Now, I’m not talking about jobs you can’t do because you don’t have the ability, like being the QB of an NFL team, but rather jobs that you are perfectly capable of doing that you just couldn’t do. For me it would be being a Humane Society Cruelty Investigator. I see these guys on Animal Cops every night at 10 on Animal Planet and I just shake my head. I know, I KNOW that if I had that job by day 3 I’d be carrying a gun, and before a week went by I’d have emptied the clip into someone’s chest, reloaded, and emptied it again (maybe the guy who hit his puppy in the face with a sledgehammer, or the gal who left her dog chained outside in the snow to starve to death). I. Just. Couldn’t. Do. That. Job.
Public defender. It’s an honorable profession and I’m glad people do it, but personally I know I’d end up saying things to juries like, “EVEN IF THE DEFENDANT TOTALLY REALLY DID IT, [SUB]you have to believe that beyond a reasonable doubt[/sub]. And of course you can’t even consider the gun found in his backpack, because I got that search exclud-- uh, oops.”
I don’t have whatever it takes to be a doctor or a police officer or fireman, or a welfare case worker, or a child protective services investigator. I could not deal with a job where I constantly witnessed death or near-death, or the gross mistreatment of people by those closest to them, or the worst elements of society day in, day out. I wouldn’t know how to deal with the heartbreak. It would make me a basket case.
Child protective services, for the same reasons Weirddave enumerates. I have a friend who works for CPS in Southern California and the stories she tells me give me the creeps. E.g.:
“No, your daughter may not sit on your lap during supervised visits, because you sexually molested her, you degenerate a$$ho1e.” (italics mine).
My headline would read something more like: SOCIAL WORKER BEATS AREA MAN TO DEATH WITH HAMMER, MUTILATES BODY. Related headline: NOVEL PROFANITIES OVERHEARD DURING MURDER.
Dentistry. Surgeon. Anything to do with the squishy bits inside the body, espcially when they are revealed in inappropriate ways, such as through a chest wound.
Any job that rquires sustained compassion for The Other. It’s not that I don’t want to, mind you, but I’m not sure I’m capable of it without either disconnecting or breaking down. (Okay, maybe that doesn’t quite fit the OP.)
I could never work in a nursing home. My heart breaks just thinking about elderly residents either having no one to come and visit them or the family who can’t be bothered to visit enough. Forget about any type of abusive environment – I’d lose it.
Check-cashing place or car title loan place. Hey, I don’t doubt they serve a legitimate function, but dealing all day with people at the desperate end of their finacial rope would drive me batty.
Honestly, now that I teach, I also can’t imagene any job where I don’t get 10 weeks off in the summer and 2 at Christmas. I like 60 hours/week for 40 weeks much better than 50 hours/week for 50 weeks!
As others said, anything involving abused children or animals. I’d end up either killing someone or killing myself because I’d be doing nothing but crying.
I couldn’t do anything that involved being around a lot of gross bodily fluids-shit, puke, blood, piss. My gag reflex is such that smells-especially shit-causes me choke and almost vomit.
The other stuff I could probably handle, more or less, but it would depend on the degree.
The dead don’t bother me; I’ve done caregiving for old folks–though not to the extent that it is done in nursing homes, so maybe that one wouldn’t work out; I’ve cleaned out high school lockers in the dead of summer when ancient sammiches and not-so-ancient bugs came spewing out of them, so I could handle some, if not all, cleaning jobs.
I dislike selling things, but I could do it if I had to.
Besides the jobs mentioned so far, you know those lightbulbs at the tops of tall buildings and broadcast antennas? Somebody’s gotta change 'em, and it ain’t me.