And: where to look for such jobs? What would be the process to find them with any chance of success?
I hope the question in the title is general enough that more people might find it useful, I’m sure I can’t be the only one. I’m going to include some extra details specific to myself below, but you can just ignore them if you want to.
- I have no education beyond high school and no useful skills, although I do have a couple of years worth of work experience at this point. I don’t really have the will to learn anything new for the purpose of getting a job any more.
- I have been unbelievably lucky in that the circumstances allow me to live on minimum wage in humane conditions, and beyond the basic expenses I have nothing to spend money on anyway. So it doesn’t matter to me how much I get paid.
- I spend all of my free time on things like reading, drawing, writing, thinking, occasionally learning something new. If I could spend even just a couple of work hours every day with a pen and paper and an Internet connection, it would make me a bit happier.
Look into the public sector in your area. Local or state government.
Probably better than minimum wage, plus usually great benefits. Many are union as well.
Just a quick note, there’s no such thing as unskilled labor. All labor requires skill of some sort. You have skills, what you lack is specialization.
I spend all of my free time on things like reading, drawing, writing, thinking, occasionally learning something new.
These are all skills that can be leveraged to earn a job. Here are a few things that come to mind which you could potentially leverage with your skills:
- tattoo artist
- author/journalist
- office staff
- graphic designer
Meh. If you can learn it well enough to do unsupervised within a week, it’s unskilled.
As somebody who has worked many skilled and unskilled jobs, and would not devalue the worth of a job due to it being “unskilled”, there are absolutely unskilled jobs.
I’ve worked some very simple jobs before as well, and disagree. The simplest I’ve ever done is collecting medical waste from hospitals and packaging them to get mailed out from the site. There were still skills involved.
- manual data entry, which required attention to detail
- navigating hospitals. Their layout is often maze-like and confusing
- remembering more than 2 dozen soiled utility door codes
- driving to and from the sites
- managing my supplies at each site
I wouldn’t call any of those menial tasks skills. Like at that point you might as well list breathing and eating.
A skill is something that any random off the street couldn’t get up to speed on in a day or two. They’re something you have to develop and hone over time to become proficient in.
We can respect and value people in unskilled jobs without playing pretend.
I think a much better definition of a skill is “anything you can get better at”. Take the other commenter who pulled nails out of boards. Sure a random guy off the street could probably do it, but compared to someone whose been doing it for years theyd be a total schmuck. If you watched that experienced worker you’d see how much faster they are, the efficiency and precision in their motions, their ability to instantly analyze the best way to her each and every nail out. There’s a whole genre of online videos of these types of people - experts in seemingly “menial” work and they do numbers because they make people stop and marvel.
That’s awesome if the point of the job is entertainment, but if the work is actually just removing nails from a board, it doesn’t really matter if people stop and gawk, in fact that’d be a detriment as they’d get in the way. And the value difference between the guy removing nails for 20 years and the guy who’s been on the job for an hour is close to nil. As long as the nails come out in a reasonable time, that’s all that matters. And because removing nails from boards is not something that takes any inherent skill, somebody who’s been on the job for an hour will be proficient at the job.
When talking about skilled work vs unskilled work, the definition isn’t “Something you can get better at”, it’s “Something you must get better at to do the job sufficiently”
Sufficiently, proficient - too arbitrary. There’s “skill” associated with all work and therefore all work is skilled work. There’s value in people being good at virtually every kind of work (excluding vulture capitalism, etc.)
EDIT: Also FWIW, if think there’s no difference between the 1 hour vs. 20 year nail puller, my guess is you’re never been even REMOTELY close to this kind of work in your life.
There’s “skill” associated with all work and therefore all work is skilled work.
You can split hairs all day and night about how anything from pulling nails from a board, to not pooping your pants at work is technically a “skill” according to the strictest dictionary definition, but to put all your pedantry aside for a moment, there is just no way to actually equate unskilled jobs with skilled jobs. They are just two different things, and the heart of it lies with how much skill is required as a floor to do that job.
If I could do your job adequately with no previous experience with a day’s worth of practice, it’s an unskilled job. If you could put 40 hours a week into education, training, and hands on experience in a job and after a full month you’re still not ready to do that job, that’s a skilled job.
EDIT: Is the heart of your issue that fact that you’re a full time board nail remover? Because that would explain where you’re coming from but it wouldn’t make you right. I think the healthiest conclusion to your train of thought is to understand and accept that the skill level of your job is not the be-all-end-all of the societal worth of your job, only the monetary worth, and money isn’t everything. I’ve worked low skill jobs for very little money that were far more meaningful than the highly skilled, well paying jobs I got later in life which contribute less than nothing to society.
I’ve had a job where the whole thing was removing dirt and nails from demolished barn boards. Genuinely zero skill involved, just a lot of time spent doing the same thing.
I guess you need eyes and hands? And the ability to show up. Those don’t feel much like skills though.
Now be a dishwasher. Or the person at Bucky’s who just goes around picking up trash.
Oh, or the overnight water park security job I’d work part time during the summer. I was just there as a deterrent to anyone who’d like to sneak in and mess around. My training took 20 minutes. “Every 30 minutes just walk around the park. Listen that these 3 pumps are still running and call me if any stop. Call the cops if anyone else is in the park.”
Gotta say, on our end we wouldn’t recommend the graphic designer job, it’s soul crushing. Video editing though is pretty fun and if your an artists its not hard to pick up
Custodial work for a government or school district, consistent hours and benefits, can even give you time to just sit around and do whatever you want if you are efficient, also usually union.
Yeah, if you aren’t scared of dirty things, its an easy and even relaxing job. Although a lot of them are at night when no ones around. Which makes it chill.
Clean offices. Vacuum, empty garbage, clean bathrooms , clean lunchroom. Done. I did this for a while and I never even felt the need to wear gloves. Just washed with hot water and soap after.
I wouldn’t do it at a gas station. No way am I cleaning those toilets.
Prep cook at a small restaurant. Tell them you only want to work part-time and they’ll make it happen.
Then just put on your headphones and chop vegetables and meats for a few hours. Lowest stress position in a kitchen. And you usually have your own separate kitchen area and nobody will bother you.
Security guard. The guards at my job sit in the guard shack (air conditioned micro-building) and monitor cameras, ocasionally doing a door check where they walkthrough the buildings verifying entry points, and oversee visitor badge distribution and sign-in/out sheet.
They might have other duties that I’m not aware of.
I worked security for a brief eternity.
I think you’ve nailed it. Watch, patrol, repeat.
Drawbridge operator. I think at least. Around here there are drawbridges that I have never seen actually open. But there is a little booth for someone to sit in all day.
I’m sure it requires a little training, but then you just sit there all day.
If you are interested in cars and live in a state that requires vehicle inspections, you could do that. My son did a two day class to get licensed. Then he easily walked into jobs.
Like the emissions tests?
Yeah. I think the class cost about $100 and two days. His first job was $15/hr plus $1 per car. Over the last 7 years he’s worked in several shops and now makes about $30/hr as a tech/unlicensed mechanic.
Wow thats sounds like a good job to do and always in need.
Yeah, for the first 5 years he was never out of a job for more than one day. There’s a lot of turnover in the industry, which is good and bad. By your second or third job, you’ll know people at a half dozen shops and a quick text that you’re available can have you working immediately. Now he’s become picky (no weekends, etc.) so it takes longer to find something. Also, he’s trying to sustain himself on mobile/shadetree mechanic work and amp building/repair instead of having a boss.
I think most jobs like this would give you plenty of free time as they’re almost universally part time jobs where you only work 3-4 hours per shift so that they don’t have to pay you benefits.
I don’t know how physically able you are but you might be a good fit for helping survey crews and researchers.
This is just one example but there’s often science work that needs physical bodes. Like there was a non profit institute I worked for that did shellfish surveys every summer for the local industry. They paid 10 bucks an hour 20 years ago and they always advertised at the collrge but also dodn’t need degrees because they always hired undergrads.
It’s worth exploring if its possible or an option and usually feels better than most menial jobs lime in retail.
Night watchman if nights are OK. I’m not in touch with how available such jobs are these days, but I had a gig once for a couple of months when I first got out of college, decades ago. Was great to get some reading and thinking done.
I work in 911 dispatch, exact qualifications and work conditions will vary from place, but often you don’t need much more than a high school diploma/GED, basic computer literacy, and acceptable typing skills, and of course the ability to keep a cool head and deal with emergencies.
Technically, I work slightly more hours than a regular 40 hour week, but I have more days off overall, and especially on night shift you can often count on having a decent amount of downtime where you can work on pretty much whatever personal stuff you want between calls as long as you can put it down when the phone rings.
And the pay is going to be better than minimum wage, not that you’re gonna be making a killing, but you’ll also have access to pretty great benefits and job security.
It can be stressful and not everyone is cut out for it, but if you are I think it’s a pretty great gig, I’ve been doing it for 8 years now. There is a lot of turnover from people either getting burned out or just using it as a resume builder to move to other public safety sorts of jobs, but that means that basically every dispatch center in the country is almost constantly hiring.
In the UK you can expect to have 0 downtime. It’s likely calls will be queud on the board constantly day and night. You’re also expected to help people with CPR and child birth. It’s an incredibly stressful job.
Look at the trades. Can be fun and lucrative with the right crew.
Pizza delivery is a good one, most of the time the places will be hiring for the dinner rush, so you’ll work a few hours and then just go home for your free time. In your car, you can listen to whatever you want, so your reading could become audiobooks!
It’s considered one of the most dangerous jobs you can have though
Depends highly on the area, for sure. I delivered in a suburb, it was pretty chill.
Don’t know how set on minimum wage you are but you can find warehouse forklift work that is 4 days a week but 10 hrs a day. They mostly hire immigrants who aren’t afraid of the hours or the work but they’ll train anyone from nothing.
I used to do college on the weekends at first, and two of my coworkers actually completed their degrees that way. I ended up just using the time to have a social life nobody my age was enjoying. It’s not a bad racket, certain companies will try to fuck you though so just stay away from big box stores
Food service fits the bill.
