There are many different kinds of jobs out there, and most are of some use to somebody.  They benefit some group of people as well as society as a whole in different ways, whether it's building houses, delivering mail, writing software, or posting brilliant and hilarious articles on the Internet.  Some jobs, however, have absolutely no use, and it's not clear why they exist at all.  The following jobs are, as far as I can see, completely and utterly useless, and we would all benefit if they stopped existing.

Many people in the U.S. today are unhappy about the high cost of prescription drugs.  Lowering that cost will no doubt be a big issue in the upcoming 2004 presidential election.  The best way I see of lowering prescription drug costs is to get rid of pharmacists.  There once was a time when pharmacists actually did something useful.  They ground different substances into powders, then poured and mixed the correct amounts of those powders into a medicine bottle to fill your prescription.  In other words, they actually made the drugs that you needed.

Today, however, things are different.  Drugs are manufactured in factories and delivered to pharmacies ready to be given to customers.  All a pharmacist does these days is look at the medication name that your doctor wrote on your prescription slip, then goes to the back to get the jar which contains that medication, and puts some of that medication into a small plastic bottle which is then given to you.  I don't know about you, but I could do that myself.  In fact, if I did that myself, I would save time by not having to wait for my pharmacist to fill fifty other prescriptions before she gets to mine, and save money by not having to pay some schmuck's salary when getting my prescription filled.

Yet, despite the fact that pharmacists do a job that anyone who can read and has functioning arms can do, they are required to have a college degree, and they get paid quite a bit of money to do it...  And they still often manage to fill your prescription wrong.  And when you come back to the pharmacy to get the correct prescription, they give you an attitude.  For example, just a few short days ago I tried to get my prescription for cough medicine filled, and my pharmacist gave me prescription strength laxative instead.  When I went back to the pharmacy to get the correct prescription, she gave me an attitude.  Our conversation went something like this:

Me:  Um, excuse me, ma'am, I think you've filled my prescription wrong.  I had a prescription for a cough medicine and you gave me prescription strength laxative.

Pharmacist (with an annoyed tone of voice):  Well, did it make you stop coughing?

Me (getting angry):  You're damn right it made me stop coughing; after I took a few of these pills and found out what they were, I was too scared to cough.

Pharmacist (still annoyed):  So, then, why are you complaining?

Me (now furious):  Because in addition to not coughing any more I cannot do a few little things that I used to enjoy... like walking, talking, and breathing... you know, little things like that.  Those things might not be all that important, but I would still like to be able to do them again, so would you please give me the correct prescription.

It was only after this exchange that I was able to get the cough medicine I needed.  Now, I ask you, wouldn't I be better off if I just got the medicine I needed myself, without having to go through all that trouble and paid less for it due to not having to pay that idiot pharmacist's salary?  I hope this shows why pharmacists should be eliminated.

I know I've already mentioned the need for P.E. teachers to be fired in one of my previous articles, but I think this is worth mentioning again here.  In theory the purpose of P.E. teachers being in schools and colleges all over the U.S. is to encourage America's youth to exercise and get in shape.  In reality, however, P.E. has never encouraged any student to do anything besides come to school with a loaded gun and shoot a bunch of people.  When active and athletic students take a P.E. course, they simply do what they would otherwise be doing outside of their P.E. class -- exercise and play sports.  They are athletic before taking that P.E. class, they are athletic while they are taking it, and they remain athletic after taking it.  It does not benefit them in any way.

Lazy un-athletic couch potatoes like me, on the other hand, who do not enjoy exercise, simply do a half-assed job when we have to take P.E. just to get a check mark put on our transcripts indicating that we fulfilled that graduation requirement.  After we've got that check mark on our transcript, we simply continue being the lazy slobs that we are and do not exercise just like before.  So P.E. doesn't benefit us either.  As you can see, it benefits no one and is nothing but a waste of time and money.  And if you are going to try to encourage someone to exercise, the least you can do is hire a P.E. teacher whose gut is not hanging down to his knees.  If a P.E. teacher is out of shape how can he possibly encourage his students to get in shape?  "Young people, you need to be active and play sports so that you can be like me and have to lift your gut up with your hands every time you want to take a piss."  Somehow, that does not seem very encouraging to me.

Speaking of not encouraging, I don't have any kids yet, but the fact that when I do have kids, this guy might be their gym teacher is not encouraging to me at all.  And the fact that I might be paying his salary, since P.E. teachers' paychecks are funded by our taxes, is even less encouraging.  These are just a few of the reasons that P.E. teachers are on this list of useless occupations that should not exist.

 Those of you who live in the U.S. no doubt know who this is.  For those of you who do not live in the U.S. this is Pee Wee Herman, a lovable nerd who was once the main character of a children's TV show.

And this is a picture of Paul Reubens, the actor who played Pee Wee Herman on TV, taken when he was arrested.  I found this image at mugshots.com.  The caption under it reads:

Paul Rueubens, a.k.a "Pee Wee Herman", was arrested July 26 1991 for jerking off at the South Trail Cinema, an XXX theatre. [Editor's note: one wonders whether that should even be a crime at all.] Reubens paid a $50 fine and did various and sundry community services. Children's television will never be the same. (sic)

What I am wondering is why are these cops spending their time at work and hence our tax money catching these kinds of "criminals?"  Have all the real criminals been caught yet?  Has all the real crime been eliminated so that these cops can move on to victimless crime?  Now, I realize that masturbating in public is a crime and people should be punished for doing it, but that does not mean cops should be sent to adult movie theaters to catch whankers and spankers.  Why?  Because people who go to adult movie theaters go there to spank the monkey and they expect others there to do the same thing while the rest of the world does not see what happens inside the theater's walls.  No one gets offended when someone masturbates in an adult movie theater.  The same can be said about having anal sex in a gay bar.

Another thing I'm wondering is what does a cop have to do to be assigned the duty of looking for and arresting people who masturbate in adult movie theaters or have anal sex in gay bars?  I'm guessing he has to do more than just sleep with his town's police chief's wife -- he has to sleep with his wife AND daughter... at the same time.  As a final thought, let me say that the New York and California state laws that prohibit smoking in bars are stupid.  There are some enclosed public places where people should not smoke, like elevators, public libraries, and some restaurants, but bars are not among those places.  A bar is a place people go to relax, unwind, socialize, and generally let their hair down, not to be uptight and worry about what others will think of them smoking.  Like adult movie theaters, bars are places where people go expecting certain things -- and smoking, like drinking, is among those things.  Prohibiting smoking in bars is almost as stupid as prohibiting drinking in bars... but I digress.

The bottom line is that some jobs are completely and utterly useless and do nothing but waste time and money.  The jobs I listed in this article are by no means the only such jobs in the world, but they are certainly among such jobs.  Well, I have to end this article here as I need to go pick up my cough prescription.  Let's see what surprise I get this time.

- Iced Alex