We all have limits to what we're willing to do, say, or try, no matter the circumstances.
We also have limits we're unwilling to cross in the workforce, regardless of how high the salary might be.
Sometimes the salary just isn't worth it.
Curious, Redditor abashedpeter asked:
"What job would you never accept (regardless of the salary)?"
Know Your Limits
"Those people who have to stand in malls trying to get passersby to sign up for stuff for companies and charities, and stay bright and cheery all day as people ignore their greetings at best and verbally abuse them at worst."
"I could never do that for long, I’d die inside."
- M_AD
"I try to always at least return a greeting and say, 'Not interested, but have a great day.' It's probably meaningless, but it makes me feel better."
- ben0318
Terrible For All Involved
"Cold-calling sales. I’ve done that job and… NOBODY involved in it enjoys it. Not the person being called, the person making the call, or the potential sales reps having to run that cold call lead. Nowadays I’m surprised people even pick up the phone."
- Goopyteacher
Absolutely Terrifying
"Not beneath me but above me. Those dudes that free climb and change lights on transmission towers. Pays really well. No, thank you."
- SophisticatedSophh
"Good pay, and if I fall, I don't have to get up and go to work anymore."
- FullWillingness883
Underwater Welding Should Not Be A Thing
"Underwater welding... I read somewhere that being randomly bumped by large creatures in the dark down there is 'just something you get used to' (shudders)."
- ColloquialCloaca
"(bump)"
"Me: Oh. Morning, Cthulhu."
"Cthulhu: Indistinct Old One Language."
- LOERMaster
"Just imagine, you start having weird dreams, and when you wake up, you realize Cthulhu has imparted the knowledge to make the best cheesecake the world has ever seen."
- Mammoth-Reveal-238
"Running a bakery called Cthulhu Cakes would be one thing, but underwater welding is something else entirely."
- TheBookishAndTheBard
Two Words: Cave Diving
"Cave diving jobs. Nothing on earth will ever possess me to travel through a claustrophobic cave and risk my life."
- SenpaiHentai013
"It's not even the claustrophobia that gets me. It's the fact that in the wrong cave, kicking your foot wrong will disturb the silt and blind you for 12+ hours until it resettles, and if you don't know EXACTLY where you're going WITH a guide wire, you're dead of drowning."
"Kicking your foot. Or hand. Or scraping the wall badly. Any of these? Dead."
- Ashaeron
"And the air in caves can be filled with too much carbon dioxide, so if you make it to an air pocket or room to try and conserve your oxygen tank while you wait for silt to settle, you could die from too much CO2 in your system."
- Dependent_Ad_7231
"Guys, I'm already refusing to go cave diving ever."
"YOU DON'T HAVE TO CONVINCE ME."
- SenpaiHentai013
Salary In Exchange For Your Life
"A friend of mine is an Executive Admin for three C-level executives. I used to be envious of her salary (something like 90k after bonuses) but then I started noticing how her life was not her own."
"Remember the scene in 'The Devil Wears Prada' when Miranda calls demanding her canceled flight get changed during a hurricane? Or when she demanded the newest unpublished 'Harry Potter' book, or rattled off instructions like, 'Find me that little piece of paper I had in my hand the other day'?"
"Multiple that by three, and make at least one of them a huge man-baby millionaire who couldn't operate a coffee maker if you took his hand and pressed his finger on the start button for him. Add another who made multi-billion dollar decisions on the daily but couldn't order socks for himself on Amazon. You get the idea."
"We were all out on a Saturday around midnight, and she got a call from one of them, asking if so-and-so had sent a certain email yet. That's when I realized there wasn't enough money in the world to get me to do it, and even if there was I wouldn't last a week."
- Competitive-Metal773
No Worse Feeling
"Putting down unwanted animals at the pound."
- throw123454321purple
"About three weeks ago, I went with my girlfriend to put her 20-year-old cat down, literally a few months away from 21. I've never been much of a cat person, but we decided to be in the room when they put him down."
"Let me tell you, I cried like a little girl when they put him down. Truly don't know how vets can do that on a regular basis without burning out."
- Zdog54
The Head Of The Classroom
"I’d never be a teacher in public schools. They’re treated like sh8t by their own administrators."
- GrandeBlu
"As someone who taught for 30 years and just retired, I can confirm this is true. I worked in several districts. Administrators and supervisors in public schools are the biggest cowards I have ever met."
"They will not stand up to parents no matter how crazy or unreasonable they are. A student can threaten you, harm you, do whatever they want, say whatever they want and the teacher is still WRONG."
- Labradawyz90
A Lonely Life
"Working on an oil rig."
- Tkinokun
"I did this one for 6 years. It's great when you're single but it gets really lonely really quick. If you're lucky, you get to work ultra-deep water on a drill ship which are actually pretty nice."
"Typically you'll have your own room and shower with satellite TV (you share your room with your relief so you'll never be in there at the same time as them), they all come with a pretty nice gym, huge rec room with movies, and four meals a day. Some of the rigs I've worked on even had a golf simulator on the below deck and could even fish (granted this was 10+ years ago)."
"All in all it's not a terrible life but it definitely gets old. The pay is nice, though."
- Geauxtoguy
No Means No
"Window cleaner on skyscrapers. Just no."
- AlternativeCry2206
"There are drones that can do this now. We just got a warning at work that drones will be cleaning the windows over the next few days. I have no idea how that works but kind of excited to see."
- BallBearingBill
Resources For Who Again?
"I met a woman at a party last weekend who told me she was in HR (Human Resources), and expanded into how she helps set up social worker-types for failure. The entire next day I thought about how miserable a person you have to be to do that for work."
- skredditt
"I’m currently working in HR, specifically leaves of absence, like FMLA. On one side, I have to manage employees’ managers who want to fire the employees just because they need surgery and can’t work. On the other hand, I have to tell employees that after some point, we can't continue to provide them with time off even though they are sick and need their insurance."
"I’m completely burnt out emotionally, and I’ve not even worked here three months. I don’t know how anyone does this job."
- tennissyd
All About Perspective
"Anything with children."
- QueenOfAvalonia
"I’ve heard this a lot. Working with kids definitely isn’t for everyone! I worked in a before- and after-school care at the YMCA for four years, then eventually became a pediatric nurse."
"For me, I’m a giant child. The frustration is real with kids, but they’re learning. Whereas, if you’re working with the geriatric population, they have learned and are just a**holes because they want to be."
- Ok-Interview-6944
Ouch.
"Any MLM (Multi-Level-Marketing) scheme."
- TomatoKindly84
"In many cases for those requiring you to buy a significant amount of inventory, you're lucky if you break even. Even those that are profitable often don't earn much after overhead is considered."
- awkwardnetadmin
"It barely counts as a job, to be honest. It's just you lying to yourself professionally."
- Mchammerandsickle97
Not For Everyone
"Presidency."
- rubixscube1985
"No matter what you do, at least half the country hates you personally, you need to make life and death decisions, and while I'm not sure of this, I suspect there are people who, if you don't do what they say, will murder you and everyone you love and make it look like a fluke or accident."
"Yeah, no thank you."
- Stargazer5781
Not Meant For The Spotlight
"Any job that entails being famous."
"For a brief moment in time, I was 'internet famous' on another website. I didn't seek it out, it just kind of happened because I liked posting and I was just having fun. But then I started noticing people talking about me. They talked about me as though they knew me. They had opinions about me, even though I knew absolutely nothing about them."
"It freaked me out in a way that I can't properly describe. My 'fame' even followed me onto other platforms where I used the same name (not this one, thank heavens) and that freaked me out even more."
"I don't know why anyone would want to be famous. It's completely unnerving to me and I am not okay with it."
- LTT82
From deep sea jobs to fame online, these are all jobs that are workable for some people but not meant for a large portion of the population.
While it's important to have a job and to be able to pay the bills, there are ways in which to do that, and for many, these jobs simply are not the way to go.
@GavinNewsom/X
