Why did Dianne work dumb jobs if she was so educated?

She is, sadly, what my mom calls "an educated idiot." It's pretty obvious she was raised in a rich, old money family, as a spoiled, only child with very few friends (no surprise there), and had never really experienced the real world. She also seems to be unaware that getting degrees in the Liberal Arts doesn't work well in getting a proper paying job. In fact, some of the most useless degrees involve studying the arts, and it's very rare to get a big break when writing poetry. Very few people hit it big in those departments. She could have gotten a job as a translator for an international company, but then there would be no story. She also thinks she's superior to the rest of the people at Cheers, when in fact, it's pretty obvious she's not much better than them, save for being better dressed and having a [mostly] strong moral compass.

Frasier's [evil] mother put it best when she described Dianne as a "pseudo-intellectual barmaid."

If Dianne truly wanted to make it in the world (even in the 80s) it would have benefited her to research which college degrees would have yielded better job opportunities, and gone with those. But she very foolishly followed degrees in subjects she WANTED to study, versus what she needed to support herself.

That is [sadly] a common ailment, even today among college students. Too often I've heard of young adults getting very useless degrees in subjects, such as Psychology or Impressionism, and then finding themselves working minimum wage jobs and saddled with a ton of debt, with nothing to show for it. It's very humiliating, yet self-inflicted on their part.

I know a woman who has degrees in psychology and law and yet works in child care. Why? Because both fields are very hard to get into. Have to pay that rent as well as the student loans they took out to study subjects that are hard to find employment in.

Sometimes those blue collar jobs can lead you to a better life after all! And without the debt!

It's written for the show, but many in academia who have PhD's 'n such often find themselves working regular jobs, but for the most part many find lucrative faculty and adjunct teacher and even professor type work at a local university.

Dianne is a pretentious pseudo-intellectual, extensively schooled, yet not necessarily highly educated.

She has a humanities degree, which is practically useless in the real world. If she were in college today, she'd probably have a grievance major like women's studies, equally useless.

My wife worked as a cocktail waitress when she was in her twenties. She was attractive and had a great personality (unlike Dianne). She made so much in tips that, even though she only worked part-time, changing to a white-collar college-graduate job would have been a financial step down.

Diane was overeducated and underskilled. She either had to be a teacher or a writer.

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Diane strikes me as the type who would want to "mingle" with what she would consider the "working folk" to try and get an understanding of them for an essay or research or something.

Human connection ?