Daniel O’Brien from Cracked.com believes that working these five jobs in your lifetime can help you solve almost everything. See what they are after the jump and let us know if you agree!
#5. Waiting Tables
Why Everyone Should Have This Job:
You learn a whole lot about people by serving them. How a person behaves to the guy fetching his drinks says a lot about that person. And you, as a waiter, start to figure out what kind of person you want to be. Are you the guy who makes eye contact with your waiter and speaks to him like a human, or are you the guy who hisses when he wants to catch a waiter’s attention (happened to me)? Everyone on the planet should know what it’s like to have to serve someone else. It’s humbling, and sometimes terrible, and some other times mostly OK.
#4. Something With Kids
Why Everyone Should Have This Job:
It’s important to, for at least a little while, be the person on whom little kids rely for their safety. Obviously parents don’t need to do this job, but anyone else, like me, who is on a direct path of relaxing selfishness and childless leisure should have to understand the pressure and stress of trying not to ruin children. The quickest way to feel like a grown-up is to have a little kid hate you for keeping them safe.
Also, you’ll learn to have more empathy for absolutely anyone who does have children, because kids are the worst people on the planet. Sticky little liars who can’t even hunt, that’s what all of them are, and anyone who dedicates their lives to raising them deserves slack, all the time, from everyone.
#3. Tech Support of Any Kind
Tech Support is about teaching someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you to fix their problems just by talking to them. Imagine how much better we, as a global community, would be at communicating with each other if we all had to spend a year in Tech Support. In the way that a lawyer trains her mind for organizing thoughts and building arguments, a Tech Support employee trains his mind for pleasantly and efficiently communicating with people who are much, much dumber.
#2. Something Where You Have Power
Why Everyone Should Have This Job:
In part, it’s for people who have never had any power to see how the other half lives, but mostly it’s about learning. If waiting tables is how you learn about other people, being in charge is how you learn about you. There is no better way to learn about yourself than by seeing what you do when you have power. Even a little bit of power would do. You don’t need to be the boss of a huge company — it doesn’t matter. As long a position has some power and a few subordinate employees, you should have it.
#1. Something Mindless/Labor Intensive
Why Everyone Should Have This Job:
Because everyone should just shut up and work for a while. Everyone should have a job that doesn’t get easier if you’re smarter or more charming than someone else. There are no corners to cut. The job is just “Here’s the work. Do the work.”
