The 7 Types of Friend Everyone Needs

The Friend With a Pickup Truck

Everyone has to move sometime, and even if you don't, you probably are going to go on Craigslist and buy a TV or a couch or a caged bear sometime, and have to pick it up. Sooner or later, you are going to reach the limit of what you can carry in the trunk with the backseats folded down.

That's where the friend with the pickup truck comes in. You can take that IKEA box or bear cage that you've been unsuccessfully trying to stuff in your Civic for the past hour and just toss it in their truckbed.

This is a friendship you really have to be careful with, though. Pickup truck owners in circles of friends who mostly don't have pickup trucks usually tend to feel a little used, especially if they have trouble saying no. If you spot a look of terror in their eyes when you ask, "Hey, you have a pickup truck, don't you?" you might want to step lightly.

You can bake them some cookies or take them out to dinner, but you probably want to make sure you can pay them back with something that's equally hard on you and helpful for them, like helping them hide a prostitute they killed, or maybe just something else on this list.

If you're in high school, this can probably be expanded to just "the friend with a car."

The Friend Who "Knows About Computers"

This is the Internet, so I'm sure a lot of you are into computers yourselves, but there's also a lot of people like me who get bored to tears reading about technical details of graphics cards, processors, audio equipment and the like. It's not that we're necessarily too dumb to understand the principles, but I personally can't stay awake while comparing benchmark tests on Tom's Hardware or reading a debate on the best way to overclock something.

I do need to occasionally buy a computer or computer parts, in order to play a fun game or do some 3D graphics work, which, while also technical, apparently requires a totally different kind of brain than the kind that is fascinated by hardware specs.

"But you can get all that information on the Internet now," you might say. "Unless you are some kind of slow grandma type who doesn't know what Google is." But it's not exactly right at your fingertips. Outside of the occasional CNET or PC Magazine comparison article (which is so occasional that the category you're looking for is usually a year or so out of date), there's nowhere you can go to find out quickly what's the "best" printer or monitor.

Tom's Hardware might have tests on three of the things you're looking at, while CNET has a brief comparison of five things from last year, only two of which are still on the market, while you have to piece together how good the other ones are based on a hodgepodge of single reviews from random other sites and some shitty, unreliable user reviews.

This is why I had Pat. Pat was a friend of mine who would read this stuff all the time and loved it. I could have made fun of him for enjoying something I thought was boring, or I could tell him I needed a new graphics card that could play World of Warcraft but didn't need to play Crysis (this was a while ago) and 10 minutes later he would send me a link of exactly the right thing to get, and I would learn to celebrate the differences that make us human. Making fun of people for liking different things can be a great time, but it does close a lot of doors.

Aside from purchases, obviously your computer-knowing friend can help you fix your computer if it's broken. Sure, you could take it to the Geek Squad, but you have to pay them money, and who knows what they're doing to your computer in the back room when you're gone.

Just because you don't have to pay your friend, though, doesn't mean you don't have to show some gratitude. Computer-fixing friends can feel just as put-upon as pickup truck friends. If they don't need a murder covered up, maybe you could find something else they'd like. For Pat, I spent years helping him achieve a goal that was strangely important to him -- trying to understand "Yours til Niagara Falls" jokes -- because sometimes when you are really good at computers, you can be a bit behind on other things.

Don't shut this out if you're a computer expert yourself. There's bound to be some area of expertise you don't have a handle on -- maybe home improvement or cars or understanding a very narrow genre of corny jokes. I'm sure someone would be willing to arrange a trade.

The Friend Who Can Watch Your Kids or Pets

If you have kids, or pets, you might someday want to go to one of the thousands of places pets aren't allowed, or one of the millions of places it's inconvenient to bring kids. Since leaving them alone means you'll probably return to a destroyed house where everyone's been electrocuted by chewed wiring, somebody needs to watch the little monsters.

Just like fictional detectives, you often have trouble finding someone with both motive and opportunity. It's not that hard to find someone to come by and feed your cats -- but caring for a dog starts to become a serious chore, and taking care of kids is a full-time thing. Even if someone is willing, they've got to have enough experience to handle emergencies, and the kid or animal has to like them enough not to shit on their carpet or bite them. There is only one other person that's able to enter my house without my black cat spazzing out and running for cover as if the house is being raided by Nazis.

If you're lucky, parents or relatives can step in, if they live near you, and if they're not terrible people you're afraid to leave your kids with. This is the opportunity problem, where the people most willing to do it live far away from you or work full-time (or possibly are in jail).

If you somehow find a friend who isn't working, knows how to take care of kids/pets and is willing to give several days of their life to watching over your kids/pets, do not lose this friend. If they have an annoying laugh or say "irregardless" all the time, just let it go. You should even go watch The Notebook or Epic Movie with them if they ask you.

Otherwise you will never go on vacation again.

The Friend "In The Industry"

If you want a job in the movie business, you probably know that you've got to know somebody. This somebody will direct you to people you can show your script to, or boobs to, to get a job. What a lot of people don't realize is that it's the same way even if you're in an ordinary, nonglamorous industry, like insurance or accounting.

There's a commonly accepted myth that you get "regular jobs" by finding ads on Monster.com or on the company's website and sending in your resume, and then going through the whole interview and urine test circus. The truth is that something like 80 percent of jobs aren't advertised. Some are internal hires, but a lot are filled through referrals and networking, where someone turns in a resume for a friend, or a friend's nephew's tennis partner or something.

I've been in on a number of hiring decisions, and the part about how qualified you are goes pretty quick -- they just look at your experience and education and portfolio, if applicable, and take a reasonable gamble. What they're digging for in interviews and references is usually some kind of assurance that you're not crazy and you won't be a drama queen. If someone within the company can vouch for you, this really puts you ahead because a testimonial from a trusted co-worker that you aren't crazy is a lot stronger guarantee for the hiring manager than trying to read between the lines of your resume or throwing bizarre lateral thinking questions at you in an interview.

You don't just need an insider for the connections, either. From the outside, it's easy to be really misled about what kind of jobs in an industry are easy to get, which jobs you'd actually want and what jobs even exist. A lot of people going into CG claim to want to be an "animator" -- which is entirely the wrong title for a lot of the work they want to do -- and are picturing a creative, goofy environment with people riding scooters and shooting Nerf guns at each other all the time, when most of the entry-level jobs are going to be in what are basically first-world sweatshops.

Here is a story for you if you doubt the power of connections: I went to animation school with an asshole who gradually went insane over the course of the program. His animation was appalling, and when any teachers or students called him on it, he had a hissy fit and complained they were trying to sabotage him. However, he had a brother-in-law who was a lead animator at EA, and used him to get a plum animator job straight out of school. His brother-in-law probably regretted it, and apparently the EA folks had to spend some time beating some sense into the new guy, but he's still there. Next time you see some shitty animation in an EA game, remind yourself to try to make some friends in your dream industry.

The Pushy Friend

Everybody knows a shameless schmoozer who never waits patiently in line or buys anything at list price, but always tries to charm the salesperson or maitre d' into giving them a special deal -- and usually gets it. A lot of us look down on those people because secretly we wish we could get away with it. I know if I tried to sneak a hotel clerk a tip for a room upgrade, somehow I would do it wrong and he would shout, "ARE YOU TRYING TO BRIBE ME?" and I would run away in shame. While these people manage to get away with it every time.

I used to be bitter about that and tell myself that I looked down on them because they were trying to "cheat the system" and that I never did things like that because I was too honest, not because I was terrible at it. That's until I met some friends like that. "Oh, you're in a standard room?" they would ask. "That's ridiculous. I'll take care of this."

There's a fine line between always asking for more because "it couldn't hurt to ask," and badgering people to the point of obnoxiousness, and a person who is willing to walk that line is a great friend to have. Especially at work.

If you get on the good side of your boss or someone else high up the ladder, they'll go to bat for you. In many places, your job advancement depends on a combination of doing a good job and office politics, and since most of us hate office politics or suck at it, or both, having a smooth-talking champion to advance your cause is a real gift. Now, I usually suggest getting on the good side of your boss by doing a good job and making his job easier, but blow jobs and brown-nosing would also work if you want to play it that way.

The Friend Who Can Find Deals

This is the kind of friend you can miss out on discovering if you make the wrong choice in a minor moral dilemma. They often reveal themselves during an innocent group conversation when you mention a vacation you went on and they ask you how much you spent, then react by saying, "Oh no, that was way too much. You should have checked Kayak first. I saw fares for $400 less last week."

You have a choice here. You can get pissed off at someone butting in and Monday-morning quarterbacking you and making you look like a chump, or you can check this person out and see if you have a genuine Deal Finder on your hands.

This is the kind of person who thinks of comparison shopping as a recreational sport. You might think it is a tedious chore, going from store to store, and website to website, reading fine print, trying to figure out which coupons stack, and following every Twitter update on Black Friday deals. But for this person, it is literally like a game. When they get a new gadget, they are less excited about the gadget itself than about the fact that they "scored" in getting it for 60 percent off.

The illegal variation of this is the person who's always able to find you pirated software, or electronics goods that "fell off the back of a truck." It might not be as good of an idea to take their deals, but it's the same personality type with slightly less scruples. My parents' neighbors are like this, and are always giving my parents a bunch of pirated DVDs unsolicited, because I guess it gives them a chance to talk about how they totally beat the system.

You can ask your friend to find a deal for you, or you can just absorb some of the tips they'll be happy to drop in conversation, and learn valuable lessons about how store-bought HDMI cables are a scam or that you actually don't save money buying a 20-pack of certain items at Costco.

You can miss out on so many wonderful tidbits in life if you're too busy worrying about people making you look like a knucklehead.

The Friend With (Job) Benefits

I think the sex version of "friends with benefits" is overrated. I'd rather have a friend who works at Adobe. Because Adobe employees can get any Adobe software package for $25, and if I get Photoshop CS5 Extended (list price $1000) from them, I've saved $975, which I can use on a pretty decent prostitute, or many, many hours of a more dubious prostitute.

Aside from the tons of places you'd like to have a friend "on the inside" for discounts, friends with service jobs, like doctors or lawyers, can also come in handy. Consider that you have to pay $200 to a lawyer just to ask him what he thinks about something, and you can see how handy it would be to have a friend who can save you the money and tell you that you have no case, or maybe just read through your house-buying documents or job contract for you. If you're in the creative industry, maybe they can help you set things up properly so you won't get your work stolen, and can solidly sue the pants off of someone if it happens.

When I bought my house, it happened to be from a friend of a friend of my parents, and she also happened to be a professional realtor, which meant she was able to hook me up with home inspectors, a title company, a loan agent, an insurance agent and make up a schedule for the whole thing, so I just had to show up when I was supposed to and sign papers. A year later, it looks like the right amount of money has gone out of my bank account so I think it's safe to say I haven't been cheated. If you've ever bought a house, you know what a hassle it is to track down all that shit, so you see why my mom has been badgering me to write this lady a thank-you card for the past two months. (I just put it in the mailbox, OK?)

Other great professions for friends to have include chef, tax accountant, Apple employee and assassin.

For out what professions you might want to avoid, in 6 Dream Jobs That Would Actually Suck and The 5 Most Overrated Jobs Of All-Time.