Is your coworker’s job actually difficult, or are they just caught in a constant cycle of complaining about simple tasks?
Some jobs simply aren’t as hard as they seem. When one person asked, “What profession always acts like they have the hardest job on earth (but it actually isn’t all that bad)?” the internet chimed in with the easy jobs that people whine the most about.
Here are the easy jobs they spilled:
1. Engineer
“I work in data engineering. People think I’m building ChatGPT, but really, I’m 30 replies deep in an email thread with Sharon from marketing, trying to figure out what the difference is between a coupon code and a promo code,” said an engineer from experience.
Another agreed, saying, “I’ve been a software engineer for the last ~20 years, and now most of my job is soft skills—mostly focusing on concepts and mentoring rather than actually doing the grunt work. I love it…this is by far the cushiest job I’ve ever had.”
2. Real Estate Agent
“[I] bought my first house in August, and I was shocked at how little effort my real estate agent put in and how difficult it was to get a text back from him about even a simple yes or no question in anything less than 24 hours.
“After dealing with this whole process, I now see real estate agents as about as ethical as used car salesmen or personal injury lawyers. I was unlucky enough to pick one who does real estate as a side hustle while holding down a day job at the place where we both work. That was my connection to him.
“I’m sure there are good ones who work [hard] for their clients, but the other 80% are bottom feeders who just want to get to closing any way they can so they can cash that commission check.”
3. Sales
“We are a big bunch of whiny babies a lot of the time. I think it’s because of the extreme highs and lows we go through,” explained a salesperson.
Someone else offered a more balanced approach, saying, “Depends on the personality. Salespeople deal with two things regularly: public speaking/meeting new people and rejection. These are things most people find extremely difficult to do. Some people find them non-issues. For some, it would be the hardest job in the world. For others, the easiest.”
See also: 11 Careers With the Rudest People, According to Their Coworkers
4. Military Jobs
“A [ton] of enlisted military jobs are very basic and easy.
“My dad’s a disabled vet, and as a result, I help him with some support groups. A lot of guys hate the hero worship around it, and sometimes they can get really messed up from the constant recognition for doing a mundane job.
“‘Thanks for keeping the country safe and America free!’ ‘My dude, I am a mechanic and never saw the front lines.’
“Obviously, it’s not a catch-all because a) some enlisted jobs are also very strenuous and b) a bad day at war is an incredibly bad, life-altering day.”
5. Hairdresser
“The whole industry is a constant competition for who can be the most burnt out, who skips lunch the most, who never ever ever ever ever sits down even for one second, who never gets a thank you for all they do, etc etc.
“I did the job. It’s really not as difficult as they make it out to be, and if it is, it’s entirely self-imposed,” stated a former hairstylist.
6. Substitute Teacher
“I briefly worked as a substitute teacher, and I was told on more than one occasion that I had one of the toughest jobs in the world.
“That was news to me because the vast majority of the time, all I had to do that follow the teachers’ detailed instructions. The students themselves were almost always perfectly fine. Even in the more underserved districts, students were fine with you so long as you didn’t treat them all like little criminals.
“The toughest part of it was just trying to navigate the schools if the office failed to give me a map of the school.”
7. Influencer
“It’s not that it’s that hard. It’s that it’s 24/7. Don’t you dare not post all the time or engage all the time because that algorithm will drop you like it’s hot. You end up never doing anything else (at least if you want to live off of it).
“But the work itself isn’t exactly hard, no.”
See also: Why I Quit My Dream Job
8. Human Resources
“The funny part about HR is that everyone hates HR for making all these [bad] decisions, but the reality is that the decision was actually made by your cool bro manager who then told you, ‘nothing I can do, man, HR’s decision.’
“HR in most competent modern organizations has very little power or authority as individuals. They just facilitate policy and the decisions made by operational managers.”
9. Accountants
“The deadlines make us think our jobs are so important…so much more important than anything else in the world.
“I know people’s money is important, but missing one deadline (usually at the client’s fault because they didn’t send their info time) will not put you in tax jail. Once I realized we aren’t doing brain surgery, sending people to space, teaching kids. etc. I felt a little more relaxed.
“I think accountants will only realize this when they see medical professionals doing their job,” professed a tax accountant.
10. Welder
“Watch ANY welding video on a social media platform, and you see a huge [catfight] in the comments about how [bad] the weld was and how they’ve been welding for 30 years and make 200k a year.
“Meanwhile, most welders got their welding certs from a 6-month school and essentially run a hot glue gun all day,” said someone convinced that being a welder fits in the category of easy jobs.
11. Military Spouses
Being a military spouse might not be a job in the sense that others on this list are. However, the people of the internet couldn’t help but poke fun at how military spouses exaggerate their responsibilities and piggyback off of their partner’s rank and title.
“They even have bumper stickers to prove it!” joked one person.
This article was written and syndicated by What the Fab.
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Elise Armitage is an entrepreneur and founder of What The Fab, a travel + lifestyle blog based in California. At the beginning of 2019, Elise left her corporate job at Google to chase her dreams: being an entrepreneur and helping women find fabulous in the everyday. Since then, she’s launched her SEO course Six-Figure SEO, where she teaches bloggers how to create a passive revenue stream from their website using SEO. Featured in publications like Forbes, Elle, HerMoney, and Real Simple, Elise is a firm believer that you can be of both substance and style.
