Top 50 Things They Don’t Tell You in the Job Description
Scott Adams from the Dilbert Blog gave his readers an amusing assignment: “describe your own job in one sentence, preferably in a humorously derogatory way.” He must have hit a soft spot because hundreds of readers jumped at the opportunity to tell it like it is. Check out some of the best replies from among the hundreds, with my top 10 at the end.
(UPDATE: I’ve also added the Top Ten Digg Responses)
My Job Is To…
- Read things that don’t matter, then write papers saying they do matter, for points that don’t matter, in order to get a job doing something totally unrelated: Student
- Take numbers on pieces of paper, rearrange them and put them on different pieces of paper: Tax Accountant
- Explain big words to sales people and then cower before customers while trying to convince them that the sales people really didn’t say what the customers understood: Customer Solutions Engineer
- Learn laws created ages ago so that I can tell engineers why I’m smarter than they are while complaining how it’s a travesty that they get paid more: Physics major
- Show you innovative ways to burn money in the spirit of patriotism: Fireworks Stand Manager
- Help people lie consistently to their bosses: Business Intelligence Consultant
- Teach your kids enough to complain but not enough to make a difference: College Teacher
- Stand on a field and get yelled at for hours: Baseball Umpire
- Make people who are already filthy rich somewhat richer by duping poor people into buying stuff they don’t need: Corporate Software Engineer
- Find as many synonyms for “explosion” as possible: Novelist for Teenage Boys
- Supervise the guys and gals who try to protect the good people from the bad, only to be hated by the good people AND the bad: Police Sergeant
- Watch the lunatics take over the asylum: Teacher
- Manage waste recycling, promotion & sales: Antiques Dealer
- Arrive after the battle and bayonet all the wounded: Auditor
- Sell gas: Energy and Telecom Business Analyst
- Tell forty year-old men it’s okay to behave like fourteen year-old school girls: Printing Press Production Coordinator
- Make corporate propaganda feel like folksy truthisms: Tv Ad Director
- Shepherd clients through the process of setting their products on fire: Consumer Products Tester
- Manage urban renewal and pest control: B-52 Bomber pilot
- Persuade kids that it’s really fun being wet, cold and scared out of their minds: Sailing Instructor
- Draw up plans for something that will not be built according to those plans: Civil Engineer, Transportation Design
- Teach kids to be evil…or so they say: Video Game Creator
- Ensure that stupid people stay in the gene pool: Lifeguard
- Do all the tasks nobody else wants to do: Admin Assistant
- Wear a tuxedo and smash metal plates into each other: Musician
- Go to strange people’s houses and take their money: Pizza Delivery Boy
- Sell gluttony: Cinema Concession Stand Attendant
- Tell people that they can’t spend money they thought they had: Government Analyst
- Take pictures of the unlucky and the stupid: X-ray Technician
- Profit from the misfortunes of others: Cops and Courts Reporter
- Take a simple two-way promise and turn it into several complicated one-way promises which neither side can understand or hope to fulfill: Lawyer
- Bring a little rain into the lives of flood victims: Government Debt Collector
- Have people spend far more than they estimated: Building Inspector
- Make sure nothing ever happens: IT Security
- Move things from one tube to another: Microbiologist
- Clean up an animal that makes more money then me in a year: Assistant Horse Trainer
- Make people feel bad about their work: Quality Assurance Tester
- Be a human napkin: Stay-at-home mom of three
- Make food that is as healthy before it goes in your body as when it comes back out: Fast Food Employee
- Repeatedly fix what you repeatedly break: IT Director
My Top 10
- Help people hate each other: Divorce Lawyer
- Talk in other people’s sleep: College Professor
- Try not to kill the baby: Housewife
- Show people how beautiful the Earth would be without them: Mountain Landscape Photographer/Climber
- Copy and paste the Internet: Student
- Write words that no one wants to read: Technical Writer
- Misinterpret the universe: Astronomer
- Spend most of the day looking out the window: Pilot
- Run away and call the police: Security Guard
- Sell magic potions filled with psychotherapy: Bartender
(Adapted from the original list found on jobmob.co.il)
UPDATED: Top 10 Digger Responses
- Ruin the economy, start multiple pointless wars, make every other country on earth view you as an aggressor: President of the United States
- Every week, remind people that they will be doomed for eternity unless they do as he says: Priest
- Act calm and reassuring while stifling the impulse to gag at bad breath and tooth rot: Dental Hygienist
- Assure people that the $70 standard definition DVD player they are about to buy will look 100x better with a $120 video cable and swear on my mothers grave that even though neither will ever fail that it’s still a good idea to get a 5 year extended warranty for another $100: Fry’s Electronics A/V Salesman
- Make people equate inconvenience to safety: Airport Security
- Slowly go insane while trying to explain to people why their expired trial copy of Norton AntiVirus 2003 let viruses get on their computer: Computer Tech
- Get a transferred phone call and asks the customer the same questions that he’s already been asked by the first guy he just talked to: Tier 2 Technical support.
- Run back and forth blowing a little whistle for 90 minutes only to receive 90,00 death threats: FIFA referee
- Tell people they’re not crazy: Psychologist
- Bring sites down: Digg
Feeling motivated? Try your creativity in the comments below.
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- How to Find Your Passion and Make It Your Career
- Life's Too Short for the Wrong Job
- The 30-Second Rule
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Copy and paste the Internet: Student”…
Been there, done that!