What’s wrong with bartenders? They’re usually the sanest. At least to the customers. They listen to the same boring stories, lame old jokes, political/religious/sports opinions & stupid personal problems all day. It they end up loopy, it’s probably due to too much exposure to the public at large.
Wait staff can over do it sometimes, but it’s usually better to err on the side of over friendly than bored & stand-offish. You get much better tips that way. You’d be surprised how many people go out to eat just to feel pampered & special. If they don’t feel like they’re the center of your attention, you get stiffed.
Bussers that eat off your plate when you’re finished? Well, you didn’t eat it. You don’t carry any disgusting diseases do you? If you really care what happens to the food you don’t eat & don’t want it to go to waste, ask for a take out box.
Personally, I’ve found scientists to be pretty whacked out & mainly only able to socialize with other scientists. Cops too. Excessive wealth seems to make people strange, too. But that’s not really a profession.
Really, I’ve been working in Downtown Denver for three or four years now and the Homeless people have a Career just as much as the other white collar workers.
The sign may say ‘Stolen purse, out-of-towner, can’t afford to get back home’, but it doesn’t mention WANTING to get back home, and WHEN the purse was stolen.
I used to know a new car salesman, and he said almost every salesman he’d ever worked with was financially irresponsible - they get paid mostly by commission, and whenever they got a large check, they’d blow it on drugs, gambling or whatever, and be broke next month when they got a smaller check.
Law partners at major firms. Getting there requires self-advancement skills normally seen only in hyenas, so the end result is some incredibly damaged goods. Associates can be pretty awful, too, but those with a bit of self-perception weed themselves out, so as you go up the scale of seniority you develop a sort of distilled psychosis.
The exceptions: people in really obscure specialties. In my experience as a corporate/securities associate, I found that tax and IP (intellectual property) lawyers were easier to deal with. For one thing, the pressure’s a bit less: they know the deal can’t get done without them, and they know that no-one’s going to try to figure out their job for them. People defer.
Actors also tend to be nut jobs - not only self-absorbed, but completely caught up in fantasy.
Hm. I’d hazard that professions in which the majority of those who enter will fail will attract those without too much grip on reality.
I work in graphic design, and I’d rather cornhole Oprah that do any more work for any engineer - every one I’ve met is so anal.
Any engineers here to flame me?
We’ve got The Big Issue here too casdave, and in fact, it IS a requirement of the job.
Most (all?) of the vendors are marginalised by virtue of psychiatric disability (to a greater or lesser extent) IIRC. Unable to find employment in the ‘normal’ sector, they are eligible to become Big Issue sellers.
And where I live, some of them are absolute doooooozies.
