Kids, Stay in School!

Seriously, I mean it: stay in school! What kind of school isn’t really important; if you like plumbing or drywall better than math and liberal arts, then by all means, find a good trade school and stay in that. Given the crumbling infrastructure in this country, having more people around who actually know how to build things, fix things, and keep things running smoothly would be wonderful, and it’s much easier to get the really good jobs in any field if you know what you’re doing. On the other hand, if you don’t, you might be faced with having to dress up as a Smurf and travel around the world advertising costume sales…

A story being reported this week on the Daily Telegraph website tells the strange but true story of Ian Tomkins, an employee at a costume shop in Newbury (England) whose employer decided to buy a huge lot of Smurf costumes from a manufacturer in China. Unfortunately, while there as a market for a few dozen Smurf costumes in Newbury, 500 of them was a bit much for this small business to move. So the owner decided to have Mr. Tomkins travel around the world in a Smurf costume and have his picture taken in front of various international landmarks. Which he then did…

Now, I’m not saying that getting paid to travel around the world on business with no duties or responsibilities beyond having your picture taken isn’t a good gig, all things considered. Nor am I criticizing the business itself (or the owner) for attempting such a stunt. It turns out that there are apparently thousands of people in Europe who like dressing up as Smurfs, and apparently all of them are now buying their costumes from the shop in Newbury, which has placed several repeat orders for bulk Smurf costumes, selling them by the thousands. I’m just saying that, all things considered, when the time comes to determine whether you have the job of wearing the Smurf costume around the world or the job being the guy who orders someone ELSE to wear a Smurf costume around the world, I know which job I’d going to pick…

Probably the ultimate case of this syndrome appeared before me a few years ago, when I was working in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. I was driving between survey assignments (long story) when I noticed a guy dressed up as a submarine sandwich standing on a street corner handing out flyers for a nearby Subway shop. At the time, my job included scaling the outside of apartment buildings without a safety line in order to check their line-of-site for microwave signal repeaters, but there were still three reasons I preferred my job to the sandwich guy’s job: 1. I got paid about 6 times what he did; 2. It was 106 degrees, and he was wearing about 45 pounds of heavy, shaggy costume, and 3. two small kids kept trying to kick him in the backside…

I’m not saying that he’d have been better off staying in school; a lot of people with college degrees can’t find work at all, and I’ve actually had jobs that were worse than that even since I’ve had a Master’s Degree. But you’ve got to admit that if you want to avoid wearing a stupid-looking costume in public and actually get paid a living wage, dropping out of school probably will not help…