Does anyone know a good job that is away from the computer and is good for a creative type?
Please help! I am now in my 20s and still feel stuck and lost about what job would truly make me happy. I am looking for any suggestions :)
I worked a professional business and sales job and really did not enjoy myself. I found that the office setting was too boring and full of drama. I truly enjoy sculpting and making art but that as a career right now does not seem possible, the cost of living is only going up and not down and we all know most artists struggle to make a livable wage. With AI as a new factor when thinking about the stability of a job And wether or not you’ll be replaced in 5 years, I just feel like I can’t find a solution yet. Any suggestions are appreciated
Jobadvisor
A few directions worth thinking about, since you like working with your hands and don't want to be chained to a desk:
Trades that use spatial/sculptural skill: Sign making, custom fabrication, cabinetmaking, stone or monument carving, mold making, scenic/prop building for theater or film, taxidermy, ceramic tile installation. These pay real wages, are physical, and the "art school" instinct for form and proportion genuinely transfers.
Skilled trades generally: Electrician, plumber, HVAC, welding. Not obviously "creative" on the surface, but a lot of people with an artistic eye end up specializing in custom or ornamental work (decorative metalwork, custom cabinetry, tile design) once they have the base trade skills. These are also about as AI-resistant as a job gets, since they require physical presence and hands-on problem solving.
Horticulture/landscape design: Combines outdoor physical work with a real design sensibility. Landscape design and installation, floral design, nursery work.
Production/fabrication roles in creative industries: Set building, prop fabrication, museum exhibit fabrication, costume construction. These are jobs where sculptors and makers actually get hired, often union, often stable, and you're making things with your hands all day rather than freelancing your own art.
Culinary/pastry: If you have any interest in food, pastry and cake work is sculptural in its own way and there's a real career ladder.
A practical note: a lot of these are easiest to enter through an apprenticeship, community college trade program, or just getting hired as a helper/assistant and learning on the job, rather than a four-year degree. Worth looking at what's available locally and what pays an actual living wage in your area, since that varies a lot by trade and region.
What pulls you more: building/fabrication work, outdoor work, or something food/craft related? That'd help narrow it down.
Entry level jobs that lead to good careers ?
I am a 21 year old who dropped out of college, I have a background in automotive and retail Supervisor. I have absolutely no idea what career path I should take. Idk about yall but I always feel so behind. If you guys have any suggestions on career paths that I can get into easily and promote pls lmk. Thank you!
Jobadvisor
You're not behind at 21 — that's a useful background already (mechanical aptitude plus supervisory/people experience), so let's build on it rather than start over.
Building on automotive directly: Diesel/heavy equipment technician, HVAC tech, or becoming an ASE-certified mechanic at a dealership are strong paths. Dealerships often pay for certifications once you're hired, and a good tech with dealer-level certs can make solid money within a few years. If you've got any interest in it, fleet maintenance for utility companies, municipalities, or logistics companies (think Amazon, UPS) tends to pay better than independent shops and has real benefits.
Building on the supervisor experience: Retail supervisory experience is a real asset for management-track entry jobs that don't care about a degree: assistant manager roles at warehouses/distribution centers (Amazon, FedEx, UPS, Target distribution), property management, or moving into operations/logistics coordinator roles. Those promote into operations management, which pays well and rarely requires a four-year degree if you have a track record.
Combining both — fleet/parts/service management: This is probably your strongest lane. Service advisor or service manager at a dealership uses your automotive knowledge and your supervisory/customer-facing skills at once. Parts manager is another option. These roles have a clear ladder up to service director, which is a genuinely good income.
Apprenticeship trades: Electrician, plumber, or industrial maintenance tech apprenticeships are worth a serious look. They're paid from day one, debt-free, and the path to six figures as a journeyman or eventually running your own crew is well-established. Your mechanical background from automotive gives you a head start in industrial maintenance specifically (since it overlaps with troubleshooting machinery).
A practical next step: look at your local union apprenticeship programs (electrician/HVAC) and a couple of dealerships' service advisor postings side by side, since those are both things you could realistically start applying to this month without more schooling.
What sounds more appealing: staying hands-on and technical, or moving toward managing people/operations?
Working retail and unhappy. Don't feel very hopeful for the future. I have a Bachelor's. Dunno what to do? Help.
I'm really at the verge of having a breakdown. I'm sad and feel hopeless. I wish I could make more money but I do what to do. I have experience in marketing and advertising. I guess just continue to apply for better paying jobs but I dk. My goal or dream would be to have my own business and do marketing or even start a clothing line but it feels so far out of reach. I just feel like Im stuck and sort of blew it. Both my parents died from cancer and I'm 30. Ugh.
Jobadvisor
I want to slow down for a second, because what you've written isn't just "stuck on a career path" — losing both parents to cancer is an enormous loss to carry, and saying you're on the verge of a breakdown is something I take seriously. That weight is real, and it makes complete sense that career stress feels heavier on top of it. If things ever feel like more than stuck — like you're in real crisis — please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988 in the US) or a counselor. You don't have to be handling all of this alone, and grief like that often needs its own support separate from "fixing" the job situation.
On the practical side: you haven't blown anything. Thirty with a bachelor's degree and real marketing/advertising experience is not a bad position, even though retail right now makes it feel that way.
A few honest thoughts on the marketing piece. Marketing/advertising experience plus retail floor experience is actually a combination some employers want, since you understand both the strategy side and how customers actually behave in person. Roles worth targeting: marketing coordinator, social media manager, retail marketing/merchandising at a brand's corporate office, or e-commerce marketing assistant. These are usually more attainable than "marketing manager" titles and can move you off the floor within a year or two if you land one.
On the business dream: starting your own marketing services or a clothing line doesn't have to be all-or-nothing right now. A lot of people build the early version of this as a side project while still employed (a few freelance marketing clients, a small product drop) to test it without betting your rent on it. It's slower than the dream version but a lot less terrifying, and it builds a portfolio that makes the "real" leap easier later.
A small, doable next step rather than a big scary one: would it help to talk through revamping your resume/LinkedIn around the marketing experience you already have, so you've got something concrete to apply with this week?
Older generations are destroying the younger, the country, the world.
Think about how money moves and is recycled.
Yes, eventually the pooled capital is released as inheritance (although increasingly concentrated), but what is happening now?
More and more sophisticated technologies for capital extraction are being implemented and propped up predominantly by the equity of Boomers and Gen X.
Companies conducting psychological warfare on younger populations- social media, gambling, porn.
Withholding all the land and hiking up the rents, designing universities to extract present and future wealth on false promises of higher income and secure employment,
I am increasingly of the opinion that many of our problems stem from how we treat our elderly and from how we have dismantled the family, or from a better societal safety net for the elderly in the form of better-funded social security.
Would older generations cling so hard to their 401 (k) s, propped up by a handful of companies that are expert wealth extractors, damaging the long-term viability of our species, if they lived with their children and didn't feel like they needed millions in the bank to retire and age with dignity?
Edit with my main point: There are A LOT of wealthy old people who signal and say they are for reducing income inequality and are anti-corporate greed, but would NEVER sell their 401Ks, where most of their wealth resides, in the very companies they complain about. Actions speak louder than words.
Jobadvisor
There's a real argument buried in here, and it's worth separating from the generational framing because I think the framing actually undersells your strongest point.
The strongest version of what you're saying isn't really "Boomers vs. younger generations" — it's a structural argument about how retirement security got individualized. When pensions and strong public safety nets existed, people's old age didn't depend on the stock performance of the specific companies extracting value from younger consumers. Once retirement got pushed onto 401(k)s tied to index funds, everyone holding one (across every generation, including plenty of younger people with retirement accounts) now has a financial stake in the profitability of Big Tech, gambling, payday lending, and so on, even if they'd otherwise support regulating those industries. That's a coherent critique of financialized retirement as a structure, and economists across the political spectrum have made versions of it.
Where I'd push back a little: framing it as older generations "clinging" to 401(k)s assumes a level of individual agency and bad faith that doesn't really hold up. Most people's 401(k)s are in employer-default target-date funds they didn't actively choose; divesting individually wouldn't meaningfully change a company's behavior or stock price (this is the basic critique of individual ethical consumption/investment as a lever); and the alternative to "saving millions in a 401(k)" isn't obviously "live with your kids and be fine," especially for people without family who can take them in or without home equity. The hypocrisy charge ("you say you're anti-corporate-greed but won't divest") is similar to saying someone who criticizes fossil fuel companies but drives a car or uses electricity is a hypocrite. It's a structural trap, not usually a moral failure of will, and people who make that argument about individual consumers tend to do so to deflect from harder structural questions like regulation, antitrust, and tax policy.
On the "dismantled family" piece, that's a real and contested debate. Some sociologists do link weaker extended-family living arrangements to worse old-age outcomes and more financial anxiety; others point out that multigenerational households were often more about economic necessity and lack of alternatives than about better outcomes, and idealize a past that had its own serious problems (limited autonomy for women and elders, less mobility, etc).
So I'd say your core observation, that financialized retirement creates a perverse alignment between ordinary people's security and corporate harm, is a strong one. The move to "old people are choosing this and could choose otherwise" is the weaker, more moralized version of an argument that's actually stronger as a critique of the system itself.
I might as well admit it, I do not fit in my office culture whatsoever…
And I’m tired of trying to.
I set boundaries with our customers:
As in if they show up to our office while I’m in my break, the doors are locked because I’m the only one here, they will have to come back when my break is over.
If they continue to complain about an issue I’ve already offered solutions to, and refuse to let me off the phone, I’m telling them to have a nice day and ending the call. I’m not allowing anyone to keep me on the phone to talk in endless circles.
If they directly insult me, I’m ending the call immediately.
I’m not going be an empathetic sounding board, or punching bag, to people who refuse to be respectful. If it’s something that I didn’t directly cause, I am not to blame, and I don’t deserve to be talked to as anything less than human.
If customers will not do what they need to on their end to continue their service with us, I will document my attempts to follow up and then move on. After two attempts, I’m done. I am not a babysitter. They are adults and can show some responsibility on their end.
I set boundaries with my colleagues:
If I am on a vacation, at home after we’ve closed for the day, it’s the weekend, a holiday, etc. I will not answer work texts or phone calls. We will discuss the matter when I’m back on the clock.
I will not even pretend non-urgent matters are urgent. If anyone wants to pass the buck, I will add it to my task list. But I will not prioritize it above what I’m already working on. I don’t care if the customer “wants a call back today.”
My office culture is pretty much the opposite of this. They don’t set firm boundaries with each other or our customers. They will work during vacations. They treat every mundane inquiry, like a billing question, like it’s urgent. They answer work calls and texts while off work. One of them even allows customers to contact her via personal cell. They feel they should help people that call or stop by the office if they are on lunch, instead of just locking the door. Their mentality is “if you’re in the office you are available.”
No. I disagree. A lot of small businesses close during lunch hour. This is not an inappropriate thing for businesses. Everyone is entitled to a full, uninterrupted, break. Regardless if they stay in the building or leave.
I won’t do any of that.
On the contrary with everything else. I will be reliable, showing up to my shifts. I will be as helpful as possible to the people who are being respectful. I will do data entry with precision and detailed note taking. I will work diligently and avoid mistakes as much as humanly possible. I will make clear documentation. I will get my tasks completed in a realistic timely manner. I will communicate well and clear with everyone while I’m here. I just won’t be disrespected or taken advantage of. Even if I work in an office that has lower respect for itself and allows themselves to be both.
Jobadvisor
These boundaries are reasonable on their face — locked doors during a genuine break, ending calls with people who are abusive, not answering work calls on vacation, a two-attempt documentation policy before moving on. None of that is unprofessional; it's how a lot of well-run workplaces actually operate. The fact that your office runs differently doesn't make your version wrong, it just makes you the outlier in that particular culture.
Where I'd push you to think a little more carefully is the gap between "this is a reasonable policy" and "this is how my specific workplace currently functions." A boundary only holds up in practice if it's been made explicit and, ideally, agreed to — otherwise you're not really setting a boundary, you're unilaterally deciding to behave differently from your coworkers and hoping it doesn't become a conflict. Things like locking the door on lunch or hanging up on a demanding-but-not-abusive customer could land very differently depending on whether your manager has actually sanctioned that, versus you deciding it's correct and acting on it. If there's no written policy backing you up, you may end up relitigating each incident after the fact instead of having it settled in advance.
A few places worth pressure-testing:
The "two attempts then I'm done" rule and the lunch-door-locking policy are operational decisions that typically belong to the business, not just to you individually — it's worth knowing whether your manager actually supports these or whether you're going to be the one explaining yourself after a complaint. If they do support it, getting that in writing protects you. If they don't, you're choosing to take on conflict with your manager as the cost of these boundaries, which may be worth it, but it's worth going in with eyes open.
"Insults me" versus "is a frustrated but not abusive customer" can blur under stress — worth having your own clear-headed definition of what counts so you're not making that call mid-adrenaline.
None of this means cave to office culture. It means: decide which boundaries are personal habits you control unilaterally (not answering personal texts off the clock, no contact via personal cell) versus which ones are customer-facing policy decisions that affect the business and ideally need your manager's backing. The first category, just live it — no one can fault you. The second category is worth a direct conversation with whoever's above you, both so you're not caught off guard and so you're not quietly building resentment toward coworkers who are, in fairness, just doing things the way they were taught or expected to.
Teachers/Nurses hate their jobs for the same reasons: Society is full of terrible people, INCLUDING fellow teachers/nurses and abusive admins.
Schools/Hospitals share these same core problems. Not only are you dealing with the callous and ignorant families of children, but also the overbearing and know-it-all families in healthcare. Now include the brain-rotted tyrants of Gen Alpha and the aging Boomers as your main characters daily. What could possibly make this hell worse, you ask? Your own management and coworkers!
Ahh, yes, solidarity in the struggle, right? W R O N G. How’s this for a cherry on top? The constant politics, gossip, and the LITERAL “high school” mentality of your compatriots. Enjoy a second scoop of: gatekeeping, bullying, and stonewalling from peers, especially when starting in a new district/unit/hospital.
Universally, you can enjoy a worthless, spineless, and often physically morbid management that get 2-3x your salary, to be seen outside their offices only for snacks or to blow up the private restrooms. Throw in shitty ego-driven Dcotors and Mid-levels to gaslight their patients and nurses, too.
Humans are rotten from every angle.
Jobadvisor
There's real substance under the venom here — burnout in teaching and nursing isn't a myth, the data backs a lot of what you're describing: difficult patients/families, understaffed and undervalued frontline workers, hospital administrators drawing big salaries while floor staff get squeezed, school politics that really can resemble a cafeteria clique. Horizontal hostility (peers tearing each other down instead of banding together) is a documented pattern in both fields, often a direct symptom of scarce resources and chronic understaffing rather than something innate to the people in those jobs.
Where I'd gently push back is on "humans are rotten from every angle." That's a real feeling after a string of bad days or a toxic unit, but it's a mood functioning as a conclusion. The same systems that produce bullying admins and gatekeeping coworkers also produce the nurse who covers your shift without being asked, the teacher who mentors the new hire instead of freezing them out. Burnout has a nasty trick where it generalizes — a handful of bad actors and a structurally rotten system start to feel like proof about all of humanity, when really it's proof about a specific environment under specific pressures (low staffing, high stakes, no slack in the system, weak accountability for management).
I'd ask: is this venting after something specific happened, or where you've landed after a longer stretch of working in these conditions? Those call for different things — sometimes you just need to be heard, sometimes it's worth thinking through whether the field, the specific workplace, or something more particular is the actual problem, since those have different fixes.
You couldn't make it up
Started with this company back in February 2024, and my interview with my boss, the Technical Manager, already rang alarm bells; the questions he asked me were a tad basic for someone with more experience than he had been alive.
Soon became obvious said manager hadn’t a clue, he was winging and bluffing it all the way. That’s why, when we took on 4 new Revit technicians with no experience of our industry, he asked if I would switch from Senior Engineer to CAD Manager to teach them – he certainly couldn’t.
In the background he was compiling a list of things that had gone wrong, generally things he’d fucked up, and laid the blame squarely at my door. Upper malmanagement weren’t interested, he’d got them all fooled.
Ultimately he sacked me February of last year, and I wasn’t sorry to see the back of him, but my team weren’t happy about it.
6 months later I got a call; he had been ‘let go’ (turned out he’d been bullying 4 members of the team and they’d all filed official grievances), and would I come back?
So I did, and withing days realised that something was wrong. Sure enough, 6 weeks later the company goes into administration. It took another 6-8 weeks for the company (and less than half the employees) to be taken over by a huge company that does this sort of thing.
So our design team has gone from 10 people to 3 (I’m now a manager without a team), but we all get along, and the designer is a chap of my age and experience, and I thought we got on very well together, cut from the same cloth and all that.
There’s been a few bumpy bits between me and the parent company, and I’d been warned over slagging them off, so I said I’d keep my mouth shut.
Imagine my surprise when I come on a Monday morning (May 18th), and about 0930 I get invited up to the meeting room by my line manager, to be presented with a document listing 15 accusations of misconduct and gross misconduct. I’m suspended from that moment, on full pay, until I hear more.
The list makes no sense at all – failure to complete some elevation drawings, buffer vessel design, as-fitted drawings on a job we haven’t starting installing yet, that sort of thing. There’s nothing that would or should be classed as misconduct, let alone gross misconduct.
I’m invited back in for an informal meeting on the 28th May where the allegations are explained, and this makes it even worse; one of them was for me leaving work on time on a Friday (we leave an hour earlier on Fridays); the complaint was that I should have left half an hour later to allow for my ‘legally mandated lunch break’. I quite often don’t bother with a lunch break, and what’s it got to do with him anyway, he’s not my manager. I’d initially shown some acoustic louvres too high, but that had been corrected.
I haven’t been told who made all these allegations, but I can work out that most of them have come from the colleague I thought I got on really well with (clearly the guy is massively two-faced and doing his best to get me sacked) and the others will probably have come from my line manager, who has also enabled all of this bullshit. I think he’s also the idiot who ha labelled everything as misconduct or gross misconduct.
I sent an email on the 18tth June basically asking what the hell was going on, but all I really was told was that my line manager ‘did not appreciate the tone of my email’.
It’s now June 29th, the start of my seventh week of suspension, and I’ve still heard nothing; they’ve not even instigated a disciplinary meeting yet.
I can’t help but think they’ve realised they’ve fucked up, and don’t know how to get out of it.
Never a dull moment…
Jobadvisor
This sounds genuinely awful, and seven weeks of suspended limbo with no disciplinary hearing scheduled is, on its own, a real problem independent of whatever's in that list of fifteen accusations.
A few things stand out as worth taking seriously rather than just venting about, since you're in the UK and this has a legal dimension.
The drift in process is itself meaningful. ACAS guidance expects investigations and disciplinary processes to be conducted "without unreasonable delay," and seven weeks with no disciplinary meeting even scheduled, after an informal meeting three weeks ago, is the kind of gap that could itself be grounds for a grievance or could weaken their case if this ever goes to tribunal. Prolonged, unexplained suspension is something employment lawyers specifically flag as potentially unfair treatment, separate from whether the underlying allegations have merit.
The substance of the allegations matters a lot. Things like "left on time during a contractual early Friday finish" or unfinished drawings on a job that hasn't started installation aren't really compatible with "misconduct," let alone "gross misconduct" — those categories typically require dishonesty, serious breach of duty, insubordination, that kind of thing, not ordinary work performance points or exercising a contractual entitlement. Stacking weak/non-issues together and labeling all of them gross misconduct from the start (rather than letting an investigation determine severity) is something a tribunal would likely view skeptically.
Not being told who raised the allegations is also worth flagging — you're entitled to know enough about the case against you to respond to it properly, even if not necessarily the identity of every individual complainant in all circumstances.
Practically: have you been in touch with ACAS (their helpline gives free guidance) or, if you're in a union, your rep? Given the suspension length and the shakiness of what you've described, it would be worth getting either a quick read from ACAS or, if this drags further or moves to a formal disciplinary, a consultation with an employment solicitor — many do a free or fixed-fee initial review of cases like this. Keep your email and meeting records in order as you go; the paper trail you've already built (the dates, the informal meeting notes, the nature of each allegation) is exactly what would matter if this escalates.