Today in jobs that are not real jobs:

If you see it and don't like it, you
have no one to blame but these guys.

So I just wanted Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and--yes, I agree the title is dumb. Not just because it assumes that audiences can't draw a line between two movies starting Daniel Craig as a detective with the same name without some lame subtitle. It's inappropriate as well, since the movie's story is, beyond Craig's character, unrelated to Knives Out. Oh, and to be clear I don't review movies, that's not what this is. I don't want to hear about it if you watch it and don't like it.

Idle rich, debonair, and often
a high functioning alcoholic.

Where were we? Right, Glass Onion. I liked it. Knives Out was better, but whatever, it was good. Watch it, don't watch it. You do you. Anyway, in the movie--and don't worry, I'm not spoiling anything here--Daniel Craig's character, Benoit Blanc, is referred to by both himself and others as "the world's greatest detective." As though that's just a thing someone can be: A rich, debonair socialite who just solves crimes in their ample free time. Like it's a job or something, and the question occurred to me: is it? A job that is. And for a brief moment I thought: sure, it's got to be, right? 

Pictured: the tedious, thankless
reality of detective work.

Sure, police detectives are a thing and I suspect the reality of the profession is way less exciting than say, Law and Order or those weird Scandinavian crime shows would have us believe. Private detectives exist as well, although it's a profession that conjures a certain image. Right? Like that of a slovenly, middle aged man chain smoking in 1988 Cutlass Supreme whilst taking photos of someone's cheating spouse with a telescopic lens. But either way, solving crime is almost certainly 99% paperwork and research and 0% inviting suspects into the parlor to dramatically reveal who the real killer is.

"J'accuse!"

-like, no one ever

The consulting detective who, as a hobby, unravels elaborate murders perpetrated by criminal masterminds on a weekly basis is nonsense. And I suppose if you were to have asked me before this realization if there was such a profession, I would genuinely have had to think about it for a minute. We're all so soaked in crime fiction, the idea of detective as job description (at least in the way it's portrayed on TV or in movies) seems totally normal, you know until you scrutinize it in any way. 

And look, this is in no way a criticism of Glass Onion, or detective stories in general, but it's objectively weird that we all just kind of accept these characters without question. Also, it's kind of disappointing that they don't really exist.

On the other hand, the sheer number of murders needed to keep a single
consulting detective busy, much less enough to warrant an entire profession
would leave the world dangerously underpopulated so, maybe it's for the best?