Underemployed librarians, particularly at tiny libraries, hell yeah. My tiny non-benefits 10 hour a week job at the art museum pays 8.50 an hour and requires a masters’ degree with cataloging, archives knowledge, book repair, reference, subject analysis - pretty much everything but storytime. Not the same as an EMT, but a lot of education and knowledge and complexity for the pay. I’m also my own manager, entirely self-motivated, as nobody else knows anything about what I do down here. That’s the situation for a lot of librarians in small libraries like this.
Look for my new book Typing With My Tits
And its not about birds.
That said, I have to say that one of the most insane jobs out there for anyone to ever get into would have to be a Paramedic. Crap pay, insane hours, the lives of people in your hands. I think I’d rather take my no-pay job as a Mom. The plus side is I can dispense scooby-doo bandaids any time I want.
How about cook? Not chef - cook.
The hours suck - as a breakfast cook, I have to be at work before most people are out of bed. As a dinner cook, I’m at work long after most people are off. I can’t go out with my friends on the weekend, because I’m working every single weekend. Regardless of what shift I’m working, my hours don’t coincide with the rest of the world’s schedule. Why? Because people only need my services when they’re not at work themselves. Since I don’t have a car, I depend on public transit. Unfortunately, if I work mornings, my shift starts before the busses start running. If I work nights, my shift ends well after the busses stop running. So I have to walk one direction or the other.
Contrary to popular belief, cooking is highly skilled work. I have to know how to properly operate multiple pieces of equipment. I have to be aware of a fairly elaborate set of Health Code regulations. I need an outstanding sense of timing in order to have multiple, different food items all finish cooking at the same time. And I have to know exactly how to cook each and every one of those items.
The job is physically demanding. I have to remain on my feet for eight hours. It’s hard on my knees, because I’m neither standing in one place nor am I moving long distances at a steady pace; all of my movements are short and quick, involving a lot of twisting. The non-slip floor mats, which are essential in a kitchen, prevent me from pivoting easily on the balls of my feet - so my knees take a lot of stress with all the twisting and turning. Restaurant kitchens are usually very hot and humid.
One of the worst parts of the job, though, are customers who think that my job is easy. Unfortunately, that group includes pretty much everybody who has never worked in a restaurant. Everybody thinks it’s easy, because, after all, their mothers did it! (Tip of the hat to stay-at-home moms who cook for their families.) Maybe Mr. Customer’s mother was a good cook. But Mr. Customer’s mother probably never had to cook 15 different meals at the same time, in 15 nimutes or less. That’s vastly different from cooking one pot that everyone dishes out of. I also have to deal with people who think their mother’s are the final word on how things should be cooked and the terminology used to describe them. I’m sorry fella, but just because your mother called her fried eggs “over easy” doesn’t mean they were “over easy” according to the actual culinary definitions we use in the restaurant business.
I’ve been a professional cook for 21 years. When I started in 1983, I made minimum wage ($3.35/hr at the time). Now, 21 years later, I make $8.00/hr, less than a dollar above the current minimum wage in my state.
Since the beginning of 2004, I was planning on returning to school (I have a BA in Applied Behavioral Science) to get my teaching certification to teach High School English. Based on the starting salary, it would have been a slight increase from what I was making at my previous job in social services. I was all lined up to begin classes when I got my new job (also dealing with social services)–and my current pay tops the ending salary for teachers in my area. There’s no way I can afford to teach now. <sigh>
For the comments earlier about pilots: yes, the compensation can vary wildly.
First, we are paid by the hour. The time we are paid is only when the airplane is away from the gate (preflight, checking the weather, etc is not paid time). Also, we are limited in the number of hours we can fly every month (and other ways as well that are too complicated to get into). The FAA says no more than 100 hours/month, but many airlines have that number set lower.
So, you look at the hourly rates of airline pilots. These can range from the new-hire at a commuter who makes $19/hour to the most senior 777 Captain who makes (with recent pay cuts) $216/hour. If you figure the same hours per month (let’s call it 80) that works out to $1,520/month for the commuter First Officer and $17,280/month for the 777 Captain. Or $18,240/year vs $207,360/year.
Also remember that 80 hours of flying does not mean 80 hours at work. Those 80 hours come over 14 or 16 days of flying, with nights spent in hotel rooms away from home. Total time away from home easily exceeds 250 hours in any given month. Dividing that by the monthly pay gives us $6.08 per hour away from home for the commuter pilot and $69.12 per hour away for the 777 Captain.
It really is almost criminal how little the guys flying at commuters get paid.
I had to think hard about this, St. Urho. Look at this this way: When we show up, we are not supposed to enter an unsecured area. If the call involves the police, they determine if the area is secured and usually accompany us in, and stand by if we are treating a suspect/ person under arrest.
Ditto when responding to a fire scene. The EMS Co-Ordinator always bows to the Fire Chief, or scene supervisor. They say we can go in, we go in. They say it’s unsafe, we hunker down and wait our turn. What’s the rule? 1) Am I SAFE? 2) Is my partner/crew safe? 3) Is the Scene safe? 4) Are the potential patients safe enough to approach and treat?
Firefighters, IMHO, are paid a lot more because they don’t get to look over their shoulders. They are first-line in a situation that is frequently less controllable than a law enforcement situation. ( no offense to cops ). I for one hate how poorly EMS workers are paid, but that is different than thinking that I’d love to have a firefighter’s job. I respect the fact that they charge in to secure a scene before I go ( used to go… ) in to do my job.
I wouldn’t have minded twice the pay for half the call volume either, but I agree with the logic that pays firefighters and law enforcement more than EMS- even if I hate the logic.
Cartooniverse, retired NYS EMT.
p.s. damn…your EMT-B partner pulls in less than $ 7.00 an hour? -shudder- Thank god we do this cause we love it so much, eh? I volunteered with the local Corps before getting my EMT card, and then rode as an EMT after getting it. Doing this kind of work is priceless, but if you are doing it as a profession, you should be duly compensated for it.
I’ve just gotten my advanced Galley Proof of Typing With My Tits: The Downward Spiral of Memory and Mammary In An American Woman’s Life, by Shirley Ujest. It’s a softcover as one might expect and fits just so perfectly into the palm of my hand. In fact, it’s just the best handful of…literature… I’ve ever …had. 
Shirley, what is not being mentioned here- and bears some recognition- is the fact that NOBODY goes into EMS, Fire or Law Enforcement unless they are adrenaline junkies. It’s a much-bandied about phrase but it really is true. It takes a special person to awaken out of a sound slumber at 2:09 am on a bitter cold morning, run to the car, scream down to the building, pull out the rig with lights going ( only a true :wally turns on the siren unless they must at 2:09 am ), and proceeds to crawl through ice, slush, torn metal and shattered glass to help out an injured driver. It’s partially the adrenaline. Trust me. I know. To deny that aspect and only speak of the more lofty parts of this area of work is foolish.
It is highly exciting work. I have, with my own hands, brought a woman back from the dead. I mean, no vitals, nothing, very seriously dead. Did it without a defibrillator, too. Just CPR and hope and a hard-working partner next to me. Who does that, and gets away with it?
Adrenaline, indeed. The drive to do a kindness for a stranger factors in as well, but…adrenaline…
As Master Helmsman aboard my ship, I was often on the wheel for 10 hour ammunition onload/offload operations in dangerous waters. Absolute precision was required (i.e always within one degree port/starboard) or thousands could die or even a shipwreck. I made 1200 bucks a month.
I should add, there were two of us, but we were both on duty at the same time in different places making rotating impossible unless we brought a third MH onboard from another LPD (amphibious transport dock. e.g. marine hotel).
I’ve heard that I could make the equivalent of 70 bucks an hour with the merchant marines with this skill. But I like my soul.
Agreed on this one.
Furnature refinisher earning $1144.00 for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.
In this case, I’m specifically talking about the depatment we run with. They run >85% medical calls. They also run ALS, so they have medics, too. A brand new medic there makes literally twice as much as I do. I know in other areas, the pay disparity is less great, and that wouldn’t bug me.
Lastly, like i said, there is a vast disparity in call volume. We average 12 calls per 24 hour shift. My district covers the territory of 5 different engine companies, and none of them average more than 5 per shift. So I think the difference in call volume should make up a good chunk of that, as well.
Oh yeah, and my partner has 4 years in as a basic with the same company :eek:
DesertGeezer, heh 
Heh heh. Sorry guys, but I find it amusing that so many of you have nominated your own jobs or previous jobs. Hee.
IMHO, the topic is a bit hard to find an adequate answer for, merely because salaries and wages vary from place to place.
Additionally, I think an extra factor should be unpleasantness (is that a word?), e.g. rubbish man or orderly. And maybe level of education needed to hold said low-paying job.
But, that said, I’ll nominate nurses as being underpaid despite them effectively working as almost-doctors. Nurses also endure extremely high levels of unpleasantness.
I’ll vote for teachers since that is the only profession I know well
However what is worse is being an intern
All the work of a regular teacher with zero pay!
This is only post in this thread that literally stunned me. Most of the other jobs were either a temporary means to an end, or a (kinda/sorta) labor of love. You’re sticking with a stressful, physically demanding, low paying job with few benefits year after year. You’re an intelligent, literate human being, why do you choose to stay with it?
I used to work for a magazine and paperback book distributor, and we had a program that figured out what should go in to the bundle or bundles sent to each retailer, based on their subscriptions. There were people in the warehouse who did the actual assembling of the bundles; I don’t remember exactly how they did it, but it seemed that it was a painstaking, very detailed job that had to be done at a fast pace. And they only got about $8 an hour.
Maybe it was easy once you got the hang of it, but to me it seemed harder than my job as a programmer.
So they get about 60K a year? It may not buy a Malibu beach house, but it’s not exactly low pay, is it? And 40 hours a week is not exactly excessive, is it?
Oh, I see, prison labor. I thought that was the salary per week, but that’s per year, right?
Yup. 55 cents an hour.
It doesn’t pay well because everyone wants to do it and the labor pool is oversaturated. I worked in radio and TV news for about twenty years. When I was a news photographer gathering content for the station to put commercials between I was making about 18K. But it was the best job I ever had except for the pay.