Episode 148: That’s really a job??

MAK: Welcome back to Money with Mak & G. Don’t forget to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE and COMMENT. We love hearing from you, so give us a topic, suggestion, or a little bit of feedback.

GRANT: You know Mak, something came to mind this past week when mom and dad were watching TV. Do you remember the clicking, the clapping, and trying to guess the word or phrase?

MAK: Absolutely, it was….

           GRANT/MAK: Wheel……of…. FORTUNE

GRANT: And, at Money with Mak & G, we do like to talk about fortunes.

MAK: We sure do. Dad asked us about Pat Say-jack and Vanna White. They’ve been doing the show since dad was OUR age. That’s literally:

           GRANT/MAK: FOREVER.

GRANT: She’s really good at turning letters. But, with the new technology, she doesn’t even do that anymore. She just has to touch or push on the bottom of the tile and the letter lights up.

MAK: We started to talk about how much she makes to touch each letter to light up the words.

GRANT: It was pretty enlightening. First, we found her salary, which seems to be:

           GRANT/MAK: $10 million per year

MAK: That’s what I found in a couple of places online. It seems like they tape 6 shows per day, and do about 35 days of taping in order to produce about 200 shows per year.

GRANT: Since it’s estimated they do about 7 puzzles on each show, with a wild estimate of 25 letters per puzzle, that means about:

           GRANT/MAK: $270 per letter

MAK: Isn’t that like Midas, who turned everything into gold by touching it.

GRANT: Nice one, she earns money each time she touches a letter. Turns it into money. Nice. I think you did another calculation on her salary.

MAK: Online, someone calculated how far she walks on each show. Each tile is about 2 feet wide on the board. If you have to walk across 14 letters and back, that’s 28’ per letter guessed.

GRANT: That’s 420 feet per puzzle, and it sounds like she’s done over 7,000 shows. If the math is right, she’s walked about 2,500 miles from the beginning.

MAK: Based on her current salary and the amount she walks in a season, that’s about $150,000 per mile, or done another way $1,600 per MINUTE.

GRANT: That’s pretty amazing. Just goes to show that some jobs out there pay a lot and you may have never thought they existed.

MAK: Sometimes, you don’t want to think about a job, because it might be really difficult, strange, disgusting, or extra messy. Ever heard of Mike Rowe he did a show called Dirty Jobs where he works right alongside someone doing these jobs. He did over 150 episodes.

GRANT: I saw a trailer that said.. “He could be processing smelly seafood in a fish factory, collecting bat guano (that’s poop) for some kind of prized fertilizer, or cleaning septic tanks (you know, a big tank that holds all the human poop).” I never thought about it, but I guess septic tanks need to be cleaned too.

MAK: It does get nasty, and he’s even been on camera creating his own fish food when making chum. That’s ground fish, which smells terrible, squirting blood, and looks horrible. And, I’m NOT talking about Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream either!

GRANT: I read that some jobs, like taxidermy, or studying how bodies become worm food were just too gross to do. But, there are a lot of jobs that pay pretty well, because nobody wants to do them.

MAK: Ok, first I have to say “super gross” on the topics they didn’t use. I’m ok with erasing that from my brain permanently. How about we name of few of these jobs that pay well.

GRANT: Sounds like a good idea. I’ll start. You and I both know that mom hates those little creatures that get into your hair and lay eggs.

MAK: Gross!!! That’s lice. This job is NOT for me, but it’s really needed. It’s a professional head lice remover. You actually work on kids’ hair and get the lice out. Yes, pretty nasty.

GRANT: But, some people don’t care at all, and see it as necessary, helping people get their sanity back and it pays $50,000 per year.

MAK: Ok, this one’s not gross, dad would love it, but some people may not even know it’s a real job. I may butcher this word, but it’s a Suh-moll-ee-ay. It’s a “wine steward”.

GRANT: Isn’t that the one where it’s not just the pay of the job, but all the bene’s you get? You get to taste all kinds of wine, pick the ones you like and then sell them in a restaurant.

MAK: That’s the one. Sometimes if they’re really good, they can use their awesome taste buds for other things, like rating wine. You have to really get the lingo and the taste down.

GRANT: Don’t you say stuff like…”That wine is buttery, with an oaky vanilla flavor, with a little smoke, a hint of chocolate, and a smooth finish?

MAK: That sounds so impressive, but you also have to say it has really good legs too. Ok, I have no idea what that means, but pays around $60,000. I’d still like to be a Chocolate Taster.

GRANT: That’s a real job. I found that a candy company listed a job for chocolate tasters on LinkedIn several years ago, got 6,000 applications and it was the 5th most viewed job post.

MAK: I saw one job posting last year for about $60,000. No food allergies, but you need a high school diploma and some other skills because you have to communicate well.

GRANT: You may have to go to school, and if you want to be a “Master”, you help make chocolates, and having chemistry is a good idea. Dad showed me a job post just 15 days ago for a video game tester.

MAK: Ok, that sounds perfect for ANY teenage boy. But, we’re getting off track. Jobs that pay well, but not necessarily the most desirable. I’m sure you’ve seen those port-a-potties.

GRANT: You mean the ones at outdoor festivals, on job sites, and at concerts? Yep, I know those. Dropping those off and picking them up doesn’t sound like a bad job.

MAK: Welllllllll. What happens when people use them and they fill up, but the outdoor festival isn’t over?

GRANT: ohhhhhh. Someone has to go there and suck out the water and solid waste?

MAK: You got. Not the same as a video game tester, for sure. You do about 50-60 of them a day. You probably wouldn’t be good with it, since you’re not very good at using a vacuum!

GRANT: Ha, ha. But, it’s a solid $60,000. Dad had a friend who worked in a sewer his whole life, and he said his dad never got sick because his dad built up such great resistance. Weird huh?

MAK: That is. I read a garbage collector pays about the same, and from what I see in our neighborhood, the truck comes up, and arm grabs the can and dumps it in the truck.

GRANT: You never have to leave the truck. That’s not bad at all.

MAK: I got one that I’m not sure I completely believe, that we might be able to start doing now. It’s a Golf Ball Diver. You’d find the white gold on the bottom of lakes and ponds.

GRANT: Warren Buffet sold golf balls he found when a kid, but he didn’t dive for them. That’s one of the things that earned him over $50,000 before he was sixteen.

MAK: We can use our scuba certification license. And, get this. It says it pays from $200/day up to $150,000 per year. INSANE!!!

GRANT: Ok, there are about 300 million balls lost a year. I think most by Uncle Tony. But, you don’t see more than a foot or two in front of you. Plus water snakes, crocodiles, and snapping turtles.

MAK: Really?

GRANT: Jacques van der Sandt was killed in a national park in South Africa a while ago doing it. Plus snapping turtles, in the Midwest can snap onto ANY appendage. They can take it right off.

MAK: That’s no fun. Hey, why don’t we do a few more potential jobs next week. This was interesting.

GRANT: Sounds good to me. Time to say goodbye. We’ll see you next week for more…..

GRANT/MAK: Money with Mak & G. Bye!