and it flew into the kitchen where it perched on a rolldown blind. That was when we got a good look at it. The beak on it was about an inch and a half long--something I'd noticed as I had been trying to hold it as we untangled it and it went crazy.

We turned off all the lights in the house except for the one at the back porch, left the door wide open, and herded the bird out of the house. We saw it around the neighborhood for about the next six weeks--I was up on the roof the next day fashioning a cover for our chimney; the ash pattern spread in front of the fireplace made it clear how the woodpecker had got in.

It was kind of freaky though--for just a minute you imagine all sorts of crazy things that may have gotten blood all over the place while you weren't home.

We had to replace the blinds--total bill for the cleanup was just over $1000--but interestingly enough, the insurance adjustor didn't need any photos or proof. He figured there was no way we'd make up a story like that...

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Career As

A Mortician

Hi kid, nice makeup--you like that movie "The Crow", right? What's that? A mortician? Hmm--never had anyone ask about that before. Okay, here's what I figure you can expect:

First of all, you'll need to apprentice somewhere. You'll probably learn about all the aspects of the trade--embalming, caskets, burial plots, memorial services and government bureaucracy. There's lots of money to be made in grief--that's why there's some huge corporations in the business of planting people--but you need to approach it in the right way. An acting class or two, to help disguise your hangovers as you wring your hands in "shared grief" might be helpful.

As an apprentice, you get to do one of the most underrated jobs in the funeral business--driving the hearse. It's a well-kept secret that these babies are among some of the most powerful production automobiles still being manufactured. Let's face it, with a fatter and fatter population, the average hearse needs to be able to carry some heavy loads, and since all the gas is a tax writeoff, there's no need for fuel economy, either.

You might as well practice saying it now--the best alternative is a lovely, closed-casket funeral. You don't want people going for simple cremations--there's very little profit margin there. Open caskets mean more work making the deceased especially presentable, but really don't add any value to your product. Closed casket means you sell a fancy coffin and you can do a quick and dirty makeup job on the body.

You'll make mistakes, of course--there's way too many different religious approaches to how to say goodbye to a loved one, and you know you'll get caught when you keep taking the hearse out on Sunday afternoons to race other apprentices in their oversized station wagons, but it's not rocket science. (Unless, of course, the deceased has chosen the "Eternal Sky" option of being launched into the ether...)

You'll sell people airtight coffins and overpriced granite stones with sentiments that would make a Hallmark hack blush. The itemized expense list shows that everyone has their hand in the bereaved's pocket--but who would be crass enough to question costs at a time like this? You'll see more and more money heading your way as you go from apprentice to full-fledged mortician, and that will almost make the other sacrifices worth it.

What sacrifices? C'mon kid--you can figure it out, can't you? First of all, you won't go out on dates as much as buy them. Not that any of your colleagues will be in a position to look down on you for it. And then there's the conventions--the dark corners of the bar will expose you to stories of lonely men and their desperate acts that burn themselves into your nightmares for the rest of your life. Only increasing whisky consumption can ease your horror temporarily.

And the sights won't be pretty--each one reminding you that one day you'll find your place on the same white porcelain where you will be drained, refilled and cleaned. At least you'll be comfortable with your own mortality, right?

If you do decide to do this, can you get me a discount? I know my ex wife will go cheap if I kick off first for sure...

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Prospector

Hi there--what the heck is that animal doing outside the window? A mule? Where you'd... nevermind--I should've learned not to ask questions like that. So--you want to be a muleskinner? No? A prospector? Okay, just let me see, I know there's a info sheet somewhere....

Here it is: "So, to start your lucrative career in prospecting, you'll need to find safe passage through the badlands and eventually make it to San Francisco, where you'll find everything you need to strike it rich up in the Klondike at Jones Mercantile..." What the hell is the date on this thing anyway? Nevermind--things are different now. You probably won't even need that mule. It may go something like this:

You'll need a degree or two in various geology-related disciplines, and then you'll probably have to mortgage your parents' home to get the advanced equipment you need to really make a go of prospecting. Don't expect to have a fixed address anytime soon--you'll wander the most forsaken parts of the earth looking for precious metals, oil, or anything else that will pay the exhorbitant expenses you're running up.

Eventually, you find something good--a load of bauxite, unusual for North America. You play it cool--instead of just filing a claim, you manage to buy up the property cheaply. Now you're ready to make the big bucks, but your money's getting very tight. You get a couple of investors to help keep you afloat, in return for a larger percentage than you want to give them. Just when you think you've got things ready to go--an aluminum manufacturer has already promised you a good price for your bauxite--the roadblocks begin.

First, it's the fact that there's an outstanding claim by a native band who says the land is a combination ritual/burial site--that forces you and your partners to invest heavily in lawyers and eventually buy your way into a settlement. Then the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, along with a coalition of 12 other environmental lobby groups, name your project as the #1 potential environmental disaster of the 21st century. Your cries of "what about the damned rainforest" don't help at the frequent press scrums, either.

Even your deep-pocketed partners are starting to sweat as the costs of creating a large wilderness park--the environmentalists' price to stop picketing your road--become clear. More partners are brought on board, and your share of the project's potential profits is cut to a mere 15%. Still, you reason, there should be enough to save you from bankruptcy, and perhaps cover the cost of two or three years of more fruitless prospecting.

A couple of days before you sign your big contract with the aluminum company, there are simultaneous announcements of huge new bauxite finds in Australia and Brazil. The price of bauxite plummets, and it becomes clear that the cost of extracting material from your mine with North American labor will be much more than it will cost to exploit Brazilian workers--so your project shudders to a halt.

Like rats from a sinking ship, your partners cut their losses and sell their interest in the mine to a large multinational holding company. You resist--you hit up all your friends and relatives for cash, and sell everything you own, in a futile attempt to remain solvent. Eventually, you sell your share to the multinational too, for a pitiful amount that doesn't even pay for your bankruptcy lawyer.

A month later, a civil war starts in Brazil--some suspect the multinational holding company is funding the rebels--and your discovery is once again profitable, as Brazil is suddenly too unstable for the taste of the aluminum cartels who now turn their eyes back north. The holding company makes 3000% profit in the space of six weeks.

You squeak out a living under the poverty line by "witching" wells for ranchers for the rest of your pathetic life. You might wanna think about selling the mule...

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?

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Clown

What's that? You want to be a clown? The circus kind or... Oh--the kids' party kind. Yeah, I know a little bit about that. My ex-wife's lawyer thought it was relevant that the guy I hired for our son's birthday had just been released from... nevermind--let me tell you what's ahead.

First of all, there's really not one particular place to get trained for all this--despite the "Clown College" you heard about on The Simpsons, the best way to go about learning it is to work as gofer and general slave for someone already doing it successfully. You'll need a catchy name--looking at you I'd guess Roly Poly might fit--and try to avoid overdoing the whole hair/makeup thing. What most people doing the clown schtick don't realize is that most kids are terrified of clowns.

Once you've learned to pull off the basic balloon animals and a few simple card tricks, you're ready to leave your mentor and start your act. You'll need a prop tricycle, a lot of annoying noisemakers, and the basic clown suit. You'll buy a crap van that spews blue smoke and you'll get one of those sad magnetic business signs to stick on the side--too bad there won't be enough real metal left on your van to stick it on properly.

You figure out that the only way you'll break into the cutthroat world of party clowning is to undercut your competition. You charge about 2/3 of what your previous boss did, but that just gets you the really cheap, unpleasant customers who deduct that one piece of cake you ate from your pay. You aren't really getting enough money to survive on, so plan B saves you. You carefully orchestrate a variety of rumours about the main competition in town--your whisper campaign hints of drug use, child abuse and more. You couple this with some radio ads--you clean out your savings to pay for them--emphasizing your identity as the "safe" entertainer for children.

Eventually all birthdays, bar mitzvahs and kindergarten graduations begin to look the same. There's always one or two kids who try to pull off your fake nose, and you see more kids vomit from overindulging on party food than you can count.

You get married--fortunately your wife will have a real job; unfortunately she will resent your pathetic income once the novelty of being "Mrs. Poly" wears off. You'll struggle to find clown work during the winter, and be forced into a variety of unsatisfying, low-paying jobs--all you're suited for due to your lack of a real education.

You'll come home beat and your wife will berate you for not being a more involved parent. "You go make everyone else's kids laugh--try it with your own" she'll scream. Of course, your children have long since seen and heard everything you have to offer, and by the time they're 12, you're simply a source of extreme embarassment that only raiding their mother's prescription bottles can alleviate.

By the time you're 45, you'll have to go back to school to learn some sort of useful skill that might earn you a few dollars above minimum wage. Of course, since you wasted half your life trying the futile clown business, you'll then have to work until you're 75 before you can ever hope to retire.

Hey--you know any good jokes?

Read all 20 career explanations here.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Personal Assistant

Hi there--so you want to do what? Personal Assistant? Hmm--never had that one before--most people don't lose all their pride and self respect until after high school. Still, I guess I could figure it out.


Don't fall for the idea that there's some sort of publicist or management course you can take that will prepare you for this line of work. You see, you'll need to become the ultimate generalist--the "jack of all trades" competent in both legal and illegal actions to aid in the comfort and safety of employer.

First of all, you should know that normal people don't have personal assistants. You will work for someone who is both wealthy and disfunctional--musicians, actors, lottery winners, children of corporate scions... Yours will be the 80+ hour week, and your personal life will be nonexistent. There is no way you can raise your own family when you have dedicated your life to parenting an incredibly selfish and needy adult.

You will start off on a professional level, at first--whatever you do, don't ask what happened to the last personal assistant--such a question shows you lack the tact for the job. There will be dozens of questions that are never asked: "Why does your passport list that as your birthday?" "Should I put your mother's call through?" "How old were those girls last night?"--and so many more. You will need to anticipate every whim before it is spoken, and should anything "kill the buzz" of the group, you will be hauled in and berated by your barely-coherent boss. You will never, of course, disrespect your employer in public, and you will sacrifice your own happiness, safety and reputation on a daily basis to keep theirs intact.

You will help them cheat on their taxes, you will calm angry hotel and restaurant managers, you will fire long time employees, you will track down and purchase all manner of illicit substances, you will pimp when your employer is horny, and you will lie to spouses and boyfriends/girlfriends so effectively that you will frighten even yourself. Don't even ask what you'll have to do for their collection of diseased, incontinent pets and relatives.

Ultimately, should you be under 280 pounds and of a gender that your employer finds at all attractive, you will be "hit on"--usually as part of a drunken, drug-addled stupor. By this time, you'll be so far removed from normal social interactions that you won't resist this final act of subservience. The next day, you'll realize that a new level of awkwardness has encroached upon your relationship with your boss, and the clock is now ticking until your replacement is found. This is when you should begin your serious embezzling of funds. Get a swiss bank account, copy and save incriminating documents, phone recordings and videotapes, and remember that everything disgusting and embarassing that's happened over your four years with this overgrown baby is now the substance of your retirement fund--you'll sell your silence to your boss, or peddle your story to the highest bidder.

Just be careful--some personal assistants find that retirement from some employers can be hazardous to one's health.


Previous Cynical Career Counsellor Advice Here

It's kind of creepy, but...

there are probably a lot of blogs out there written by people who've died. The blogs just sit there, not updated of course, while visitors just assume after a while that the person just got bored and moved on. Over time cyberspace will be filled with these strange memorials--a graveyard full of the thoughts of the dead.

I have a friend who knows my password, I think. (the signin is jpurple) I would hope if I did die, that she'd find a way to post a little note or something. Of course, I guess it wouldn't matter much to me at that point.

I was randomly looking up ICQ i.d's a few months ago, and I found one belonging to someone I know who died about three years ago. Her parents had just left a message on it asking that only her friends use it to communicate about her. (I don't use icq so I'm not really sure how it works)

Yeah, I know, this is kind of a morbid post. I must need some sleep.

J.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A High School Teacher

What? You really want to know that one? Have you seen the people who work here? What in the hell makes you think they have a lifestyle that could in any way be appealing? Seriously, I know these people, and they're freaking misfits, every one. Summers off? Yeah, that might seem nice--but let me explain.

S0, you'll go to college, but before that, maybe you'll work in some job to raise cash for school. Remember that job--if you'd stayed there, you'd have kept on earning money--probably more as you climbed up in seniority and skill, and you wouldn't have had to pay tuition fees. Instead, you'll waste five years at college, when you could learn everything you needed to teach in two. If you ever calculate the difference between going to college and teaching, or staying in your old job, you'll realize that you'll have to work until you're 85 to be ahead on the deal.

When you graduate, you won't find the job of your dreams just waiting--you'll either travel to some godforsaken outpost where all the kids are siblings, engaged to each other, or both, or you'll rot on some substitute teaching list waiting for the phone to ring. After a year, you'll figure out that the more popular subs are those who find subtle ways to bribe the teachers who call them in to work.

Subbing will be tough--you're fresh meat for the truly sociopathic members of the school community--which is about 50% of any given school's population--and few of the regular staff ever get your name right, unless they have to seek you out to blast you for parking in their spot.

Eventually you get a job at a school--not full-time, of course, and the salary of teachers early in their careers is about half of their older, burned-out colleagues, so you won't really be pulling in much more cash than some of the kids you teach manage to earn in their after school jobs. The difference is they still live at home, so they can use their earnings to buy late model cars and clothes that fit, while you lie to yourself that no one laughs at your Pinto and that one day you won't need to pin those pants that a more svelte incarnation of you once wore with ease.

Staff meetings are hell--the pathetic divorcees who live alone with their cats have one venue each month to vent their anger at the world, and you must suffer through it--of course, maybe you'll be lucky enough to share a department with these special individuals, and that means even more quality time hearing why your gender is scum. The only thing worse will be those rare unpleasant social gatherings that include drink--these interactions will scar you for the rest of your life.

Students, of course, will be the source of all that is both good and terrible about your day. Parents won't believe their kids need the ritalin, but you'll know better, and it only takes one or two angry violent teenagers to ruin a decent class. Sadly, some of the worst will excel only in their attendance records.

Even the good ones can't be trusted. They'll mock your wardrobe, particularly if you ever wear the same article of clothing in any 10 day period, and you'll eventually realize that you are lied to about 40 times a day. Your favorites will eventually disappoint you when you find mocking charicatures of you scribbled on the backs of the binders they forget in your classroom. Your feeble attempts to be "relevant"--which means painfully embarassing misuse of 10 year old ghetto slang--will be particular fodder for their parodies that stop when you walk too close...

Eventually, you'll be too old to try to connect any more, and it becomes a sad parade of years wishing 10 months gone to enjoy the all too brief moments of July and August. You become the old fart that everyone wishes would retire, but you can't really afford to. You and your students are united only in your mutual loathing of each other. After the first 10 years, you give up even trying to make the occasional class interesting--too many swine have brutishly trampled the pearls of your creativity.

Parents treat you no better--sure there are the occasional ones who find something positive in what you do, but every parent night has at least a couple who've shown up to work out their anger from their own tragic high school experience on you. Even the good ones are convinced that you are a scam artist stealing a full-time paycheck for working four or five hours a day.

Your family, if you have one, will be under constant financial pressure, and your pile of marking and preparation work is a burden that you carry like Atlas shouldered the globe. You are the only one who ages in a room full of the perpetually young, making you constantly conscious of your own mortality and physical deterioration.

Of course, if it gets too bad, you could always switch to counselling...

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as

A Used Car Salesperson

Hey there--oh, a car salesman? Yeah, I guess that might work out--how do you feel about plaid suits? Just kidding...

So, the path you'll probably take is to first work on your charm--I don't mean the stuff you use to try to get with that girl I saw you following around at the dance last week, but the truly insincere patter that you can only develop by going for unexpected visits to your elderly relatives or volunteering at the seniors' center. Eventually that cheesy smile and quick handshake will become second nature.

You won't go right into car sales--no one wants to buy a car from an 18 year old--so you'll have to follow the tried and true food chain to success: Stereo store, matress/furniture outlet, used cars, new cars, life insurance.

You'll do well at the stereo store. Your patter will become smoother, and you'll throw around terms you memorize from the audiophile magazines left in the washroom. You learn the fine art of never recognizing the customers who come back to return items, and you have the advantage of being one of the few employees who speaks fluent English and doesn't have to run out the back way when the immigration authorities pay a visit. Your commissions rise steadily, and soon you move on to the matress outlet.

There you continue your success, and soon you're one of the five assistant managers--all that really means though is that they can phone you when the alarm goes off on a Saturday night, and you get to fire people who really piss you off.

Finally, you're ready. You've created an impressive sales resume, and you skip the sketchy dealers on "the strip" and go work in the used lot at a dealership. They've got a simple policy--if you're the bottom in sales for two months out of four, you're fired. With four or five of you always working the lot, it's tricky to stay off that list, but you manage.

You're third in the pecking order on that lot. The top is Bob "The Closer" Wellburn--a veteran who could have moved to the front and sold new cars, but has a schtick that works best with the "get this unique car before it goes" routine that involves his signalling a nearby real estate office where one of three cohorts dashes over to pretend to feel they'd already bought the car in question--Bob, of course, sends them away and usually makes the sale.

Second is Jenny "why yes, I was a Budweiser girl" Baxter; her business attire always includes blouses with snaps rather than buttons that have an amazing knack of popping open at the most opportune times. The mechanics joke that "test drives" are a euphemism with her customers, but you know she has simply perfected the flirt sale.

You become the "honest" one--you will already have learned to fake sincerity better than anybody--and this usually keeps you off the firing list, at least until you drop your guard--your lot is down to four sales people, and you feel unthreatened even after a bad month previous--the new guy, with some unpronounceable name and broken English hasn't made a single sale since they hired him. What you don't anticipate is his wealthy relatives coming in and buying five high-end cars from him on the last two days of the month.

It boils down to you and Jenny for two days--she isn't in danger of being fired, but she's never finished last, either. Bob steps aside to run an office pool on the two of you, and you work without rest--pulling out all the stops and cutting your commissions to nothing, and you are about to close the month safely when Jenny comes in to congratulate you. You chat in the break room, then she leaves--where you see her outside the window crying on the shoulder of your boss. He storms in and fires you for sexual harassment--she pleads for leniency between the tears, and your protests are dashed when she shows him emails she sent herself from your email address when you left your mailbox open on the breakroom computer.

You're furious, but there's nothing you can do. Reputable dealerships aren't hiring, and your ex-boss has blacklisted you with them anyway. You suck it up and head to the strip, where soon you're lying about crash histories and coming in at night to set back odometers. When you can't fake the VIN numbers of cars with dubious ownership histories, you sell them to your new connections in area "chop shops", and overall, you're soon pulling in more money than at your former job.

You're taken down in a sting operation and sentenced to 18 months--you get off in 6 with good behaviour, and move to somewhere like Red Deer or Oklahoma where you spend the rest of your life selling RVs...


More Cynical Career advice here

And it's on TWICE a week

American Idol. My family watches it. Not me. You see, I direct musicals, so each year, I get to sit through four or five days of that.

So the thrill of sitting in front of the t.v. for the first several weeks while they show over and over the very worst possible performances that they reject--it ain't so much like entertainment as it is reliving what I have come to dread a bit. Thankfully, most of what I see is pretty good.

Then of course, there's all the obligatory trash talk about why it's a travesty (usually mispronounced, of course) that such amazing talent was rejected. Thing is, the whole thing smacks of phoniness now anyways. Most of the really awful people know that decently talented never gets on t.v., but William Hung wannabes will stand a better chance at a few seconds of fame.

Then there's Canadian Idol. More of the same, but with cheesier production values. I think the trick to success is to find a small enough country and take up citizenship there and win their "Idol" show. I believe, were I younger, I could make a good "Icelandic Idol".

I think this was a British show first, wasn't it--like Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Weakest Link.

The Brits have a lot to answer for, methinks.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Cabdriver

Oh hello. No, he's not here right now, but I'm substituting for him. I'm Ms. Pauly, but you can call me by my first name, Anna. So, I understand that normally this is the office where people come to get advice on what to do for a living. What would you... Oh, a taxi driver? How wonderful! Let me see, I think I can come up with something for you.

You look like the type of person who's a really careful driver--am I right? Oh, really? Well, I'm sure it was a misunderstanding and you'll get your license back very soon. So, once you do, and you walk out of here with your diploma, you will have to take some imporant defensive driving courses, so you know the best way to handle the roads, to protect the precious lives entrusted to you each day.

Taxi driving will be an exciting life, so you should go downtown now, while you're still in high school, and make friends with the drivers who are waiting for fares down there. Tell them your dreams; I'm sure they'll be just as excited as you are. You'll see the romantic side of life when you're cabdriving--important politicians, successful business people, and young newlyweds all will grace your clean, shiny taxicab, made all that sweeter by the fresh cut flowers you place each day in the little holder on the dashboard. People will share...

Wait, who's that at the.... er, Mr. Jamison, you don't look, er well, should you be... what? You've been listening in? I'm going to have to go talk to the principal about... excuse me.

Whatever--don't roll your eyes at me, you psychotic Mary Kay reject. Ugh---look kid, I'm sick as a dog and I've been drinking since noon, but I came here to pick up the bottle I left... er, some important papers, and I heard that load of crap. I don't have much time... I'll give it to you simple:

You'll hate driving cab, you'll hate the people who ride it--they'll either look down on you or they'll puke in your car. Nobody will tip you enough, and everybody will think you're trying to rip them off. You'll be robbed an average of once every 10 weeks. People will run off without paying about four times a week. You'll get fat, and you won't get dates. You won't be able to afford a nice place, so you'll live over the taxistand. On your days off you'll eventually start working the dispatch, since that's where they deal the drugs from, so at least you can finally make a little bit of money.

Look--I gotta hit the can. Lock up, wouldya? Drop in next week and I'll try to find you some brochures or somethin'.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

An Elementary School Playground Supervisor

Hi--are you sure you're in the right place? Oh, you do? Then come in. No, don't touch that. Just sit down, okay? All right--what is it you want to talk about? What's a "duty"? Uh-huh... Oh, you mean one of those playground monitors. As a career? You realize that you'd need some sort of real job; that doesn't pay... Now wait a minute, don't get upset. You already get money? Plate in your head? okay then... It would probably go something like this:

You will finish high school, I guess, and then you'll get some sort of job training, and eventually you'll indicate that... huh? Oh, indicate means you tell somebody. Look, I'm just going to smoke while we do this, okay--don't tell anybody though. Right--don't "indicate" about it.

So, you'll say "I wanna be a duty", and some nice person will teach you about being one. And then you will. Great, see you later. What? Whattya mean, there should be more? Well that's because those kids are talking about real... all right, but not too long.

You'll get a nice orange vest, and a shiny whistle, and you get to yell at the bad kids. Some of the bad kids might make fun of how you talk, but you don't worry about that. When they go back inside, you just let the air out of their bike tires, or smear the dog poop from the sandbox on their seats. Whenever the principal comes to talk to you, listen real carefully and then ask him why you don't have a pension plan or dental benefits. Here, I'll write it down for you.

Make sure when November rolls around you ask all the teachers when the Christmas party is and tell them you want to have it at your place. If the principal or one of the other staff asks you to do something you don't want to, like sweep up the glass on the playground, say "my head hurts" and go lie down in the nurse's room for a while. Make sure you blow the whistle at least once every lunchtime or they'll take it away from you.

There, is that enough? Good. Yes, I like you too. No, you can't have a cigarette--you can smoke lots when you're a duty, though.


Previous Cynical Career Counsellor Advice Here

don't look in the china cabinet

Transcript of conversation mentioned yesterday (more or less)

Judy: So if we buy this warranty it covers all the things on this list? (looks at list)
Furniture Girl: Yes--and if you buy it we don't charge you GST on your purchase.
Moi: Stains from bodily fluids? Ewwwww....
Furniture Girl: Well that's more for fabric of course...
Moi: (pointing) See--it's listed for the wood furniture too.
Judy: Couldn't you just clean it?
Furniture Girl: It would be like if a kid maybe threw up on it
Moi: You could clean that--I think they mean bloodstains
Furniture Girl: Yeah--of course, if you were going to murder someone in your home, you wouldn't want people to find the bloodstains
Moi: But wouldn't the people who who replaced the furniture know?
Furniture Girl: (looks around surreptitiously) They might not tell...
Moi: But with all the CSI stuff now, I bet they could still tell
Judy: So this lasts for seven years?
Furniture Girl: Yeah--so if after five years you want new furniture, you just "arrange" to have a child drop something heavy on it. Of course, it would have to be (looks around again) "an accident".

She didn't make air quotes with her fingers, but they were clearly implied. I think I would shop there again, even if the furniture is kind of crappy.

J.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Career in

Radio

So you want a career in radio… well, I think you should know a few things about it first. Oh, you’ve got experience on the school’s lunchtime “radio” show that broadcasts on the p.a. system, do you? Maybe you don’t need me to… oh, you think so? Good—then listen up.

You’ll go to one of those colleges that prepare you for “an exciting career in broadcasting”—funny how that ad hasn’t changed in so many decades, yet nobody’s bothered to shoot or sue enough to stop it. You’ll learn how to run the sound equipment and record commercials and all the stuff that will keep you in a stuffy little room that smells like the last guy’s b.o. and onion-filled sandwiches. When you “graduate”—not that there’s any cap and gown ceremony from this institution, you’ll take your “certificate of completion” and the list of radio stations they gave you from some internet site, and you’ll cold call your way to depression and low self-esteem.

After a long time living in your parents' basement delivering sales fliers and phone books, some hick town station hires you to work in their run-down 1000 watt station broadcasting live from the cattle fair and the tractor shows, and you’ll pretend that you’re not embarassed when you cash your tiny paycheques at the only bank in town. After six-months of rejection letters you’ll begin to fictionalize your resume, paying an acquiantance to pose as all manner of former employers should someone actually call to check your references.

Eventually, after two years of learning more about alfafa then you ever cared to, you manage to score a job in a larger community, where you get to cover the local special events, like beer league baseball tournaments and the annual shriner’s fair. As you become better known, you continue to hone your skills. You learn that smoking a pack a day and drinking whisky late at night help give you the deep resonant tones that eventually command you the coveted morning slot on a station that still only pays you what the night manager at Mcdonalds earns.

After 10 years of moving from one market to another slightly larger market, you finally catch a break. You get afternoon drive-time in a metropolitan market, where they disregard your proud Polish heritage and christen you “Ace Daniels” or “Rocking Rick Shepherd” or some other generic handle that all the other afternoon personalities go by in all their other major market stations. Everything is dictated to you—your jokes, your personality, even the clothes you wear when “on location”.

Of course, moving from town to town while earning poverty-level wages has helped keep you poor and single. With the new job, you aren’t getting rich, but at least you can afford to ditch the bike and get your old MG back on the road. As for relationships—well, the girls who are impressed by your radio “fame” are all a half-dozen years too young to join you in the bar that is your second home. Still, your voice can charm the occasional bitter, drunken divorcee into thinking she’s getting close to some sort of pseudo-celebrity, and who knows, maybe Suzie the traffic girl will dump her drug-dealing boyfriend if the cops can finally make this one stick... You can always hope.

Previous Cynical Career Counsellor Advice Here

R.I.P.

They go by the book value of cars when they write them off. Sadly, that won't do justice in this case--this pic was taken back in June, and there's no way I'd have sold it for less than 2200 or so--yet I'll be offered probably less than half that. Grrr.... I just put new speakers in it two weeks ago, and the stereo is about six months old.

And don't laugh, but I think, as much as I have griped about driving an old car at times, there's the sentimental value. I've had this car longer than I've known my wife or worked for my current school district. I bought it in Vancouver when I still lived up in Prince Rupert.

At least the rental I get to drive for a few days is nice, though.

J.

I thought 2004 was over...

That biotch of a year, I was glad to see it done. What's going on here--looks like my little adventure this morning is going to cost me my car. Despite my complaints, it's served me well for the past 16 years--yes, I bought it before I even met my wife, moved to this town, etc.

Sadly, its loyal service, efficient performance and overall reliability aren't figured into the formula, so I'll get bugger all for it. The details, 'cause I know a couple of my regulars will have heard and want to know:

Just driving to work this morning, stopped because the cars in front of me were stopped, and a large van pushed me along until I was accordian-ized between it and an SUV. Seems the driver behind me was hitting the gas and the brake at the same time, and so the harder he pushed down to stop, the more his vehicle pushed my little car forward. Not fun. Busted my driver's seat in the impact, so i guess that's partly why my neck hurts. I feel like such a stereotypical "accident victim" crying whiplash.... but it's damned annoying and hurts, so I guess maybe there's something to it.

Can't afford to be out of action right now either. grrrr...

At least the guy who hit me was a class act about the whole thing, which helps.

J.