What about the public service? Pay isn't too bad (here in Oz at least!) & your customer service skills will be looked upon favorably (again here at least!). Add to that usually no night or weekend work required! At my office, quite a few of us have varied backgrounds, engineers, IT people, doctors, lawyers, we even had a former Ansett pilot work with us for a bit when they went bust. He soon left to join QF to fly A330's...