Can you list some careers where you can get away with being irresponsible?

No one has a career where you “get away” with being irresponsible.

A comedian who is irresponsible will have a very short career. A fiction writer who is irresponsible won’t get published a second time.

People who don’t show up or blow off other people get second and sometimes third chances, but they only get as much slack as they might earn for delivering something of genius. After a couple times, people don’t give a crap how brilliant they are,

The jobs you can hold while being irresponsible are few, and they aren’t careers. Why would anyone pay you to disregard the commitment you made when they hired you?

@zenvelo How about someone with tenure? Even Beavis and Butthead have a job at Wally World.
What about jobs that requires less responsibility like a cashier vs brain surgeon?

@Jeruba What about a jester or clown?

@talljasperman Look into those professions and see if the people who hold them take them seriously or not; work at them or not; have to fulfill an obligation to an employer or not.

You don’t start a career with tenure.

An irresponsible cashier won’t be permitted to handle the business’s cash and interact directly with its customers. These are just silly questions.

Those that you see being irresponsible generally fall into two categories;

1) Those who are serious and responsible “off stage”
2) Those who are unsuccessful

For instance, one of my favorite musicians gives the public appearance of being a happy-go-lucky steampunk pirate, but behind the scenes he’s doing a lot of writing, rehearsing, negotiating with promoters for the band’s fees, doing the payroll… oh, and being a husband and father of two who home-schools his kids so that the band can tour. (Leaving them at home with their mother isn’t an option; she is the keyboard player.) In other words, underneath the facade is a man who handles a lot of responsibility.

Anyone in the entertainment biz is the same way, at least until they big enough to hire agents/managers to handle that sort of stuff… though dealing with that agent/manager requires some degree of responsibility to avoid having them screw you sideways. That includes clowns, writers, YouTube celebrities, or any of the other jobs that look like fun.

Tenure is a reward for many years of responsible behavior. You have to earn it by being responsible. Even then, it’s pretty much restricted to professors at universities, and I just don’t see you becoming a teacher/professor any time soon.

[Mod says] Moved to Social.

Work is called work for a reason.

Even the characters at Disney World like Goofy, Mickey Mouse, etc., have to follow rigid rules or they will be fired. It looks like they are having fun and goofing off all day, but they have to remain professional and polite at all times. Even when it’s 100 degrees in those suits.

Trust fund denizen, lottery winner, Arab prince. But even those folks have limits on their levels of irresponsibility. @zenvelo got it right.

Of course there is a job for the irresponsible. It won’t last long, but hey, free coffee in the break room until then!

I notice that you have a talent for asking questions that just dog me for hours, and I’m not kidding. Whenever some question pops up here with its plot centered on one of those judgement call words, I wind up stuck on the damned word. There are just too many levels or degrees of irresponsibility. I mean where’s the line? Is absentmindedness irresponsible. Do you fire an otherwise brilliant employee for repeatedly leaving the lights on? A messy desk? I know it sounds like nitpicking, but it’s the sort of thing that drives me crazy, because no 2 people are going to agree on where the line is.

From what I’ve been given to understand, those are union positions, and I’ve never had one.

Panhandler.

Contingent work comes to mind. This kind of work is paid by the day or by the unit, with no guarantee of future employment. Traditional examples include piece work (sewing garments, getting paid per piece) and day labor.

More recently, a lot of internet-based companies are using this model. Lyft, uber, postmates, and taskrabbit all come to mind. You could say that this kind of work has gentrified. My city’s local alternative newspaper covered it recently. The article had stories about dog walkers, the people who hold flags during road work, and strippers. One of my neighbors started an amazing dog walking business; I had no idea that dog walking was in this category.

@Haleth

How does an irresponsible person get away with being a dog walker?

When people contract with someone to walk their dogs it’s usually because they’re at work all day and can’t get home to do it themselves.

If the irresponsible dog walker wakes up one day and decides that since it’s raining, he will just stay in bed that day because he just doesn’t feel like walking dogs in the rain.

So the owners of all the dogs come home to a mess all over their floors. If the irresponsible dog walker is extremely lucky he might be able to come up with an emergency cover lie and get away with that once. If he’s lucky.

But that will be the last time. After that it’s the end of their business. And if we are dealing with someone who is known to be irresponsible, there will always be a next time. That’s inherent in the definition of irresponsible.

BTW

According to the Wiki article linked, it states plainly that “contingent work” is not considered a career or even part of a career since there is little to no opportunity for professionak or career development.

@talljasperman

Why not find something that you enjoy or have a passion for and develop whatever skill or education is required to make it a career ?

This is only the latest in a long string of questions you’ve asked in wanting to find a job/career that only requires the most minimal degree of either skill, education or responsibility and yet offers the opportunity for major money.

In other words you’re looking for the easy way out.

As many others before me have repeatedly advised you, there is no such thing. Life doesn’t automatically reward the lazy, unmotivated ones who are just barely skating by.

Instead of wasting all your time and energy trying to find out how little you can do and “get away with” it, why not invest your energy into something more productive which will, in addition to just money, provide the satisfaction of genuine accomplishment. This is why people choose careers; not because it’s something they can get away with for minimal affort.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

And BTW, how do you know that being a clown or a comedian means you can get away with irresponsibility? Do you actually know any real life people who are either a successful clown or comedian?
Because you cite them as examples of irresponsibility, I highly doubt you’ve ever met one in real life. Because if you did that to their face, they’d quickly tell you exactly how much their career depends upon a reputation of rock-solid work ethic and track record of responsibly showing up for work when necessary. They can’t just wake up and decide that they just don’t feel like it. That won’t fly if they intend to stay employed for long.

I guarantee you that while undoubtedly they really enjoy their work and are happy while doing it, if they are successful at it, they are definitely NOT irresponsible.

For instance, there aren’t a whole lot of clowns who work for Ringling or Circ du Soleil, but the ones who do definitely can’t “get away with” being irresponsible, constantly missing performances or rehearsals will result in their job loss. They will be replaced in short order.

And for the majority of clowns out in the real world, they are relying upon doing either corporate events or kids parties. They can’t just decide to not show up for a scheduled event. Again, irresponsible = no jobs, no career.

But the term “irresponsible” is just too vague to consider the question tangible. To understand what I mean, consider the word’s cousins incapable and incompetent, both equally as vague and variable, and without specific examples too slippery to stand alone in such a question. All 3 words have distinctly different meanings, yet any one of the 3 can be either responsible for or the result of the other 2. And all of us looking at a specific situation are certain to interpret it differently and subject to conclude differently as to which of the 3 words is applicable or even the combinations or varying degrees of weight to be given the 3 of them. The question as given is actually diabolical in its vagueness, because while it appears simple and straightforward, it is at it stands MEANINGLESS.

@stanleybmanly

Well, that’s your perspective, but I don’t think most of us have any difficulty comprehending irresponsible as compared to the other two.

I don’t know any employer who wants to hire someone who is irresponsible because that’s a matter of the will. The other two are related to experience or knowledge which can be remedied.

Both incompetent and incapable can be remedied with further training and/or education (providing the employee is a willing participant)

But if someone cannot be relied upon to show up when and where they’re supposed to then, in the long run, there is no remedy. An attempt can be made to talk to them or impose penalties for not showing up but over time, if the person is recalcitrantly unreliable (late or absent) then the only solution is to fire them. How can you change someone’s will?

How on earth can someone make a career out of anything if they’re continually irresponsible?

That’s one of the biggest complaints of employers nowadays because the sense of “work ethic” is eroding more and more from what it used to be in times past.

And, I wouid contend that if someone does nothing more than show up on time day in and day out, that an employer would value them far more and be willing to patiently shore up any inadequacies regarding capability or competence.

I daresay they would be far more valuable than a very capable but irresponsible flash in the pan who may or may not decide to show up on time on any given day, or perhaps not show up at all.

If someone is irresponsible it means that they cannot be relied upon (no matter how capable or competent they may be.)

(incidentally, this is one reason why more enlightened employers are willing to hire people with a degree of intellectual disability. If nothing else, they show up on time every day. They are reliable because this job means so much to them they don’t want to risk losing it.)

Employers know that it might take such people a little extra time to learn something but it’s well worth the time and effort because they can be counted upon to show up when and where they’re supposed to.
Irresponsible = unreliable and that just won’t cut it in any career that I’ve ever heard of.

Even in rare jobs with the option to offer flex time (such as software developers, game designers etc.) there still needs to be something productive being accomplished. If there is a deadline for the project, just lollygagging around ALL THE TIME while producing nothing is not going to cut it. There must be a basic responsibility to get the job done regardless of when. Being unreliable in producing work (even with flextime) will result in no job sooner or later.

To think that there is a career in which irresponsibility is a valued (or even tolerated) aspect of one’s personality is ludicrous.

What employer in their right mind values an unreliable employee?

But that’s what I’m getting at. YOU’ve defined areas of irresponsibility that matter to an employer. Punctuality is important in a place where mentally challenged employees are for example assembling widgets, but what about the odd balls with terrible work habits, who never show up anywhere on time, miss deadlines, and are totally lacking in interpersonal skills, yet consistently generate 30 times their salary in revenue for their employer. Look, if you are going to ask about jobs for the irresponsible, it is essential to state the defects you are talking about. There are jobs where punctuality, deadlines, etc. aren’t primary issues.

And that’s another thing. How often do you suppose that incompetence is mistaken for irresponsibility? How would one determine, once again, where the line is?

@stanleybmanly I think you’re overthinking this. The OP is looking for an easy out and is not going to have one.

@stanleybmanly … but what about the odd balls with terrible work habits, who never show up anywhere on time, miss deadlines, and are totally lacking in interpersonal skills, yet consistently generate 30 times their salary in revenue for their employer.

What about them? IF such a person exists, they don;t have a career, they have a job in which someone puts up with them as long as the revenue comes in, but they are out the door as soon as they fail to produce. And I don’t know of anyone that produces like that over the long term because customers get tired of them,

@stanleybmanly

I used being on time as merely one example of reliability. Unreliability (or irresponsibility) can translate to other aspects of job performance as well.

The bottom line is that an employer welcomes a worker upon whom they can rely, not a flake who drops their responsibility on a whim.

You keep insisting upon conflating irresponsible with incompetent. They are two different things. Incompetence is not something that a person can turn on or off at will like a light switch. They are either skilled (competent) at the job or they aren’t. Or they are minimally competent and need further training.

But if someone is irresponsible, they can turn it on and off like a light switch because it’s a matter of will, not skill.

The essence of irresponsibility is not caring and trying to slide by with the absolutely minimum amount of effort and commitment.

If they are generating a large amount of revenue for a company that’s just dumb luck. And sooner or later luck runs out.

Someone with a genuine work ethic produces consistently day in and day out and year in and year out. In the long run, reliability will win out over dumb luck.

And those of us who have read enough of the OPs questions about jobs and careers have noticed the overarching theme.

He has asked in numerous ways what amounts to basically “How can I have a lucrative and prestigious career with an absolute bare minimum of effort, commitment, knowledge or skill.”

And many people have repeatedly replied that there is no such animal. You might as well make up your mind that after you determine a field of work which interests you, it’s going to require consistent effort and knowledge for it to translate into a paying profession. Just make up your mind to put in the necessary work to get the skill or the degree required and you’ll have something that you can be proud of.

But he keeps looking for something that he can “get away with” zero effort or commitment and yet reap large rewards. Life just doesn’t work that way.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

In an unrelated question, someone was asking about Nursing. You mentioned your wife pursuing her Nursing degree and the job satisfaction she has as the result.

I’m quite certain that she didn’t have the attitude of just sliding by and seeing how much irresponsibility and bare minimum effort she could “get away with”. Had she tried that she would have gotten kicked out. She knew what the deal was and worked hard to get to where she is today.

As @zenvelo pointed out, there is a remote possibility that an irresponsible person MIGHT be able to generate income for the company but everyone would sooner or later tire of being disrespected by him and his attitude. Being irresponsible is the height of selfishness and people like that don’t last because no one can count on them for anything. That just isn’t going to last. Nobody is that lucky.

@stanleybmanly

My apologies for my dim memory confusing you with @funkdadfy regarding the wife getting a nursing degree.

The ol’ gray matter ain’t what it used to be :)