I am generally pretty happy as a librarian.  It matches my skill set and interests and I like other librarians.  I seem to do a good job – patrons thank me more often than not and I continue to be employed.  All that said, on a given day I’d rather not work than work.  Note: I do anyway, because that is how I obtain money.  But without this extra incentive, I would not go.  I’m glad I am connecting people with information and all, but if I were not compensated for my time, society would just have to do without my guidance while I did something else that allowed me to continue eating and having a house.  Or, if money were not motivation at all, I would just do all those I other things I do that make me happy enough that I don’t need further enticement.  Naturally, this leads me to wonder if there is a job out there where I would want to go even if no one paid me.  Or at minimum, would it improve one or more work-related variables without overly screwing up the other ones?  For example, that would be great if I could do the same amount of weekly work for ten times the salary, but I would not make the trade if there was a significant chance of dismemberment.  I suppose I could try to estimate how much higher my salary would have to be to take on a job that entailed a risk of dismemberment, but I’ll leave that exercise for later.  (Off the top of my head, probably at least 7 figures.  And there would have to be some pretty good benefits.)

So, over the next months or however long it takes to get bored of this project, I will parse through this list of 200 top-rated jobs and consider whether any would be worth a career change.  I will use a random number generator to pick which to discuss next.  The random number generator says:

113. Barber.

Duties, per CareerCast site: “Shampoos, trims, cuts, and styles hair according to the desires of customers.”

Before I do any further research:

What do I think people who have this job do? You work in a small shop. Sometimes you own the shop, or work for the person who does.  Sometimes it’s more like a chain, which would be sorta depressing.  I think the best situation would be to work in a cool old-school barbershop like the one in Rushmore. But I bet most of those are getting put out of business by crappy SuperCuts franchises. You answer the phone and take appointments, but otherwise you sit around reading magazines until someone comes in.  Sometimes customers are really nice and aren’t too picky. Sometimes they will accuse you of ruining their life when you’re done. Sometimes they will be kids – the terrified ones are best because they hold still.  You have to objectively know stuff about when a haircut looks good and when it doesn’t, for both sexes.  Then you sweep up some hair. You spend a lot of the day standing and holding your arms up in the air, so I’d think your shoulders get stronger.  You see some pretty poorly-washed hair, but at least you can wash it.  You’re handling razors so probably no punks are going to mess with you.  You probably have your regulars and feel like a comfortable townie but don’t make much money.  You can watch TV while you’re working.  I would guess there are enough jobs that pretty much anyone willing to be a barber could be a barber.

Do I think I would like this job? Probably not at all. I don’t like touching strangers. I have little sense of style. I am terribly uncomfortable getting my own hair cut, why would I want to cut someone else’s?

What would be required to become qualified? Having no training matching this job whatsoever, I would have to either apprentice myself at a barber shop or go to beauty college.

Would I want to do that? No chance.

Looking at the numbers:

Overall rank: 113, in the upper part of the bottom half.  I guess 113 out of 200 says: if you have to have kind of a cruddy job, this isn’t a bad one to have.

Details: Work environment gets a 575.120 (pretty good), physical demands 9.22 (lots of standing, but that’s about it), stress 23.621 (way low), income about $24K (terrible), hiring outlook very poor.

Conclusion:

I think I pretty much get what a barber does, and I wouldn’t want to do it.  It’s not too demanding, and certainly not stressful (more the opposite: boring).  But the salary is awful.  I’m surprised that the hiring outlook is poor.  Wouldn’t society always need barbers?  Maybe it’s hard to become a good one.  Or maybe once a good barbershop job is taken, it stays taken.  I have been going to my current barbershop for years and have never seen any new staff.  Anyway, it all comes down to having to touch a lot of strangers’ heads.  No thank you.

Next up: #79, Public Relations Executive.