True tales of occupational horror

When I was a little girl in South Korea, the generic threat to "If you don't do your homework..." was that one would grow up to be the garbage man.  Of course, now I understand that sanitation workers can be paid the upper limit of their salary range, plus government benefits.  Instead, I will regale you with real scary stories of what happened to people we know.

Case #1: This prematurely-aged lady spent her youth in a rock band and not going to school.  The highlight of this career was to open for Sonic Youth, which, I admit, is pretty cool.  But the lack of academic pursuit drove her to become a heroin addict, and now she works at our local Trader Joe's.*

*Don't get me wrong.  Trader Joe's is my favorite place to buy groceries.  But our friend, who was once this lady's roommate, told us that she once ran out into the street, completely naked, and tried to kill her boyfriend with a kitchen knife...  BOO!

Case #2:  A promising young man once received a full college scholarship thanks to his talent at swimming.  But then!  "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2" came out for the Playstation (this is a video game) and the fellow dropped out of college.  Having nowhere to go, he was then conned by a job offer into becoming a mortician (he didn't realize that it was an apprenticeship).  Not long afterwards, the man was fired when the funeral home was bought out by a national corporation.  He now works at a cafe with the friend from the footnote to Case #1, who he detests.

Case #3:  There is this fellow who went to join the army instead of going to college.  He was then discharged and became a nighttime taxi driver at the age of 26.  Instead of trying to get his degree, he went to porn theaters and became obssessed with an underage prostitute...  Uh, I must be thinking of something else.

Case #4: This is more of a tale of general neglect than just homework.  Your uncle Ben once left your grandparents' nice Audi on some street in Boston for several months without ever checking up on the car.  When he finally remembered, he searched high and low for the Audi.  At last, he learned that the car was impounded and then crunched into a small, metal square.  To add insult to injury, your grandparents were billed for the car demolition.  And this is why you have a crappy car now.  When you have a lot of money from studying hard, you can buy your own Audi.