Those new service sector jobs — the world of the caddy

I enjoyed this piece by Sarah Turcotte:

Tour caddies are well-compensated. The winning looper this week will pocket a nice $144,000. But they earn that 10 percent. A long-running joke among caddies is that there are only three rules: Show up, keep up and shut up. Truth is, their jobs might be tougher than the players’. Well maybe not quite, but it’s close. Caddies are part pack mule, part meteorologist, part psychologist (BIG part), part mathematician, part scapegoat, part psychic and sometimes even part bartender. When I played in the LPGA’s Michelob Ultra Open a few years back, a veteran caddie suggested to the man on my bag a little Drambuie and Sprite to calm my nerves. (Full disclosure: He did have a water bottle filled with Chardonnay available at all times. We never used it, but it was a comfort knowing it was there.)

Caddies do not appear to do very much, yet most people could not hold a job as an effective caddy for a good golf professional.  This, in a nutshell, is why the transition toward the new service sector jobs will not run smoothly for everybody.

And even if you really do make the grade, “…job security for caddies is non-existent.”

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