If someone comments saying their actual current job, please be kind and thank them in a reply.
Teacher.
As a teacher, I have to say I do get a lot of thank you’s. I get Christmas presents, gift cards, coffee, and hand written letters/cards. Sometimes my students reach out and/or visit me after they graduate. I feel quite valued and thanked. I live in Canada, if that makes a difference.
My wife who is a social worker spends her days slaving over people’s cases and is repeatedly harassed, and has been assaulted countless times. Now that is a thankless job.
Yeah, I’d say living in Canada makes a huge difference. However, I think people answers “teacher” because, all things considered, it’s a very hard and valuable job, frequently an underpaid one.
Youve never been thanked for being a teacher?
Drive-through window clerk gets thanked a lot, too.
Cook.
Kitchen staff, for the most part, work long hours in chronically understaffed kitchens for very little pay. You get a break when things slow down and chances are you’re going to be eating, hitting the bathroom, and trying to get a little sit time in a milk crate out back in that short little window (hint, pick two of those, the third might not happen).
You get burned, cut, over heated, covered in filth, and breathe in noxious crap all day from stoves, fryers, industrial cleaning chemicals, and other things.
You, probably, and a lot of your coworkers are short tempered, sore, tired, and possibly on drugs or alcohol. You are surrounded by ideal weapons for hurting others and you will be in or see a fight every so often.
Wait staff pretend to like you but really they work shorter shifts, go home relatively unscathed, and make a fortune in tips. So you also dislike and resent them. You don’t want to but see above.
You work when everyone else is off so you end up hanging out with people in similar situations who aren’t always the best people for things like networking into a better job. They really like partying though, and who needs a future.
Then you get a little older. Maybe you are running a kitchen and finally don’t need to have roommates to afford the horrible apartment but you’re only there about seven hours in a row at any given time. You met someone through friends but they don’t see a future because you are always working.
Eventually, health issues force you to find other work and you claw your way to normalcy 15 years behind everyone else in retirement saving, salary growth, and so on.
I just left the restaurant industry after 10 years (mostly as a cook). This is too accurate, unfortunately 😐
Uhhhhh did you just read my autobiography? Graduated with a degree in culinary arts after high school whilst working in kitchens throughout the course of school. Worked my way up to district management in a metropolitan area. 15 years in I had zero life outside of work and nothing to show for my work other than crippling depression and addictions. Moved back home to start over. Got a 9-5 municipal job and I’m back in school working towards a doctorate in a completely different field. Never been happier in my adult life than the past 4 years that I’ve been out of the service industry. Fuck restaurants. It’s even ruined my ability to enjoy eating out. Doesn’t help that it costs a fortune now and 20% tips aren’t enough anymore. Also fuck the restaurant owners that take advantage of their staff.
I can enjoy a good restaurant but get really upset at crappy ones. I mean the kind of crappy you can detect with this kind of background. Like terrible menu choices that you know mean tons of frozen product or line cooks that have so many dishes to remember that they just wing it on half of them.
And I’ll never spend my own money to have someone else cook me a steak. :)
IT in so many ways in so many industries.
At least it pays… usually
Street/Parking Lot Cleaners.
Every night, I clean up:
- Styrofoam cups/cans/plastic cups & bottles
- tossed out left over fast food
- dirty diapers that someone couldn’t walk 7 feet through the Walmart parking lot to throw in an actual trash can
- empty boxes for: flat-screen TVs, Car seats, memory foam mattresses, or Amazon purchases
- disposable vapes
- trash bags that someone decided needed to be left in a parking lot instead of in a dumpster
- So. Many. Plastic. Hangers.
- receipts
- grocery bags
- candy wrappers
- Edit shattered glass, but it makes that gravel in a vacuum sound when the truck sucks it up, so that’s nice.
And the only time I get thanked is when my employer asks me to do extra work because there was a storm, another driver was out sick, another driver needed help on a site, or there was a big event that needed to be cleaned for/after.
Thank you for your work.
Speaking as a surgical tech: hospital janitorial staff, and sterile processing staff. They are INVISIBLE until something goes wrong, then everyone likes to bitch and point fingers, but they bust their asses constantly to keep us from becoming a giant pathogen cocktail. Hospitals would be fucking disgusting in the scope of like, idk, 2 hours, without those peeps.
Been a little bit since I put one of them in for an award. I think it’s time to flex my keyboard again.
Tankless water heater installer.
You’re throwing downvotes! 😱
It’s thankless not tankless/s
Tank you!
Garbage collector.
They should just swap the names for pickup artists and garbage men.
Walmart greeters. They always say ‘thank you’ to you, but have you ever thought to thank them? I dont think so.
Health care aide. They get paid a pittance to clean up people who have pooped themselves. They should get 300 dollars an hour and a bottle of tequila per shift.
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I very much appreciate the work truckers do.
However, 90% of the people who cut me off just to go 10+ miles under the speed limit are truckers.
Like y’all are already going slow, why inconvenience 10 other drivers in the fast lane who are all going to pass you in 30 seconds.
Truck drivers aren’t even allowed to go in the fast lane where I’ve lived.
I always wave or nod to truckies. Truckies are the best.
And if one pull to the side so I can pass I flash my indicators at them when I’ve passed to say thank you.
Jizz mopper
Morticians?
Came here to say deathcare. Especially those without a degree or license.
I’ll go with social activism. A lot of people wouldn’t even recognize it as a job.
Detectives who work on CSAM cases. They have to watch, document, and describe the offending material in order to enter it as evidence. Then they get undeserved hatred for working with law enforcement.
My first thought was, what if a pedo became a csam detective.
And then, what if they had really strong moral convictions, so they’d never act on their desires, but they also enjoy their job.
- my mind, after my adhd meds wear off
Interesting moral thought experiment.
If they never physically offend, and watching all of it, documenting it, and submitting it puts away those who do physically offend, and it saves someone else the trauma of having to watch it…
Interesting how from a purely utilitarian POV, this is a clear cut net positive, but the idea is… cold.
Just the iky feeling that they’d be getting off on the videos is what makes me stop short of saying it’s a good idea. Like… it’s just hard to say okay to something like that.
My wife is a school based therapist. The parents routinely cancel without notice. The kids have behavioral problems and trauma that makes interacting difficult and stressful. Not to mention that she has to read through the kid’s trauma history that requires them seeing her in the first place. Not a lot of thank yous for that kind of work.
