Remember when bakery workers were old ladies in hairnets, tattoo artists were ex-cons, pawn brokers were banged-up guys in storefronts and real estate agents were too often women looking for newly separated men?

These kinds of jobs were considered low on the excitement scale and were the kinds of gigs you’d take if you couldn’t get one of those high-paid glamour jobs in say, entertainment PR. Right?

Not anymore.

Reality TV has made what we used to think of as mundane look exciting and fun — “Cake Boss,” for instance — while the glamour jobs on reality TV are almost a guarantee of ratings suicide.

Remember Lizzie Grubman, the uber-connected entertainment PR guru/ex-con and her reality show, “PoweR Girls”? Probably not since it lasted one season. Ditto for the hideously boring entertainment PR show, “The Spin Crowd,” produced by empty (bathing) suit, Kim Kardashian. It was even shorter-lived than Kim’s fake marriage.

Then there was “Kell on Earth” about Kelly Cutrone, a fashion PR force who just couldn’t promote her own show into more than one season.

Meantime, shows about people’s junk like “American Pickers,” “Pawn
Stars,” “S
torage Wars,” “Oddities” (on Science Channel), “Hardcore Pawn,” and the granddaddy of ’em all, “Antiques Roadshow,” are hotter than well, Internet porn.

Coming up on A&E is “Barter Kings,” about folks who trade stuff they own for stuff other people own. Right.

Then there are hit TV shows about jobs that nobody wants, but that everyone wants to watch, like “Dirty Jobs,” which has featured cricket farmers and toilet crushers and “Swamp People,” about alligator catchers.

Chief among these shows is “Hillbilly Handfishin
’ ” about a guy who teaches others to dig in the muddy swamp to catch catfish with their hands. It’s been one of the biggest hits in Animal Planet’s history.

Coming up: “Duck Dynasty,” about a family that makes, yes, duck calls, and “Rambug,” about Brooklyn exterminators, because, really, who doesn’t want to watch someone kill roaches? (And don’t forget “Billy the Exterminator,” which has aired for five seasons on A&E.)

Animal Planet’s even got a second season for “Tanked” about brothers-in-law aquarium makers, which I find even more riveting than watching the endless shows about high-end realtors.

I mean, aren’t pushy realtors, exterminators and pawn brokers the very people you want to avoid ? I mean, they aren’t there because things are going well.

But, then, who ever said reality TV has anything to do with reality, anyway?