Ten Most Dangerous Jobs

The ‘Ten Most Dangerous Jobs’ in the world are listed as follows:

1) LOGGING WORKERS – Whoever said that it was better to work in the Great Outdoors than in an enclosed, sterile office environment certainly never had to operate a chainsaw 200 ft. in the air or run the risk of being crushed under a fallen tree I guess.

2) AIRCRAFT PILOTS + FLIGHT ENGINEERS – Wait, I thought that flying was the safest way to travel? How can pilots make this claim and then still profess to have the second most dangerous job? Unless they’re just using this listing to pick up chicks in airport bars while on furlough in foreign airports. Either it’s safe, or it’s not safe. Make up your friggin’ minds and let us make up our own minds before going on vacation.

3) FISHERS + RELATED WORK – I can understand how snow crab fishing in the Bering Strait would be considered extremely dangerous, but I’m just not going to buy that a retired recreational angler sitting on a cooler drinking beers on the edge of a pond has any real worries besides getting too drunk and catching himself on a fishing hook.

4) STRUCTURAL IRON + STEEL WORKERS – No argument here. These guys are crazy! You’d have to be in order to walk along steel girders no wider than a toaster hundreds of feet in the air with no safety harnesses. The real travesty here is that they are ranked behind the pilots who sit in comfy chairs, push buttons and pretend that their job is dangerous despite popular airline allegations. Of course, willingly subjecting themselves to the specific risks associated to working without a net would probably also automatically qualify them for the top slot in the list of the ‘World’s Stupidest Employee’s’. But I digress…

5) REFUSE + RECYCLABLE MATERIAL – Pardon? Garbage men have a dangerous job? I find that a little hard to believe that 43.2 per 100,000 employed are killed each year. Are they contracting and dying from contagious diseases they caught from hauling people’s trash or something? Statistics show that the majority of garbage men are killed by explosions from hazardous waste or mowed down my impatient passing motorists. Well, if stupid drivers are the majority cause of death among garbage men, wouldn’t that mean all us pedestrians should also be somewhere on this list?

6) FARMERS + RANCHERS – At first glance, I was surprised to see this category of employ on the list of ‘Most Dangerous Jobs’. But then I considered most farmers I know and have seen. Almost all of them have scars from back when they were either run over by a tractor, got mangled in a combine, or got kicked in the head by an ornery mule. So in hindsight, perhaps they do deserve a place on this list.

7) ROOFERS – Understandably. Refer to Structural Iron + Steel Workers.

8) ELECTRICAL POWER LINE INSTALLER + REPAIRERS – Fucking-A! No contest here. In my humble opinion, you are either a few sandwiches short of a picnic or have a death wish to work this job - probably a combination of both. I get nervous even changing the batteries in my television remote control.

9) DRIVERS/SALES WORKERS + TRUCK DRIVERS – Where I understand the imminent dangers existing on our highways and city streets, I still can’t seem to sympathize with this category of Dangerous Jobs. I’d be more wary of being a Boy Scout leader in this day and age than I would be of being a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.

10) TAXI DRIVERS + CHAUFFEURS – If I didn’t have much concern or sympathy for truck drivers or traveling salesmen, I’m sure as shit not going to shed any tears for cabbies or chauffeurs – no matter what the death toll is. Shuttling around spoiled rotten celebrities in luxury automobiles is not my idea of a dangerous job unless you’re working for, say, Cameron Crowe or Naomi Campbell. And for anyone who has ever accepted a ride from a sour contemptuous New York city cabbie – well, they deserve what they get anyways.

After reviewing this list I have one burning question eating away at the back of my mind: what does it say about my own job when I would happily perform any of these dangerous jobs over my own? I guess, apart from, say, the person who collects sperm samples from bull elephants (which I can’t believe didn’t make the ‘Most Dangerous Jobs’ list by the way) that would make my own job on the top of the list of ‘Ten Most Shittiest Jobs’.