14 Absolutely Horrible Jobs You Should Avoid

When you’re ready for your career’s next step, your first instinct is probably to research what’s out there! But, while you’re searching through those options, you’ve got to make sure you avoid these 14 horrible jobs … 

Each of these unethical professions is shady, corrupt, and- sometimes- evil.

It’s completely natural to feel a level of desperation when you’re job hunting and changing careers— I’ve definitely been there.

Compromising your values to get out of it is not the solution. Most likely, you’ll end up searching for a new career in less than a year anyways.

The key to creating your dream career is knowing your passions, skills, and values and aligning each step of your career with them.

It’s totally fair to feel lost and dodging these horrible jobs makes it easier to get back on track!

1. The top horrible job: Police Officer

The Black community has known for centuries the US’ police system is violent and oppressive. Unfortunately, it only started becoming a national conversation in the last decade.

The police have brutally murdered Black children, teenagers, and adults without apology or remorse, because our entire system is built on white supremacy.

Most white people don’t realize our modern criminal justice system started as “Slave Patrols.” Even though most forms of slavery were made illegal, the anti-Blackness it was created with just became disguised- not eliminated.

Since the entire system is rooted in dehumanization, violence, and white supremacy, it’s not possible to be a “good” police officer,

“All cruelty begins with dehumanization — not seeing the face of the other, not seeing the whole humanity of the other. A cultural regime of dehumanization has been constructed in many police departments. In that fertile ground, racial biases can spread and become entrenched.” (Quote from the linked article above)

Until we defund and abolish our current criminal justice system and construct a new, positive one, being a police officer is an unethical, horrible job.

2. Lobbyist

Ask yourself, “Does it make sense that large corporations can hire people to convince politicians to vote in their favor?”

Uhm…. no! But that’s what lobbying is! 

Just imagine things the wealthiest corporations in the world — oil drillers, tech giants, banks, and weapons manufacturers — could be paying politicians to support.

Yeah, it’s pretty scary. So while we all work toward making that controversial job non-existent, at least avoid it.

Lobbyist is definitely one of the worst, most hated jobs you could take!

3. Televangelist Cold Caller

Really, all positions with televangelists are shady jobs. Televangelists themselves have one of the most evil jobs, tbh.

By abusing vulnerable people’s religious beliefs —  aka their perception of their eternal life — you hold a lot of power over them.

Any religious language is the most powerful form of communication, so people using it for their own personal profit is incredibly harmful.

Televangelists actually do a lot more than just spout nonsense on an obscure TV channel like you might think. They have entire workforces committed to effectively persuading people out of their hard-earned cash.

If you want to learn more about how televangelists proactively scam people for their own gain, check out this amazing deep dive by John Oliver:

I def learned a lot when I watched that special! had no idea televangelists and their employees were that calculated and powerful.

Fun side story: when my dad was in his 20s, he tried going to a televangelist for help. First, the guy told them that, “Everyone not in this room is going to HELL.” Which makes me laugh, because that’s maybe 100 people not going to hell? Out of the entire world? Amazing. 

After that, my dad got called on stage and spoke into the microphone about his problems. Then, the guy secretly pushed him hard to the ground and yelled to the audience that the Holy Spirit had done it and now he was cured. My dad was rushed off stage and couldn’t believe the man had faked the whole thing to the audience.

Even though my dad escaped without giving money, a lot of people don’t have the same “behind the scenes” experience he got. Many, unfortunately, end up convinced their “tithes” will guarantee them future prosperity, as long as they give enough money.

Televangelists and any jobs for them are definitely unethical and immoral careers.

4. Weapons Engineer

I feel like this horrible job is pretty self explanatory. Weapons cause destruction and death. Engineers who design them are creating new, increasingly violent ways for people to harm each other. Therefore, weapons engineers are literally the architects of violence.

Personally, I don’t see why someone would do all of the work to become an engineer just to use that incredible knowledge on one of the most evil jobs imaginable.

If you’re interested in engineering, use your skills for good! Build roller coasters, fun children’s hospitals, or like a bunch of super cool treehouses!! There are endless options for engineers, so there’s no reason to take one of the most unethical jobs in the industry.

The next one of our horrible jobs is also in engineering, but this one is computer engineering… 

5. Engineering & Marketing for JUUL, Amazon, or Facebook

Honestly, there are a bunch of companies I could add to this list. Pretty much any Big Tech company is ethically questionable, but there are 3 that stand out:

• JUUL intentionally created and marketed its products for teenagers as a safe & not harmful alternative to smoking cigarettes. Unfortunately, that’s a lie, but JUUL didn’t admit to it until after thousands of teens were addicted.

• There’s a pretty much endless supply of reasons that Amazon is evil, but we don’t have time, so I’ll stick with the ones that stand out: they don’t let their warehouse workers- including pregnant ones- take bathroom breaks, they’ve repeatedly squashed legal efforts from their workers to unionize, and they purposefully steal ideas from thriving small businesses so they can take them over. 
  
  I want to make it clear: I am not talking about Amazon warehouse workers, delivery drivers, or anyone else in a similar position. This is about the people who make the that lead to the abuse of workers and small businesses.

• If the 2016 election taught us anything, it’s that social media platforms, especially Facebook, have gained way too much power. By creating hyper-specific ads, rewarding controversial & hateful content, and selling our personal data, Facebook is actively controlling and destroying democracy.
  
  If you’re interested in learning more about how Facebook and Trump manipulated the 2016 election using an actual weapons grade propaganda strategy, I strongly recommend The Great Hack on Netflix. Tbh, the whole Cambridge Analytica/ data mining thing totally confused me until I watched it!

Again, if you have incredible computer engineering or marketing skills, don’t waste them on one of the many unethical jobs at a Big Tech company. You’re so much better than that, bestie!!

6. Payday Lender

The entire concept of payday lending is also messed up. Whoever invented it was basically like, 

“Oh a large percentage of people can’t afford to live or eat on minimum wage. Instead of fighting for higher wages or trying to actually help them, I’m gonna exploit their desperation by giving them the money from their paychecks early and then charge them an outrageous interest and add on a bunch of hidden fees, so I can drag them deeper into poverty.”

Yeah, that’s super effed. 

Honestly, so many of the unethical and most hated jobs involve taking advantage of the many ways our systems force people into poverty and then keep them there.

These professions realize the system is leaving people poor and desperate, and they actively decide to capitalize on that by disguising their greed as service. 

Unfortunately, poverty is profitable for these companies, so they don’t actually want to lift people out of the poverty cycle. Payday lenders are included in that group, which definitely makes it one of the most horrible jobs.

7. Psychics/ Mediums

Yep, I said it. Psychics are a shady job and, well, fake.

Psychics and mediums use manipulation and deception to convince vulnerable or grieving people to spend money to gain access to the impossible: a lost loved one or a guarantee of future happiness.

Yes, there are seemingly incredible videos that make it seem like psychics and mediums do have an ability to connect with something the rest of us can’t. But, just like a great magic trick, it’s an illusion. 

For a deep dive on the methods psychics and mediums use to deceive people, check out this John Oliver episode:

Btw, if you haven’t noticed, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is my favorite show. Tbh, like 47% of this list was inspired by an episode. I’m trying not only to link his videos, so I’m finding other sources for them. But yeah, I love John Oliver and you too can learn a lot from his hilarious show and beautiful face. Forget I said that last part.

8. Contractor who sells PACE

This morally questionable job is another one that seems good on the surface: homeowners can get a lower price on solar panels through a special loan, and the cost of the loan gets absorbed in the savings on energy costs from the solar panels.

However, there are a lot of issues with this program- to the point where people have actually lost their homes because of how messed up things got.

The problems are a little tough for me to explain myself because, tbh, all this loan financial type stuff is not my thing. So, here’s a quick breakdown courtesy of this article:

“1. PACE loans are generally offered by the contractors who will perform the renovation, meaning people who are not trained in finance are touting a complex loan tied to property taxes.

2. There is no requirement that an independent energy audit be done to the home before the installation or renovation. That means there’s no way for a homeowner to truly assess if the energy savings are worth the financial burden of obtaining a PACE loan.

3. PACE administrators often market them by claiming ‘the loan is on the house, not on you.’ The problem, however, is that this…is now attached to the property – if the homeowner goes to sell the property before fully paying the PACE loan, the assessment transfers to the buyer [making it harder to sell].”

Sure, it’s unlikely you were questioning this particular horrible job, but it’s always good to know what to look out for!

9. Mobile Home Manufacturer

This is another one of the morally questionable careers you might not expect. On the surface, mobile homes seem like a great alternative to buying a house.

However, unlike a house, mobile homes decrease in value over time.

Think of them like cars- once you “drive it off the lot,” the value drastically lowers and never stops. The value of a house can increase with care, renovations, and more.

Also, once mobile homes are placed, they aren’t actually movable anymore. They settle into the land they’re placed on, so they essentially turn into houses without the value.

The people who make and sell mobile homes know all of this, but purposefully hide it from their customers. 

This was all news to me until I- you guessed it- watched a John Oliver episode about it! Check it out here and let me know if it surprises you too!

Like I mentioned before, a lot of these horrible jobs involve someone realizing a problem in our system — housing is expensive —  and, rather than make a genuine effort to change the circumstances, they find a way to exploit the people struggling to afford housing.

PS Don’t ya think housing should be a human right?! Learn more about that here!

10. Landlord

Remember how I said housing should be a human right? 

Landlords don’t agree, which is why they purchase houses, charge as much as they want for someone to live there, and then raise the price every year until a large percentage of their tenant’s paychecks are going in their pockets. 

And all they had to do was buy a house once a long time ago.

If we had rent control and a high quality public housing system, then, maybe, being a landlord wouldn’t be one of the horrible jobs. Until then, it definitely is.

11. NSA/ CIA/ FBI Agent

Let me start by saying: there’s over 100 years of history here and it’s all unethical, so it’s impossible to sum it up right here. 

Instead, let’s do a few bullet points of select examples with links to learn more:

• The NSA and massive government surveillance is definitely a complicated topic. It’s not possible to have full privacy and full security, so how do we find the right balance? Well, whatever the right combo is, we haven’t found it yet. Read more about the NSA’s unprecedented access to our private info (including phone calls) here.
  
• The CIA has a long history of brutally abusing people around the world and disguising it as “freedom fighting.” This article sums up just 1 way the CIA  has been abusive and inhumane. The article does discuss physical, mental, and sexual violence, so only read it if you’re in the right mental space for that type of information.
  
• Just like the other 2 federal agencies, the FBI has systematically done harm to marginalized groups. This report shows how the FBI has expanded its authority to have an unprecedented amount of power and increasingly large domestic surveillance operations.

Overall, any job with the NSA, CIA, or FBI is unethical and you should definitely avoid them!

12. Paparazzi / Tabloid Writer

Even though flipping through trashy celeb magazines in the grocery store checkout line is entertaining (guilty!), the writers and photographers for them aren’t getting that content ethically.

There are a lot of examples of paparazzi & tabloid writers crossing boundaries and harassing celebrities, including Anne Hathaway, North West, and Katy Perry.

Luckily, if you’re interested in celebrity journalism, there are plenty of ethical ways to do it. The key is working for a publication that mirrors your personal boundaries and follows a journalistic code of ethics.

13. Bounty Hunter

I feel like this horrible job speaks for itself, if ya look at it closely. 

Regular people, with basically no training, are made pseudo-deputies to chase down people who are too poor to pay back a bail bondsman. They’re even allowed to carry handcuffs and weapons. And, to top it off, they can legally break into your house. 

Lemme repeat that: private companies can hire random private citizens to legally carry weapons, break into homes, & arrest people for not paying their bills.

Yes, it’s only bail bond businesses that can do this, but still… is the concept of bail bondsman, and even bail itself, ethical? Absolutely not.

This is definitely one of the extreme examples of how we criminalize the poor: 

1. You’re charged to get out of prison to await trial (innocent or guilty)
2. You can’t afford the bail, so your freedom is held hostage for a ransom by the government
3. A business across the street offers to lend you money and being in debt is better than being in prison, so you agree
4. You get out of prison, but fall behind on your payments because you lost your job or any other understandable reason
5.  The business that lent you money LITERALLY HIRES PEOPLE TO HUNT YOU DOWN AND BREAK INTO YOUR HOUSE WITH GUNS.

Now, was any of that fair? Uhhhhhhhhhhhh nope! Not at all!!

Is that last step pretty fucking extreme, unnecessary, and traumatizing? Yep, yep it is!!

So, while we work to abolish our entire system of criminalizing the poor, do the very minimum by not becoming a bounty hunter.

14. Diet/ Weight Loss Sales

Oooooooooooof, I don’t even know where to start with this morally questionable job.

Something about this horrible job hits differently, honestly —  maybe because it typically affects every one of us in a very deep and personal way throughout our lives? 

Diet culture starts influencing us from the time we can first understand a frustrated adult saying the words “I feel fat.” After that, it never really stops, which is very intentional.

Companies profit by selling us the lies of weight loss products like “tummy” teas and lollipops, waist trainers, keto crap, endless “innovative” diets, and anything else that claims:

1. Any ounce of fat is unhealthy & ugly
2. This is the magical cure to make you as small as you want

But both of those points will always be false: fat is natural, beautiful, and healthy, and you were born to take up space.

I’ll never understand why we’re told to spend so much of our limited time on earth focused on making ourselves as small as possible. I want to take up space. I want to be free to enjoy delicious food without guilt. I want to love and appreciate my body without feeling shame. And I want that for all of us.

While we do the hard inner work of deprogramming ourselves from diet culture, stay away from taking any of the evil jobs that promote it.

When you’re exploring careers, it’s tough to know which paths are worth looking into and which you should avoid no matter what. I know sometimes it’s hard to have boundaries when you need cash fast, but sticking to your values is an essential part of creating your dream career. These 14 horrible jobs are ones you should never take, because they’re unethical, shady, and harmful. Instead, learn how to explore careers that line up with your values, skills, and passions, so you never have to compromise YOU! 

Take my free job search workshop to get the secrets to exploring careers like a pro!!