Context: 25 year old male. I've worked the same shitty full time office job for ~8 years. After all this time, I get paid $14.50 per hour, which equates to $30,160 per year. I do the same meticulous shit every day. I am on average 10 years younger than my coworkers. They all talk down to me. Nobody treats me with respect, and I can tell that there is almost no room for any "career" in this field. If I stay here, I will essentially be a monkey doing the same data entry task and never grow. Minimum wage in my state is $7.25 so even though my 30K a year seems like shit, it's substantially above the poverty tier that is minimum wage. Housing and grocery costs where I live are 11% below the national average. I can get by with my salary, but I end up saving very little.

An old friend has been working as a cop for almost a year, and I went on a ridealong with him the other day. It was quite fun, and almost every part of the day was interesting, and I spent 12 hours with him. He also works four 12 hour shifts with 3 days off, which is more attractive than five 8 hour days. He also gets 4 hours per week of paid time to work out or go to school. The minimum starting salary is $45,000 per year, so $15K pay raise (excluding taxes).

I'm seriously considering looking into this as a potential career change. I'm just curious if this would have a negative long term impact on my future career prospects. Here are some negatives I could see:

  • A much more high risk job, relative to the average job.
  • Government dictates your salary based off of schedules instead of merit. Pay increases are more stable, but likely not large.
  • My youth and vigor isn't going to last forever, and this could cause problems down the line if my job is physically demanding.
  • Potential to get a bad shift which would fuck my internal clock, such as a midnight shift.

The positives would be:

  • Interesting job where every day is unique and active. Major change from my current job.
  • A substantial increase in pay
  • A new chance to show my work ethic and earn the respect of coworkers, instead of being handed a job as a kid and having that kind of unearned/tainted relationship with coworkers.
  • A respectable job that would be much more polarizing and easier to explain than "I work for XYZ contracting company and I am basically a data entry monkey".

I know that I definitely need to change my job soon. I'm not good enough at programming to get a job doing it, and that is the only thing I think I would be decent enough at to get a job in.

Could a career in law enforcement be a sensible choice? I'm asking because I don't want to look at it through rose colored glasses.