Do you judge a guy on his job?

[Got it]

Because I am in the retail/hospitality industry as well I fully am aware the wide scope of positions within that market. I like someone that is well versed, opened minded, and worldly. Because my career is very important to me I want someone else who is equally minded so I don't have to hear complaints about the hours, travel, etc. I am not attracted to someone who is just punching the clock, blue or white collar.

 

So a business owner who owns a construction company? Fantastic. A government worker who is in it till retirement with no aspirations. No thank you.

[GravityMan]

The job you hold, especially if it's in your career field (instead of a low-wage stint meant to be short term for some pocket change), can be an influential factor on your personality and who you are as a person. Many people in sales, marketing and media are pretty outgoing. Many people in engineering and IT are introverted. A lot of lawyers are bold. And so on and so forth. The converse is also true...for example many extroverts who love being social and have a keen interest in real world events tend to gravitate towards journalism. The company you work at can also play a factor in what kind of person you are, especially if you started working there while young (e.g. right after college) and stayed there for awhile. The culture at Microsoft is quite different than the culture at Google or Facebook, for instance. The culture gradually seeps into you and may eventually influence your personality, worldview, lifestyle and values.

 

Certain occupations are more suited to people with street smarts and emotional intelligence, while others are more suited to those with advanced education and book smarts, and still others need a good mix.

 

While it is often wise to try to keep your personal and professional life largely separate...it is almost impossible to completely separate the two. Aspects of each will bleed over and can influence the other.

[serial muse]

Educated, white collar people are not superior to uneducated blue collar people (and, sometimes, they are even less intelligent...because, after all, education doesn't equal intelligence).

 

This is true, but I do find it frustrating that there's an anti-education bias in a lot of this thread (and, let's face it, in much of the U.S. as well). Such that you will indeed have people going around claiming that if you are white-collar you're by definition an ivory tower egghead with no street smarts and nothing to offer society, and that you must on principle despise anyone who isn't. The hell? Why is everything so black and white?

 

Well, I've dated my share of so-called blue-collar guys in the past, and invariably found that they would put down my choices, as stated above. It wasn't like I was throwing my weight around; I'm a pretty shy person IRL and I rarely bring up my education, and in fact tend to downplay it when I'm not in professional circles. And I've never denigrated someone else's choices.

 

But it didn't matter - once the topic of school comes up it's up, I'm not going to outright lie about what I've done and where I've been, and no amount of "to each his own" is going to appease someone who chooses to feel threatened by circumstance. My options seemed to become either agree that intellectual pursuits for their own sake are worse than useless (in order to keep the peace), or break up. Or be cheated on, so that the guy in question could reassert his dominance or something, which also happened.

 

Look, I'm sure there are blue-collar guys out there who wouldn't judge me for my education, but they're not as thick upon the ground as one might think from reading this thread. Blue-collar guys can be super-judgmental, and it's annoying and from my perspective, became not worth it after a while. That's just the way of the world.

Edited July 19, 2013 by serial muse

[Joyvke]

As long as they have a job who cares. My last boyfriend was a welder and I didn't love him any less. Though with the last one I couldn't really have deep conversations and alot of the times he didn't even understand what I was talking about so I had to explain things several times. Though this has nothing to do with someones job, it depends on how their personality is. If you click and you can talk, job doesn't matter .

 

Though if I do get a new boyfriend, I want to go out, I want to go on holidays, I want to feel I'm actually worth it for him in the sense of him wanting to do things with me and not sit in the bedroom and the only things we'd do going out for dinner and sleep/ lay on bed...