so, what do you do?

does anyone else get sick of answering that question?
i've been thinking about employment lately so that gets to be our topic for the week- career/job/something to keep one busy or whatever, and why people do the jobs they do. the point of most of my thinking has pointed out that the vast majority of employment positions today are purely superfluous, and don't provide much (if any) actual life-sustaining value. i excuse of course, doctors, ummm, doctors, farmers, and for some reason, movie stars from that generalization.
seriously, i work in hr. imagine trying to explain to a cave-person that i shuffle around papers with information about other employees...(i don't think i could even begin to explain employment, let alone a corporation).
or that my husband is a personal trainier. yes, he helps people be healthy - people like me who don't do any real manual labor for their sustenance, and need his help not to get fast food diseases like high blood pressure and atherosclerosis that they wouldn't get if they would go shovel some dirt or rake hay in the great outdoors instead of typing.
don't get me wrong, i love my job pushing papers, and i don't mean to be hypocritical - but i used to get paid for hard work, and i just can't help but notice that i've gotten in worse shape since i got my desk (as opposed to moving furniture at the job i used to have). i wonder what i'd do if our society hadn't turned in the direction it has. i know that i make lots of references to "back in the day" but the past just fascinates me. for thousands of years, humanity had so few employment options: serf, soldier, farmer, hooker, blacksmith, butcher, baker, candle-stick maker... you get the idea. notice how these are all what we'd call "blue collar jobs"?
it's like we've made our whole society into the aristocracy. back then, most people lived in shacks and wore fleas. now we've all got internet and a place with carpet, and if we hate a job and walk out, well, we could probably weasel our way into some government funds to tide us over until we get another job.
so i like the fact that our society lets people pay people for handling their funds and paying other people who help people that are in bad shape because of not working with their body get in better shape. (can anyone say run-on sentence?) i like that we have money instead of getting paid in sheep or clam shells. i like the way things are going - for the most part.
of course, then we get into unions and labor laws, and i go off on angry rants. i love what unions were able to do for the poor abused workers at factories back in the day. i hate that unions run practically every grocery store now and that joining them is mandatory, and then they tell people when and what for to strike.
i like that labor laws exist. i hate the loopholes, that they're so difficult to enforce, and that management, for the most part, doesn't care. has anyone out there ever worked somewhere that they got to take all the breaks they should have? i think that if i ever get high enough up in management again, that my budget will suck, but dammit everyone will follow the labor code with breaks at all the right times and overtime pay and the whole bit. dammit.
did i mention that we're in the middle of a who-gets-what-break-when conflict at my ymca? blah, i tell you - BLAH! if everyone would just follow the rules like they taught us in sesame street, everything would be hunky-dory and i'd skip off into the sunset, at least until i ran out of breath.