[cableshaft]

I miss my fast food job (and especially my retail job), to a certain extent. I also worked in a warehouse and a factory for a bit, and there are certain things I miss about those as well. I don't miss the low pay though. And my health is no longer good enough (in part because I've been too sedentary in office jobs the past 20 years) that I can no longer stand for hours at a time (not even that, I can no longer stand in place for more than a few minutes at a time).

I could completely forget about my job when I got home, didn't have to somewhat keep a framework of some giant corporate spaghetti code soup in my head to a certain extent for months or years on end, and interacted with people way, way more than I do now, and made deeper friendships with my coworkers.

Also there was no risk of me working on something for six months and it get cancelled or shelved before it gets used by anyone. At least in fast food and retail jobs you're helping multiple people (sometimes hundreds of people) every day. In my corporate career I've often ended up working on software that only has a handful of high paying clients, or only used internally and not client facing.

If I could justify the insane pay cut and could manage it physically I'd probably do something like be a barista nowadays. Or be a teacher, maybe.