Have you ever needed assistance by an employee but quickly discovered that the people working there couldn’t help. In fact, they literally had no idea how to answer your questions or had any knowledge on their job.
The following Ask Redditors responded to the question, “What profession hires the most [unlikely] people?”
Find the original thread at the end of the article.
Transportation Security Administration employees. I don’t think half of them even have their GEDs or high school diplomas. Every time I go, I have to explain the concept of “dual citizenship” at least four times.
DasUmilaut
Cooks in the Navy.
When you enlist in the Navy, they test your aptitude and give you a list of jobs available to you based on your results.
If you score in the bottom 5th percentile, you have one job available to you: Cook.
Cooks in the Navy generally aren’t the brightest apples in the bunch.
tjt5055
Guitar center salesman. You need 5 of them and 2 managers to buy a kazoo.
ScreamFlight
From my experience, real estate. They can be great at their job but I’ve met agents that make me wonder how they can function in the rest of their life.
SnipeyMcSnipe
Supermarkets.
Source: I’m not very bright. Work in one.
In all seriousness they tend to hire anyone, so while not everyone who works in one is under qualified or smart, you get a lot of them.
FoetusGrinder
How are Multi Level Marketing and Pyramid Scheme workers are at the top of the list.
TheKingReckless
Not really a ‘profession’ but people who work in sport shops.
Anyone that has been to Sports Direct will know what I mean.
FakeMexicanGuy
The food service industry hires some of the most oddest people out there. It’s a constant battle between lack of common sense and inability to perform the easiest tasks.
I worked for Buffalo Wild Wings them for a while and saw it first hand.
Osmaar
Those who work as a Sales Representative for every industry I’ve been a part of were terrible with computers.
huazzy
Warehousing.
We have no educational requirements at all. We have people who are functionally illiterate and Health and Safety Briefs have to be read out to them.
In addition we do not vet new staff members at all really, our training procedures are laid out to in theory make them 100% fool proof (200% checks, remote and physical supervision etc), yet we still get people who have been employed for 3+ years making week one mistakes as they “forgot” how to do a task they had completed a few hundred times before.
One guy’s ability to follow tasks was so bad, we physically had to print out his work sheets (with multiple copies for when he lost the first two…or three…) and make him read the instructions back to us to make sure he got it.
Honestly I reckon if I was to remove around 10-15% of the workforce, we’d either have no loss in production or even a marginal gain in stock accuracy.
Oi-Oi
So, I work in a porn store. Some of my coworkers who have been there forever are real smart cookies, but a majority of applicants..not so much. When I first walked in and asked for an application, I was handed a sheet of paper and told to read it before I could have an application. It said that you shouldn’t apply if you’re prone to oversleeping, frequently get flat tires, don’t have steady child care, and a bunch of other common-sense things that apply to pretty much any job. My first thought was, “what kind of people do they usually get applying for this job?”
ViviWannabe
Oil sand workers (outside of trade and professional jobs). Some of the most unequipped people who get paid astronomical amounts of money to basically lift heavy things and drive vehicles. And then when the economy crashes they blame the evil government because nobody wants to hire somebody without a drug habit, a 70 IQ and a lifted truck with brass testicles on the hitch.
Protodeus
Uber. Some kind of vetting would be nice.
Rikosae
Middle Management at nearly every major company. These are people that typically have failed upwards. They are not decision makers and they weren’t irreplaceable enough in their previous role. They have enough power to interfere with daily operations without the foresight to understand the impact of their power trip.
flxtr
For some reason every single oil refinery has a couple of engineers and operators who don’t really do anything, been their forever, and have very strong views that are almost hilarious – both liberal and conservative wackos. Usually job title like safety engineer, or maintenance planner 3.
ooo-ooo-oooyea
Telemarketers.
If you ask them specific questions about the product they’re trying to sell and specifics of the warranty, they often have no idea how to respond accurately and professionally.
Back2Bach
Scholarship and financial aid offices.
IamMichaelSc0ttAMA
Join the Army. They’ll take you no matter how many times you were dropped as a baby.
ThirdPlanetFromSol
I run a small production company, so I need actors frequently: let me tell you, these are the most unusual people in the entire world, but the golden ticket is that they’re pretentious and constantly trying really hard to make themselves seem deep and insightful. I had one actor, while filming a commercial for a damn yogurt ask me: “but would my character really look at the yogurt right now? I feel like they’d wait another couple of seconds before looking down. This character had no name. Literally the only thing they did was to look at the yogurt. The actor was trying to impress me with her try-hard approach- spoiler doesn’t work.
One time I was filming a PDF software commercial and I told the actor that I’d be filming in a high frame rate so that I could slow it down. He didn’t really get it so I just said “It’s a slow motion shot, you don’t need to worry about it so just go at regular speed.”
(continued on the next page…)
I had to explain this repeatedly over FIVE TAKES that the camera was making it slow-motion and that he didn’t have to. I had to explicitly tell him TWICE to not do it in slow motion. The guy made slow-mo FX noises in slow motion as he moved his hands across the keys (on more than one occasion). At one point when I told him to do it in regular speed he responded “oookaaaaay”, paused, and then said “oh. OH. ok.” before promptly going back to slow motion. If I hadn’t been with him for like 4 hours I would have have sworn he was high.
That guy was the worst, like honestly his sandwich was missing some mustard, but almost all of them do this thing where you’re giving them direction and they’ll nod and say yes at the EXACT moments that they need to be taking in information. “Okay, so when you pick up the cup I need you to-” “Yeah, okay” “-make sure that you’re not looking into the-” “gotcha”. Most frustrating thing in the world. God I hate actors.
matthewmcorry
Any work at a mill. I’m sitting in my lunch room as I type this and I’ve never heard more crude or aimless conversations in my life. I’m only here for a summer job and I’ve already lost too many braincells.
Mister_Sassafrazz
I worked at a factory making luxury mattress tops to be put on the mattresses. After working in construction for 5 years in the hot Oklahoma sun, snow, rain and even in a few mild “tornados”, working in a mattress factory was the most miserable job I’ve ever done. I worked 3 months there and it drove me crazy. I would leave work pissed and just annoyed of everything. I’m used to driving 2-3 hours to work but driving 15 minutes to that factory and driving home from it was just horrible. I couldn’t wait to get home.
Opieh
I don’t want to attack the profession of driving trucks, but they hire whoever can hold a steering wheel, and even sometimes people that can’t.
Grithok
Porn industry. I starred in a dozen over ten years ago and doesn’t matter if you were male or female or smart or not they hired you if you had the right assets or body part length.
Ever wonder why some plots in porn sounded so obviously scripted? Most hardly knew how to even read!
BebopDC
Rural area public schools. They’ll hire anyone who went to college if they’re that desperate for a teacher.
tddup
There was a group I was in (years ago) with this guy named Mike in it. Mike was a very nice guy, not a mean bone in his body. Married with 3 kids, but unemployed so his wife worked. He could never get a job anywhere because he had no qualifications, and he just couldn’t see patterns in stuff. Even in our group he’d just sit there happily without saying anything for hours. We tried to ask him a few times if he’d like to chime in, or what he was thinking, and he genuinely had nothing going on upstairs.
Suddenly, he applied to the Sheriff’s department and got hired, and they loved him. He’s been there for years. That changed my view of the Sheriff’s dept.
JaqenHgharHasNoName