Needle, Meet Haystack

It’s Saturday, and you know what that means…

Well, maybe that too, but in this case, I’m talking about another edition of Jobs That Might Seem Cool But Actually Kinda Suck (now with new formatting – the higher the rating, the worse the job)!

The job: Food or drink quality tester

You might like this job if: You like eating or drinking, especially if you hate cooking or are in college

The good: Holy crap!  This might be the best job ever!  Do you like beer?  Ice cream?  Muffins?  Consuming any sort of food or beverage?  If so, you might like this job.  All day, you get to taste different batches of the stuff and make sure it’s all up to par in terms of quality and taste.  And you get paid to eat it!  You’d never need to bring lunch again!  And if it’s for booze, you get to get drunk for free!

The bad: Holy crap!  You’ll get fat in no time!  In addition to guzzling down food and/or drinks like nobody’s business, you actually have to have a pretty discerning palate and be able to quantify taste, texture, content of different ingredients and all that crap down to the most minute detail.  And no matter how much you like, say, nachos, it’s safe to say that after about a week of eating it all day to note oil content, saltiness, and crunch, you’d be sick of it – never mind years of doing it.  So you would need not only all of your taste buds intact, but you;d need to be a bit OCD.

Also, think about just having that food on a regular basis.  If you’re testing beer, keep in mind you’d have to scientifically test it, not just drink thimbles of the stuff for each batch.  Would a night out with friends be as much fun?  It’d be reminding you of work!  And soon, you’ll turn to wine coolers, which leads to neon drinks with a bunch of umbrellas and fruit and crap on them just to escape the barley and malt-filled tsunami that your life has become…

Summary: If you are obsessive over food and don’t mind getting sick of eating the same thing every day from here till eternity, you might like it.  Otherwise, not so much.

Rating: 3 expanding waistlines out of 5

Hey everyone!  Thanks to all of you who participated in the Job Application Diet, or read about it, or considered it, or stumbled across it in a web search to find Mr. Potato Head and then never came back.  In case you missed any of the Diet, here’s the breakdown – with links!

Day 1 – Introduction

Day 2 – Detox

Day 3 – Initiate change

Day 4 – Experiment

Day 5 – Take your time

If you haven’t figured it out, the overarching theme of the D.I.E.T. is to help you see that looking for a job is almost like a job in itself, and that it must be taken seriously.  I hate to use the following phrase, but in this economy (I hate saying that!), job seekers are looking for work longer than usual,  and some of the old tactics that may have been used successfully in days gone by just don’t work that well anymore.

Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in doing things a certain way, or assuming that we know how things are supposed to be, that we forget how things are, and that we might need to make some changes.

I hope that the D.I.E.T. helps re-energizes your job search, and helps you find work a little quicker.  And if it didn’t…

…at least you weren’t sweatin’ to the oldies.