Apprentice Stonemason. Salary: $25,000 or less

You wake up early and bounce out of bed because your back hasn't been destroyed by decades of stress and heavy lifting. Everyone at work calls you Fresh Meat. Everybody except Paul, of course, but nobody talks to Paul.

Quarryman. Salary: $30,000

Most of your day consists of repeatedly hitting a rock with a powerful sledgehammer and/or pickaxe. When people ask you what you do for a living, you hide the urge to shout "Hulk Smash!"

Fixer Mason. Salary: $40,000

Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all they have to do is call and you'll be there―except of course when it snows, rains, sleets, or hails. You work outside with heavy machinery, and you're not taking any chances.

Banker Mason. Salary: $55,000

You now work inside, shaping and prefabricating stones to fit the blueprints for a building that you may never see in person. You've got a team of masons underneath you, working in unison to make big hunks of marble into tiles for a new superstructure. Or maybe it was a supermarket. You never can be sure.

Carver Mason. Salary: $80,000

You've discovered a knack for really intricate floral designs for stone tablets being used in water gardens. You travel the state selling your skills to the highest bidders, of which there are many. When the governor needs a new fountain for the statehouse lawn, he calls you to carve the state seal into the base. You may or may not have also carved your initials (you totally did).