Very depressed about work situation.

[oldtrader]

She does not want the type of advice she has been given. She wants someone to tell her a magic method, to have great money without any more effort than she is putting out now.

She sees retail as a low end, dead end job. I got out of the Navy (went to the navy when my draft notice was in the post office box) in 1954. I had a wife and 2 children. I needed to earn a living. I looked around and found that all retail is not low pay. I got a job selling furniture (any big ticket commission item can do the same), on commission. Within a year, I was earning $125,000 plus in today's dollars. Not bad for a guy younger than the OP. From there I went into the corporate world and ended up division sales manager over the western half the country. I got tired being transferred around the country, and took classes at a good university for one year while going back to selling furniture for a year and earning over $150,000 a year in today's dollars. At the end of the year in 1972 I got my real estate license, and specialized in investment real estate handling clients similar to how stock brokers handle their clients accounts. That is where I discovered what making real good money was like and stayed there till I finally retired. Only one in the city that was offering this personalized service. I had clients as far away as Iran, back when Iran was under the Shaw and Americans were working there, and Malaysia. I bought, sold, and exchanged real estate for these out of country investors as well as local ones.

I am telling the OP this, because if she looks around there are even Niches in retail, where you can make big money, or you can work for minimum wages. In the 60s, I was working for one of the top department stores in the country. They paid commission in Furniture, Carpets, Major Appliances, and Electronics. Every one of us in those departments were earning $150,000 or more in today's dollars. At the same time the rest of the employees were working for minimum wages. I never worked for minimum wages in my life, even made more working in a gas station while going to high school. In that department store, I have seen customers furnishing a new home where I made more on commission from that one sale than the regular clerks earned in a month.

Just going to college is not enough. It is selecting the right degree if you want to make money. There are degrees that sound like fun job, but only start to pay at $30,000 per year, and there is no way someone can go $100,000 in debt and pay off the college loan as well as live. If you want to make money using a college degree you have to pick the right field. If you want to top $100,000 to start, you need to be a Petroleum Engineer. Next in line, are some IT degrees, but either one needs strong math skills, and I doubt with a 2.5 grade point average, the OP has what is needed to get into those type of fields.

As the OP says, she wants money so she can play and have fun. She is more interested in play, than she is in putting herself out working to make money to be able to play. Until she resets her priorities, she is going to go nowhere. OP there was an old saying, "Shape UP or Ship Out". In the Navy it meant that you put the effort and time to earn a good job, or they would ship you out to the Aleutian Islands (way up off of Alaska) the worst duty the navy had. I spent the first year in the Navy in boot camp, and then in 2 different navy schools. I was only assigned to Naval air stations in California and Hawaii, and was always one in charge. First in charge of the people loading aircraft with cargo, and did some of the passenger supervising. Then for the last year and a half, in charge of an air terminal at a Naval Transport Air Base in California. The air terminal handled all cargo and passengers, just as a civilian air terminal does. I was working 3 ratings above my pay grade, and had people with higher rates working under me as my section leaders. Either you want to get the better jobs, and are willing to put forth the effort to get one, or you can stay at the bottom all your life. I always wanted to be top man not one of the flunkies at the bottom.

Until the OP makes a decision she is willing to put forth the effort to get better jobs, and is willing to give up some fun, playing time to get ahead, she will never progress. She has more dislikes and hates about real jobs, than she has a desire to get ahead. Over the years, I have had people just like her working for me, and people that wanted to progress. It does not take long, before she is type cast by employers, and the employer will look for the up and coming type not the ones that hate real work.

[80skeys]

What the previous Navy guy said is true. In sales you can make a lot of money and it doesn't matter whether you have an education or not. What you need is a sales-type of personality, which a lot of us don't have, but those who do can make very good money. But you still have to work hard at it and you have to learn the ins-and-outs of what you're selling.

But it can give you more money right at the start without needing any real education to speak of. For example, I work in Silicon Valley (as an engineer) and most of the companies I work at have sales teams. I have a friend, she's about 22 years old, and she doesn't know a thing about computers, but she started out at a company I was at, doing some sort of sales that involved cold calling, and she was earning about $55k which included commissions. (Not real good for Silicon Valley, but still it's about double the minimum wage).

But if you don't have a sales-type of personality, then forget it. Probably the best bet for the OP is for her to focus on some hobby that she enjoys, and develop her skills there. Maybe this would even include some trade school, as others have mentioned, depending on what her hobby is.

[s1alker]

I believe when the OP mentions "retail" she is thinking of minimum wage type Walmart clerk jobs. Most people in sales today generally do have a degree, not because the position requires it, but because many graduates find their way into sales if their original plan didn't pan out.

It's very hard to make a living wage without some kind of education past high school. You either need to pick up a skilled trade, or go into the STEM fields like computer science. If you aren't willing or can't educate yourself, then you have to get used to a hand-to-mouth existence of working very low paying jobs.

[patheticpeter]

Work is just coping bro. Get a cute girlfriend and your work will be irrelevant.