I'm always reminded of the bit from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, where they mention a civilization that was evacuating their planet in two groups. One group was the "essential" group of important people, who were all very wealthy. The other group (who never actually made it off the planet, if I recall correctly) was made up of "useless" people, including many "useless" jobs such as telephone sanitizers. All the "important" people die as a result of a plague spread by unsanitized phones.