A few days ago I had to buy something at a medical supply store, hardly the kind of establishment I normally frequent. Judging by the products on display in the store, walking aids are their bread and butter. I was not aware, albeit I am not surprised, that there are various price tiers in order to better siphon off money from the elderly. Anyway, I was not going to to buy a walker but I had to talk to one of the women in the store so that I could try on a wrist brace. This is the woman this post is about.

There were three women working in this store, and two of them looked about as attractive as you would imagine, i.e. not at all. The third one was different. Even though she was older, in her mid-30s or perhaps even her early 40s, you immediately saw that she must have been very attractive when she was young. She had all the markers of stereotypical good looks: white, tall, slim, blonde, blue eyes, high cheek bones. As she was chatty and in fact approached me, asking if I needed help, I was close to asking why she is wasting her time working in this store. But because I am not a total autist, I have a vague understanding of socially appropriate behavior.

I was probably the only person not expecting to die of a natural cause within the next ten years who had entered this store in days, if not weeks. There were a a few geriatrics around, so probably talking to me seemed to provide that woman with some reprieve, and a chance for her to tell me that a “good wrist brace needs to be tight but not not too tight”. My interpretation is that something must have seriously gone wrong if a formerly good-looking woman ends up in a store catering to the elderly. For this kind of work you do not need any special qualifications, and surely there were career paths available for her elsewhere, such as joining a big company as a secretary, er, executive assistant, getting bent over by her boss, marrying, and enjoying the rest of her life on easy street. This used to be seen as completely normal, and this very lucrative career path still exists.

Of course you may object that perhaps she is happily married and has kids at home. This could be the case. Yet, if that was the case, then the counter-argument is that she could likely easily have married a man who could have afforded to keep her out of the workforce. There is the cope that having a job, even if you supposedly do not need one, provides more than just some extra money. I am not so sure about that but even if this is the case, where is the fun in working in a store that has probably not more than half a dozen employees, is located in a drab commercial area, and exposes you to basically nothing but old people? Supposedly, one of the benefits of being a high-school teacher is that constant interaction with teenagers keeps your mind sharp. For the sake of the argument, let us assume that this is true, but if it is true, what will taking to primarily elderly people for eight hours a day, day after day, do to you?

Please note that I do not want to bash people who have retail jobs, in particular if you are a guy. Men do not really have the option to find a woman who would offer them a free ride through life. Someone obviously has to do this kind of work, but a lot of people can do it. I bet that the owner of the store was giddy with excitement when that woman walked in, and he happily offered her the job. Yet, so many other women could do such a job. It would not have to have been her. She could have done something else instead. If she had no morals, she could have made more money as a stripper in two years than in her current job in a decade. There are also plenty of jobs were it is enough to be a woman and somewhat easy on the eyes. A few years ago, when the job market was great, she probably could easily have gotten a job in tech, working as an “organizational development coach”, an “agile coach”, or a “product manager”. The women I see with such titles come from sometimes quite unexpected walks of life, and none of them seems to have encountered mathematics beyond the grade school level. I know a middle-aged woman who went from teaching elementary school to getting hired as an “organizational development coach”, several who became “agile coaches” (a six-figure gig!) after going through the flimsiest of training programs, and “product managers” who are about as necessary as this guy in Office Space:

If you see an attractive older woman languishing it is likely either because she made a really dumb decision or something bad happened to her, but even in the latter case, she should have found it easy to get support and get back on her feet. Not even an aging attractive woman should have to do shift-work in retail, in particular in such an unglamorous field as medical supplies. A nondescript retail job is probably one of the worst life outcomes for such a woman. It probably takes a string of bad decisions or a lot of bad luck to end up in such a place. Young, attractive women have all the options, and they do not even need to wait for the best one. All it takes is taking one of the several good options they get.