Teacher.
As a teacher, I have to say I do get a lot of thank you’s. I get Christmas presents, gift cards, coffee, and hand written letters/cards. Sometimes my students reach out and/or visit me after they graduate. I feel quite valued and thanked. I live in Canada, if that makes a difference.
My wife who is a social worker spends her days slaving over people’s cases and is repeatedly harassed, and has been assaulted countless times. Now that is a thankless job.
Yeah, I'd say living in Canada makes a huge difference. However, I think people answers "teacher" because, all things considered, it's a very hard and valuable job, frequently an underpaid one.
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Waste pickers in the clothing canyons of Ghana, or any other landfill/wasteland
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Volunteer caregivers for people with disabilities, especially in places where there are limited or no social safety nets
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Street vendors like the children hawking goods in Yemen or Samoa or Zimbabwe...
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Cleaners, such as the Sewer divers in places like India where there is no protective equipment provided
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Food services workers.
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"Domestic" services workers like childcare, housekeeping, etc. I include victims of forced marriages here.
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All other exploited, outsourced, trafficked, and/or forced labour, such as the cobalt miners in Congo, or the clothing sweatshop workers in Bangladesh, or the Phillipines call centre workers, or the hazelnut pickers in Turkey, or construction labourers in Qatar, or the chaingangs in the US.
Social media moderator
God I cant even imagine the shit they see. I saw a podcast episode of one and it just made me sad, think the podcast was other people's lives
They don’t get thanked, they get PTSD.
It's a long read, but very much worth it. It goes into detail about the types of material these people have to spend all day watching and reviewing, and talks in length about some of the unhealthy coping mechanisms these teams develop for themselves. Lots of drug use, sex in the office, and suicidal ideation.
While the article focuses mainly on Facebook moderators, I used to share an office with YouTube's content moderation team around the time this article came out, and a lot of the article rings true for YouTube, as well. I imagine it's similar across all the big platforms.
Cook.
Kitchen staff, for the most part, work long hours in chronically understaffed kitchens for very little pay. You get a break when things slow down and chances are you're going to be eating, hitting the bathroom, and trying to get a little sit time in a milk crate out back in that short little window (hint, pick two of those, the third might not happen).
You get burned, cut, over heated, covered in filth, and breathe in noxious crap all day from stoves, fryers, industrial cleaning chemicals, and other things.
You, probably, and a lot of your coworkers are short tempered, sore, tired, and possibly on drugs or alcohol. You are surrounded by ideal weapons for hurting others and you will be in or see a fight every so often.
Wait staff pretend to like you but really they work shorter shifts, go home relatively unscathed, and make a fortune in tips. So you also dislike and resent them. You don't want to but see above.
You work when everyone else is off so you end up hanging out with people in similar situations who aren't always the best people for things like networking into a better job. They really like partying though, and who needs a future.
Then you get a little older. Maybe you are running a kitchen and finally don't need to have roommates to afford the horrible apartment but you're only there about seven hours in a row at any given time. You met someone through friends but they don't see a future because you are always working.
Eventually, health issues force you to find other work and you claw your way to normalcy 15 years behind everyone else in retirement saving, salary growth, and so on.
Well fuck man I'm a senior in highschool and I was debating between culinary school and IT/engineering or something the like. Just made my choice a hell of a lot easier.
IT in so many ways in so many industries.
- "Everything's working, so what are we paying you for?"
- "Everything's broken, so what are we paying you for?"
Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). These people do the grunt work at nursing homes. They change bed pans and wipe butts, they fetch things, help people stand and sit, and generally get talked down to by the lower level nurses. When I did ambulance transfer, they were the ones that actually knew the patient’s normal mental state, and how they’d been changing over time. All for minimum wage.
One of my old roommates did it. I work in patient transportation at the hospital, and two of my coworkers did it. All of them have talked about terrible the job was. And not even because of the things people think would be terrible. Like bed pans aren't fun. But its part of the job.
But they're understaffed, the managers suck because they're all only interested in money, so they get mentally abused by the higher ups, they have to work over time to get things done so people don't die but then get yelled at for working over time, etc. And all you said, it's for shit pay. I don't blame anyone for leaving those jobs. And it's sad, because ultimately it's the elderly who suffer from all of this.
My wife was a CNA until a few months ago. The pay rate has gone up to $12-15ish per hour at least but still terrible benefits on top of getting verbally beaten down by the nurses while getting physically beat up by the residents. Could make the same money with less risk of bodily harm working fast food
Speaking as a surgical tech: hospital janitorial staff, and sterile processing staff. They are INVISIBLE until something goes wrong, then everyone likes to bitch and point fingers, but they bust their asses constantly to keep us from becoming a giant pathogen cocktail. Hospitals would be fucking disgusting in the scope of like, idk, 2 hours, without those peeps.
Been a little bit since I put one of them in for an award. I think it's time to flex my keyboard again.
Street/Parking Lot Cleaners.
Every night, I clean up:
- Styrofoam cups/cans/plastic cups & bottles
- tossed out left over fast food
- dirty diapers that someone couldn't walk 7 feet through the Walmart parking lot to throw in an actual trash can
- empty boxes for: flat-screen TVs, Car seats, memory foam mattresses, or Amazon purchases
- disposable vapes
- trash bags that someone decided needed to be left in a parking lot instead of in a dumpster
- So. Many. Plastic. Hangers.
- receipts
- grocery bags
- candy wrappers
- Edit shattered glass, but it makes that gravel in a vacuum sound when the truck sucks it up, so that's nice.
And the only time I get thanked is when my employer asks me to do extra work because there was a storm, another driver was out sick, another driver needed help on a site, or there was a big event that needed to be cleaned for/after.
Thank you for your work.
Walmart greeters. They always say 'thank you' to you, but have you ever thought to thank them? I dont think so.
Health care aide. They get paid a pittance to clean up people who have pooped themselves. They should get 300 dollars an hour and a bottle of tequila per shift.
Nurses, or hospital staff in general. Overworked, underpaid and generally unappreciated.
Social worker is pretty high on the list. Most are overworked, underpaid and treated poorly by their management, their clients, or both.
Step parent. While not entirely thankless (depending on the kids involved) it's tremendously underappreciated.
So much expectation that you do things for kids that aren't yours.
Don't get me wrong - it can still be rewarding in many ways, and my stepkids and I love each other like blood. We have a fantastic relationship.
But it gets under my skin every time I think about how little their own father has done for them, and I've had to pick up the (financial) burden, yet that prick will be the one who gets to walk my stepdaughter down the aisle.
That depends in her because it would be HER wedding.
If she is grateful enough, you'll get to walk her because you would have been her real dad all her life.
There is no written law that the bio that most be the only one who can walk her, its all just stupid wedding traditions.
If she grows to be a brat, and makes her bio dad walk her, then she doesn't see you as her real dad, and would be something for you to reflect on.
All customer and/or low level jobs
Public relations.
They are usually not responsible for the bad decisions but are responsible for taking the heat for them. They are also powerless to actually influence most decision making.
But people will just flame them for being "bad at their jobs" or something like that.
I'll go with social activism. A lot of people wouldn't even recognize it as a job.
Nursing Assistant, though some of us nurses thank them. Man the pay sucks though.
There are several jobs that are frequently mentioned in discussions like this that are actually thanked all of them time.
Nurses, teachers, fire, EMTs and police are always mentioned. They are hard jobs and mostly under paid. However they are constantly thanked, businesses give discounts and commercials and politicians thank them endlessly.
Grocery store workers, butchers, plumbers, electricians, custodians, truck drivers and most "menial jobs" are completely thankless. Think of the last time you saw a 10% off for nurses and if you've ever seen 10% off for overnight stockers.
Detectives who work on CSAM cases. They have to watch, document, and describe the offending material in order to enter it as evidence. Then they get undeserved hatred for working with law enforcement.
My first thought was, what if a pedo became a csam detective.
And then, what if they had really strong moral convictions, so they’d never act on their desires, but they also enjoy their job.
- my mind, after my adhd meds wear off
Meter maids are traditionally hated but if they didn't exist there is a good chance there would be no parking spots.
My wife is a school based therapist. The parents routinely cancel without notice. The kids have behavioral problems and trauma that makes interacting difficult and stressful. Not to mention that she has to read through the kid’s trauma history that requires them seeing her in the first place. Not a lot of thank yous for that kind of work.
Customer Service Agent.
I did that for years and had more wonderfully nice and thankful calls than I did bad ones, but man it sure feels like they evened out anyway.
Housewive/-husband.
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