PS I’ll add to the European perspective and say that I have never seen a supermarket checkout person not sitting on a stool or chair. Why on earth would they have to stand? Why not give them the option to do either?

The best-off patients are dying fairly quickly; it’s true that I liked hugging them, but it was heartbreaking every time. We had the long-term care patients from the county jail, who frequently had many transmissible diseases; because it was a decent place, there were gloves and masks and I was expected to wear them and didn’t catch anything. I did have a wrist cracked by one of the violent patients. Because it was a decent place, the experienced workers kept an ear out for newbies getting in trouble with the sex-offender patients, and only set us up sometimes. We had more trouble keeping them from molesting fellow patients.

The worst-off patients were not dying quickly, but had to live there in the smell and heartbreak for decades. Car accident victims, most of them, and a woman who had almost certainly been framed as mentally incompetent by her son.

Most of the protection we had trickled down from things the nurses’ union had fought for; nurses had only just unionized, IIRC.

If you had no empathy at all, the only problem with the job would be the effluents, the low pay, and the mild physical danger. But not even Bob Black would think that a just society would seek out those with empathy and set them to take care of the helpless.

“I want you little horseshits to remember one thing before you go get your neck broken: some guys get stronger on accident than you’ll ever get on purpose.”

To wit, there was a recent incident in America where a kid tried to rob an old man in a store line, but the old man felt the hand in his pocket, grabbed the kid’s arm, and beat him near within an inch of his life. Although the man was 72, he had been a Golden Gloves boxer, a Marine, and then a steelworker for several decades. That’s just bad.

But I actually think that in a more just society, there would be fewer “directive” jobs of the sort that Professor Baber seems to find more suitable to human flourishing. One of the good things about lots of these bad jobs is that they provide what is clearly a valuable social service, as opposed to being, say, a hedge fund manager. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part (I myself found studying analytic philosophy “seriously” to be one of hell’s minima), but it seems to me that the good for all has to be sought in what can realistically be done by all, and that means a focus on the badness of common jobs in terms of making them better. Someone, as they say, has gotta do it.

As for me, I don’t like teaching and do it because the alternatives are much worse, but you can bet I give it all I’ve got because I’m grateful to have this job, because it’s what I’m paid to do, and most of all because it’s one of the most worthwhile and important things that anyone can do, and on that account a privilege.

More troubling to me is that here is yet another teacher who doesn’t like teaching or interacting with students, who teaches only to escape a worse job. Guess Prof Baber’s students get an accidental course in situational ethics.

“I think I read somewhere that the occupation with the highest mortality is soap opera character.”

Yeah, but soap opera characters often rise from the dead. Sometimes even more than once.

The two worst types of jobs for me would be any kind of direct sales (I am not a talking-people-into-doing-stuff person) or nonthinking jobs (like the tollbooth job) that don’t allow you to bring a book or sudoku or whatever to work to keep the mind active.

Back then I used to wonder how anyone could work under such conditions for a long period of time and remain sane. Most of my work mates were young temps like me, but there were a number of regulars who had worked there for 10 years or more and they did not seem very sane to me either.

Small note from Europe on supermarket check-out personnel. I have yet to see a supermarket where cashiers need to be standing all day. They have stools at their disposal and use them.

That said, sometimes cashier take a break doing their jobs “standing”. Main problem for them, I asked some of them, seems to be their lower backs since they often have to grab a heavy item, turn to pass it in front of the scanner and then turn some more to push it aside. Standing makes that gesture more comfortable.

So, everybody can rest assured. Cashiers here have the best of both worlds. They can sit and stand.