Special Agent Trainee. GS-4 Salary: $40,000 or less

Greeting your coworkers with a hearty good morning and a hundred-dollar grin, you drop each breakfast bag on the appropriate desk. Back at your shared space, you realize you lost yours somewhere along the way. Good thing you packed that banana nut bar.

Junior Special Agent. GS-5 Salary: $70,000

Your workspace is an abstract canvas of data, analytics, numbers, files, and coffee stains. Your coworker Bob walks by and reminds you that things called "computers" exist. You wave as he passes, ending with a look that's probably not workplace-appropriate.

Senior Special Agent. GS-7 Salary: $90,000

"Surprise!" shout your coworkers as they present you with a cake, the number 100 standing tall in the center of the delicious cream cheese frosting. You give the best "you guys I had no idea" you can muster, and take your first bite of 100 sweet victories.

Task Force Director. Salary: $120,000

Special Agents Smith and Jones report that they were able to recover around $500,000 from the drug runners. You walk over to the white board that shows a large drawing of a thermostat with numbers to the left. Taking a red marker, you fill in the final bit at the top. You smile, because you hit $10 million in recovered money mark, which means one thing: pizza party for the office.

Retired at age fifty. Salary: $0 (but a great pension and loads of savings)

Putting the nozzle back in its holster, you wipe a little condensation off the gas tank of your motorcycle. You take another look at the GPS before you head back off down the road, searching for a taco stand with what that hippie in Arkansas called "the best carnitas tacos in the entire galaxy, man."