Here are the top-voted responses:
1.
“The people that pump out the Porta Potties on construction sites. Holy shit, do I have respect for them, but you couldn’t pay me enough to do that job. I mean…I’d do it for $500,000/year…maybe.”
2.
“Rescue diving. The unknown down below scares me.”
“My coach in high school became a diver for the state troopers. Sometimes he had to dive for evidence. Sometimes to retrieve a car. Sometimes to search for bodies. Imagine being in low visibility water so you’re practically searching by touch and bumping into a body. I could not do it.”
3.
“Line cook. The cooks who are on the line are in the heat, getting yelled at (often times by one another), watching ticket after ticket after ticket come through, and having to not only prioritize what to do first, but also under the intense pressure to get it done faster than humanly possible.”
4.
“Fast food restaurant manager. Cleaning the toilets when it’s been clogged, smeared with shit, urine, and dealings with leaks and clogs. I’m a manager at one and it’s usually the managers that sort it out like myself. I don’t like giving those jobs to people under me cause, screw that. I can’t begin to tell you the amount of times I’ve thrown up after cleaning them. It doesn’t get better and I never get used to it, even though it happens too often.”
“I’m a manager at an Italian joint and the amount of shit I’ve had to clean up is mind blowing. Like who shits outside of the toilet? What kind of person thinks that is funny? I always feel terrible passing it down the ladder so I just do it myself, too.”
5.
“Morticians and embalmers.”
6.
“Paramedics. People in that line of work deal with situations of true horror that none of us would have imagined, but they somehow cope with it in their daily lives, and face the next day without a flinch. I really admire them.”
7.
“Hospice.”
8.
“Nursing. Pee, poop, snot, mucus, vomit, no thanks. Mad respect for the nurses that actually enjoy working on the painful boil that grew on my ass and had to be lanced, drained, and treated several times. I’m a grown man and could never do that job. I’m glad there are those that can.”
9.
“911 operator.”
10.
“Cleaning surgical instruments. I worked in the basement of a hospital downtown in a department called sterile processing. It was a completely thankless job. You wear PPE when you work with dirty instruments that are covered in blood and sometimes feces. A lot of the instruments contained large pieces of body tissue…”
“There were two smells: a sterile enzyme soap that dissolves the blood and feces, and the smell of copper from all of the blood. You work long grueling shifts, no one takes you seriously no matter how hard you work, and you regularly get treated like shit by coworkers and especially other staff from around the hospital that have no idea what your job even really does.”
11.
“Veterinarians and anyone else working in animal care. It’s a brutal profession and those who choose the profession do so because they are deeply empathetic, and then have to see animals in distress all day.”
12.
“Therapists. I mean like really I respect them because they’re kind enough to listen to all of our problems, but I have enough problems of my own to listen to other people.”
13.
“Social workers. Not just because they’re underpaid, but they’re also under appreciated.”
14.
“Teacher. Two of my friends do it, and they spend hours every weekend creating lesson plans and grading assignments…unpaid. When I leave work, that’s it I am done until Monday.”
“I used to be a kindergarten teacher. Massive respect for those that do it years on end. I got a thousands hugs and kisses and beautiful moments, but I also got home everyday totally stressed out.”
And finally…
15.
“Podiatrists. I have a friend who does this and while her passion is surgery, she said she makes hella money clipping toe nails at the old folk’s home. It makes me gag every time I think about it.”
Now it’s your turn! What’s a job you’d NEVER do but have respect for?
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
