Wage slave 3: the redundancy!

A long time ago, I wrote two posts listing dozens of entry level jobs in the grim darkness of the near future - not the dreamy tech-graduate aspirations conceived in optimistic futurist blogs but the street level roles left behind as every low income career gets automated out of existence. 

These are the roles your 'runner characters found so horrifying they chose a life of shooting computer programmers and chopping off their own arms to fit ugly metal replacements. These are the jobs their relatives scrabble for. These are the jobs their fixers and mob contacts pretend to hold in their front offices. This is the sprawl and the people in it.

Wage Slave 1 covered everything from 3D Printshop Attendants and Chicken Little Trimmers to Industrial Origamists and Intercourse Trainers.

Wage Slave 2: The Restructuring began with Kelp Strainers and followed up with Persona Bums, Ractors and Scop Scoopers.

A year and some later, Wage Slave 3: The Redundancy finally presents thirty more dead-end careers for your cyberpunks to aspire to when they finally choose to retire from the 'runner biz.

Apprentice Nostalgist: the great mass of elderly people, unable for their all collective political efforts to return the world to an imagined 1950s, can at least remake their own living spaces. With the aid of historical textbooks, vast databases and few 3D printers, you help your employers turn their home into something resembling whatever idealised prior-century year they care to wallow in. 

Architectural Beta-Tester: every new physical and virtual environment is now carefully designed according to nudge theory and the architectural precepts of a generation brought up on video-games, where every element is designed to channel the human ratsoccupants into pre-determined behaviours. Your job is to inhabit architectural mock-ups, while sensors monitor such things as heart rate, visual stimulation hooks and the speed with which the security drones activate in the event you enter while poor.

Depending on circumstances you may find yourself testing physical architecture in a virtual environment or virtual architecture in a physical mock-up, because the near-future is nothing if not painfully meta.

Wage slave part 2: the restructuring!

Part 2 of the unexpectedly popular wage slave series - from Kelp Strainer to Window Cleaner...

This seems like a weirder bunch than what came before. Apparently the second half of the alphabet is stranger than the first!

Kelp Strainer - strain kelp in corporate kelp production facilities, using mechanical devices to check nutrient levels and determine whether said kelp is most appropriate for kibble or kelpboard manufacturing. Fun!

Labour Exchange Attendant - in the age of chipped "free" workers (see the last post) someone has to hand out what jobs are going. Either you'll be standing on a street corner with a bus sign or at at a mandated "labour exchange," where you'll hand out skill chips and bus tickets on a first-come, first serve basis. Illegal immigrant workers and construction workers in the Gulf States already have to put up with these people - chipware just brought them into the mainstream. 

Be a jumped up neo-Hitler and take bribes to let people work at cut rate! Establish a relationship with the mob! Arm yourself! 

"Limo" Driver - be like Jamie Foxx in Collateral or Angela Bassett in Strange Days. Transit clients across the dark city. Have meaningful conversations with the psychopath in the back seat.

Meat Puppet - switch off your brain and let a chipped personality control your body for a period. A methodology associated with prostitutes, but surprisingly common among security personnel, prison guards and waitresses. Bunraku in Shadowrun.

Meat Space Attendant - when half the world has retreated into a fully virtual existence, someone has to attend the comatose bodies. Keep the plumbing going!

Wage slave - entry level jobs for your near future dystopia! (part 1)

Your Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun player character became a gun toting oh-so-cool future criminal for any number of reasons, and unemployment was probably high on that list. 

When half the jobs have been automated and the other half have been outsourced, what are the legitimate options for someone who grew up in the inundated city slums, without access to education or networks? The following list presents a few, in the hope of fleshing out city setting and providing some innocent bystanders to get caught in the inevitable crossfire. 

(As a side note, I compiled about two thirds of this list in a VFTE post back in 2009. I've had to take a few out because they came true...)

3d Printshop Attendant - you work for a shop running a few expensive printers, dealing with jobs that the average home fabricator can't handle. Lose your job if someone gets disguised gun parts past you.

Aid Worker - Fifty million displaced ecogees need food and medicine and paper refugee clothing. You're there to provide it.

Animal Control Officer - hunt down escaped designer pets and malfunctioning cyberanimals. Night vision goggles, chunky motion sensor and a shotgun surprisingly mandatory.

Augmented Reality Designer - design Augmented Reality signs and spaces for small businesses, etc. Not as well paid as you'd imagine because everyone and his uncle (who earns £13563 a week without leaving his desk you could too visit this link) thought this would be their ticket to riches in the early 2020s.