The unhappiest of jobs

As a list junky, I am always delighted to see a list – especially when you don’t have to click through a slide show to get at the info. So I was plenty happy to see a list of the happiest and unhappiest of fields to be working in.

I found the article on Huffington Post, which, in turn, was citing CareerBliss.com, one of those online whatevers where I can’t quite figure out what the business model is.

Anyway, I was not surprised to read that the unhappiest of field is retail.

As one who had plenty o’ retail experience back in the day, all I can ask is ‘how could it not be?’

A good deal of the time, it’s drop dead boring. If there are no shoppers to pay attention to, you can straighten the merchandise, but trust me when I say that there are only so many times you can pat down boxes of stationery.

You’re also on your feet all day, which is not especially comfy and pleasant when you’re twenty. So I’m guessing that it really doesn’t get any better when you’re fifty, however sensible and orthopedic the shoes you’re wearing.

Then there’s having to slap on the smiley-face and deal with “the public,” including those who are: trying to return obviously worn clothing without even bothering to wave the supporting sales slip at you; attempting to bargain you down because their potential purchase is a bit shopworn or somehow damaged (when that “somehow” may have involved their own nefarious intervention: that missing button is in their pocket!); running an “I gave you a ten, now give me back a twenty” change scam on you.

And then there’s the paltry, miserable pay, that leaves you so skint that, even with your 10 or 20% employee discount, you can’t afford to buy anything in the store. (Unless you worked at Route 9 Surplus, where you wouldn’t want anything to begin with and, if you did, you could afford to spring for even without the 10% off. Who needs a discount on 59 cent flip-flops? Surely not my sister Trish…)

The one thing that retail does give you, however, is insight into human nature.

In one of my memorable encounters, while working in the Filene’s stationery department at Christmas, I waited on a man who was buying a box of writing paper. I pointed out that the box was somewhat dirty, and offered to get him something cleaner.

“Don’t bother,” he told me. “It’s just for my wife.”

So anyway, wanting to learn more about unhappy industries, I wended my way over to CareerBliss, only to find yet another delightful list, this one covering the unhappiest of jobs. Without working myself too much into a sweat about the distinction between “field” and “job” - I mean, there is a big difference in retail between clerk and senior buyer. While a buyer might be a lot more pressured, it’s a much better paid gig, and not so boring, since you get to jet around from one Fashion Week to another, rubbing shoulders with Jean Paul Gaultier, Donnatella Versace, and Stella McCartney. At least this is the case if you’re a buyer for Neiman-Marcus; buying for Wal-Mart may be a tad less glamorous - I was quite interested in what those unhappy jobs were. I figured, quite reasonably enough, I felt, that since retail is such a miserable industry, then retail clerk would be right near the top of the bottom.

Not so!

First on the misery list was security officer, which is more or less equivalent to retail clerk in terms of compensation and boredom, with danger and a gun layered on. But while it may be in retail half the time, it’s not of retail in the same way that clerk is.

RN was the next least happy jobs, which surprised me, since most of the ones I’ve met – dozens over the last year alone – seem to be competent, committed, and compassionate, a trifecta that would seem to me to be associated with job happiness. Then again, the nurses I’ve met are all at Mass General Hospital, which was – speaking of lists – chosen the #1 hospital in the US last year. Maybe the fact that everyone in the hospital was given a commemorative fleece made the nurses seem happier.

Teacher was the third least happy job, which I find sad but not surprising, given how much of a beating they’ve been taking lately, as if it’s their fault that they can’t fix all the problems of our diverse and troubled society in six hours a day.

Sales engineer was next on the hit parade, which I didn’t find much of a surprise either. Having worked with sales engineers for years, I realize that they were perpetually pissed off that they were the brains of the outfit, having to continually make up for the idiocy and false claims of the sales people they support, while making half the money.

What I was surprised to see was that, of the final six places on the unhappy list, three were occupied by jobs that I had held: product manager, marketing manager, and marketing director.

Huh?

Sure, product manager can be a thankless task. When people used to ask me what a high tech product manager actually did, I would tell them this:  Everything that needed to get done to develop, release, sale, and support a product was set out on a table. Everyone involved in the development, release, sale, and support of a product walked around the table and picked out what they wanted to work on. What was left was what the product manager did.

Still, I enjoyed product management, since it gave you a tremendous insight into all elements of the product process, you weren’t stuck working with the same people all the time – you were stuck working with different people – and it was seldom boring. Plus, on occasion, when the product was released and sold (but before the support calls started bombing in), you actually got to feel a sense of accomplishment.

Marketing manager and marketing director are also positions that I held. Those titles are, of course, umbrella titles, and can mean a lot of things, but I found marketing – at least, and at least in the tech sector – is interesting, challenging, and creative.  And, especially if you can stay as far away on the continuum from really horrendous sales people, it was actually fun. I recognize that bad salesperson avoidance is not always possible, and that, however small or large the company, you will on occasion have to deal with screeching salespeople who believe that a) they know everything there is to know about marketing; b) marketing is really just about knowing how to order golf-balls with the company logo on them; and c) unless you can tell the sales person to go to the 14th floor of the Acme Building on May 7th and ask for Linda, who’ll have the signed, enterprise sales contract ready for you, what you- your feeble marketing manager – are calling a lead is not actually a lead. (One good thing about bad sales folks, however, is that they made you really and truly appreciative of the good ones. So, after-the-fact thanks to Ted, Valerie, Kevin, Tony, Chris…)

Okay, I would never say that a career in product management and marketing was “career bliss” exactly. But unhappiest of jobs?

Nah!