Jobs I never knew I always wanted

Dear Mrs Forgot-Your-Name,

Firstly apologies for forgetting your name, but as you will discover through the course of this letter, it was probably done for good reason.

I'm writing to complain about the career choices that were presented to me in my formative high school years.

I realise that your IQ level and significant limitations in social abilities were obstacles to your understanding of possible career choices. I also acknowledge that you were blindsided by your discovery of, and subsequent obsession with, TAFE and the possibility of prematurely ridding the school of a good percentage of its students, but I nonetheless feel that I have been hard done by.

Omitting law, medicine, finance and all of the other professional fields beyond your realm of comprehension, I'd like you to consider and add the following jobs to your portfolio (alphabetically they will fit on your list somewhere between "drop kick", "waitress" and "xerox machine operator").

• Web developer - This is both the antithesis of journalism and a good way to make bundles: deadlines mean nothing, communication is unnecessary, the money made is obscene and the end result doesn't have to resemble the brief. Apart from a few good eggs it is an industry of people who get paid very much to do very little.


• Tiger trainer - The internship description on the T.I.G.E.R site is: "This is a full time, 365 days a year task. It takes all of your time, with no vacations and no free time off except in the evenings, a few times a year for the first year or two." Which, as you will note, is not that far from journalism except that you get to play with tiger cubs. "We start pay at $100 per week and give you a place to live with pool and hot tub. We pay all utilities/phone, electric, gas, cable and laundry. We also provide a car for you to drive. We also pay for all of the food when travelling. This all equals to about $1000 per month +. You may make more money as you become a trainer. We have paid up to $3,500 per week to trainers on jobs that they solely operate." So, to summarise, you get to spend all of your time in a resort-style zoo playing with tigers. Once you've done a sufficient amount of playing (about two years' worth), you can earn up to $182,000 a year...


• Whatever the job description is for this - The people in this video clip (and look how many of them there are) look super pleased with themselves. And why shouldn't they? It's like dominoes-meets-lego for adults...(Thanks go out to my friend Verity for finding it).


• Embassy/consulate worker - Although I would have to adopt a whole repertoire of new frowns and develop an appropriately condescending voice, I'd be prepared to do it for a two-hour shift three times a week, during which I'd simply have to tell people that they're better off getting things sorted overseas.


• A Sydney Ferries Corporation Outer Harbour Engineer - According to this story in The Daily Telegraph (cough, cough), people in this occupation earn $92,000 a year and get 165 days off (including 104 rostered days off, 11 public holidays, 25 days annual leave, 12 days "maritime leave" and 13 days "leisure leave").

While I can't really complain about my chosen profession (I do have an obsession with words and grammar that lends itself to hours of unpaid overtime which -- strangely enough -- I quite enjoy), but I feel that given the opportunity I would have found a similar fondness for not doing much at all and getting paid an adult wage for it.

I hope you die in a ditch.

Disenchanted,

Agnes Gajewska

On a semi-related note, here is a forum I found on the subject of cool jobs. It does not reflect kindly on the intelligence of our species. It also makes me suspect that Mrs Forgot-Your-Name has expanded her realm of influence.