(1) What are some of the worst jobs you know about? Why are they bad jobs? Why do people want these jobs?

Telemarketer, embalmer, grave digger, and janitor are a few of the worst jobs that I can think of. There are several reasons why these are less than desirable career fields. I think the poor job design in particular is to blame. Good job design consists of skill variety, job identity, job significance, autonomy, and feedback (Heizer & Render). These jobs have few or none of these attributes. First off let’s talk about skill variety. These jobs, with the exception of the embalmer, are very low skill jobs. They involve doing one basic task, for example calling random phone numbers or digging graves. The next two issues are job identity and significance. While these jobs are specific enough, it is hard to find the real significance in your job as a janitor. Indeed, you do keep the place clean for everyone else, but couldn’t they do that themselves? Autonomy, is a part of all of these jobs, maybe a little too much. Being alone in the work place all the time can be quite difficult since humans are social creatures with a need to interact. The final aspect is good feedback. With these being mostly autonomous jobs, it is unlikely that feedback is provided. As you can see, job design can play a factor is making a job worse than it already is. Why would someone take these jobs? There are undesirable jobs all around the world, and someone has to do them. Maybe the telemarketer loves to talk, and this is an outlet for his need to talk. Or the embalmer and grave digger are simply entering into the family business, and this is perfectly normal for them. The janitor may have a compulsive need to clean all the time, and this job allows him to do just that. Everyone’s definition of what is a good or bad job is different, however, job design does play a factor is