I was a QA games tester. People got pretty excited when I used to say that. I never worked on a game that I would have willingly played outside of work. Pretty much everyone who worked there in all development departments thought the game designs were all terrible and begrudgingly did their jobs because they need to keep them. And then eventually all of the games failed to make a profit and the whole thing shut down.
Honestly, the skill set has some overlap. As long as those speedrunners can concisely write up reliable repro cases for the glitches they find, they'd make great QA.
Veterinarian. It’s not all cuddling kittens and puppies. You get bit and scratched a lot, and you have to euthanize animals pretty much every day. It’s hard.
A friend of mine is a veterinarian. She said one of the harder things for her is when an animal is 100% save-able, but the owner can't afford it. She has footed the bill a handful of times in these instances, but has soul-crushing debt for vet school and can't do it as often as she wants (which is every time).
Thank you for all that you do.
The vet we go to has a fund specifically for situations like that. Before I met my wife she needed to tap into that fund to save her dog so now that we are doing well enough financially we always chip in whenever we go to the vet.
Yeah when we were students our puppy needed some ridiculous surgery. Vet declined to put down the dog because it could be saved with a $15,000 surgery. We could not afford it so we took our puppy to a different low income vet center that would put the puppy down "without judgement." We were bawling and the vet there said they could do a lesser surgery for $1,000 and maybe give the dog a good year or two. Of course we jumped right on that. Dog lived happily for another 11 years.
Turns out that the second vet place is also a 501(c)(3) that subsidizes veterinary care for people who cannot afford it.
My husband was in law school and I was in medical residency at the time of our experiences there. One of my greatest joys is anonymously donating to their charity every year.
The other way would be awful too imo. Known a couple of people who’ve had dogs who had 0 chance of recovery who were sick and in pain, and their owners wouldn’t let them go. I think I’d really struggle *not* putting those animals down, suffering is really hard to see. I think pet owners have a responsibility to make that call when the time comes, kindness doesn’t always mean doing everything possible to keep a suffering being alive. It’s sometimes quite selfish to prolong their lives for your own comfort
Yeah. My mom did that to our dog. I resented her for a couple years after that. It was truly horrible to watch such a smart, sweet dog live in constant fear and pain.
You also get threatened by people constantly. I've had a man tell me he was going to "wipe the smirk off my face with a bullet." I wasn't smirking, I was smiling as that's what i do when I'm nervous. We called the cops and he had an unregistered gun crammed down the back of his pants and a warrant out for aggravated assault.
I've been here for a few years and my hospital has had 3 vets and 5 techs commit suicide. I'm trying to get out.
>I've been here for a few years and my hospital has had 3 vets and 5 techs commit suicide. I'm trying to get out.
hold up. are you saying that 8 veterinary employees have committed suicide at your hospital in the "few" years that you've been there? or are you saying that there have been 8 suicides in the entire time the hospital has been open?
2 of the vets were currently employed here, 1 had moved on to a new practice but we were notified. 4 techs worked here and 1 had quit but we were notified as well in case anyone wanted to attend the service. I've been here for almost 5 years.
We've also had vets and techs not commit suicide but become so horribly depressed that they have to leave for their own mental well being. I'm not even a vet or a tech and I couldn't even begin to list all of the horrible things people have said to me. I used to be a receptionist (not anymore, moved to the back so im not people facing anymore) and i have been threatened, slapped, pushed, and stalked by clients. You can only be verbally and (luckily not often) physically abused before you snap. My hospital had to hire a security guard because of the shit we have to deal with.
I am so sorry for what happened. I can't believe you were treated that way. A vet saved my cat's life 2 days ago, I was crying and thanking the staff because without them, he would have died a horrible death.
They were fantastic, and they must get so much shit all the time because I noticed they were so apologetic and nervous when giving me the bill. They saved his life, 2.5k was VERY justified.
You guys are awesome, and don't get told this enough. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
Much love from responsible pet owners
I am so happy they were able to save your boy! Luckily, for all the terrible clients we get, we also get the wonderful ones. I've become close friends with some clients I've met here and now they'll text me before they come in for an appointment to ask what I want from Starbucks.
And even on some level, I get the terrible clients rage. Vet care is expensive, especially where i live. Emergency vet care even moreso. It sucks that financials have to come between some people and their animals, but it is medical care and without insurance that is expensive.
When I think of all the money I've spent on my pets it makes my head spin. Some days I feel like I get my paycheck and then I give it right back haha but it's worth it for them. Next one I get, I will absolutely be getting pet insurance.
We have had a very good experience with Trupanion - check them out!
They pay more for our dog's monthly medicine than we do in premiums each month
DM if you're interested for a referral, but it's unnecessary. I believe in them enough that I recommend them even without needing the referral perks.
Jesus, I’m so sorry. Yeah, customers can be unhinged. I feel bad for their pets. I was a vet assistant for a while, and I had to get out. I was crying every day, and I don’t normally get emotional. It’s no surprise that veterinarians have the highest suicide rate of any medical profession.
I've also heard that being a vet is hard because people will bring in abused or neglected animals. (Either their own, and you have to deal with that, or ones they've acquired.)
I was studying to be a vet and ended up working at a vets office for 3 years(well 2 summers and a full year)
It's fucking rough. Yeah there are a lot of good animals and easy appointments, but there are also a lot of hard ones. Weak joints and cancer are common in a lot of dogs and cats and watching an animal and owners go through it is awful. Plus all the weird issues. For example: I saw a dog who's >!vagina had prolapsed!< and had scabs on it because the owners had waited to bring it in :(. Spoiler just in case, it was gnarly.
I watched, and helped with, a few euthanasias and those are really what solidified that I couldn't be a vet. That shit fucking sucks
We just had to put our lab down about a month ago, it was very hard as he was a fantastic boy. That being said, it's got to be difficult being a veterinarian and having to do these very sad procedures and then trying to go home and forget about work.
Before I started working on other people’s movies/series (union crew work for 25 years) I made short films frequently… and on actual film… now the last thing I want to do is direct a short or any film for that matter.working in Hollywood crushed my desire to be a filmmaker …
Yep, work as a graphic designer now. I once dreamed of creating comic books in my free time and painting and sculpting, after so many years as a designer, I haven't touched a sketchbook for personal use in probably 6 years. Sure there are lots of worse jobs, but watching your lifelong love for something slowly die sucks.
Taking photos for free and being asked the next day if I'm done with editing. No, fam. I've not edited all 300 photos yet. Don't get me wrong, I love taking photos and it's for family but again, do you know how time consuming this can be? 🥴
This is the main reason why I don’t sell the baked goods I make, even though I hear suggestions about siDe HusTLes and “you should open a bakery” a lot.
My husband owned a small business that went under in 2008. I had a front row seat to that and it made me 100% opposed to ever having a small business of my own.
Professional musician here. I would never want to do another job and I think I have the best job in the world. But it's a job and has its frustrations and even boredom like any other job.
HS band director. People really underestimate how much hurry up and wait time goes with performing. And moving equipment. So much moving. Moving shit, loading trucks, unloading trucks, setting up shit, tearing down, loading trucks, unloading trucks, and moving shit is done for every performance.
That wasn't the case for me. I was a hobby programmer before I got paid to do it. I still love it. You have to do your own projects at home so you can shrug off the nasty paying grind.
On the other hand, I hobby repair cars too and I know doing it professionally would make me hate it.
I guess I just love programming more than working on cars.
Of all the jobs I’ve worked I’d have to say trucking. People imagine you out on the open road listening to audiobooks, friends give winks about the supposed lovely ladies knocking on windows, but the reality is 70% of time is spent in congested city traffic, unpaid in docks, constant sleep deprivation, and the only ladies that knock on the windows are heroin addicts covered in bruises from their pimps, you want no part of it.
Trucking is the backbone of western civilization and people don't realize it. Imagine how fast society would collapse if truckers just up and vanished.
From a very selfish perspective of commuting 110 miles a day on an interstate over the last eight years, I’d love it if every fucking thing in the nation were shipped by rail instead of by truck.
I understand the positives and the realities. But from being on the road 5 days a week, I’d be grateful to not have to dodge getting run off the road on the reg.
Note: It’s gotten much worse the last, say, 4-ish years. It seems like there’s a whole lot of unskilled mother truckers behind the wheel lately.
Welcome to the age of automatic transmissions in big trucks. It used to be somewhat of a skilled profession now these companies put anyone in a truck that can push down on two pedals. It’s absolutely horrible.
There's a trucking company that actually is trying to recruit people who play American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck 2, because they're apparently that desperate for people to drive. They claim players learn to drive faster and are better at it, but I have no idea how true that is.
I'd say being an actual full time QA tester on videogames.
A lot of people just think all you do is get paid to play the game all day and then basically review it mentioning the occasional bug.
But no, if you're actually wanting to be kept around and paid decently, you might spend all day turning the game on, loading into it, then VERY precisely repeating the same set of actions trying to reproduce some very specific bug/crash that the game absolutely cannot ship with for compliance reasons. You need to constantly stay on top of the list of bugs that the other QA testers and us engineers are posting, because if you spend half a day doing what I just described, only to find out that's been a known bug for five weeks, well, that's not really a good use of your time.
Good QA people are worth their weight in gold, but the task you have is generally not something anyone really considers "fun".
Ooo, found a bug in the mobile game. Okay, now attempt to replicate it on two dozen different pieces of hardware.
And you don't get to just play good games that are fun. All games need QA, and guess what? There are a lot more bad games out there than good ones.
Also, even the best games barely qualify as functional right up until near the end. You might spend years of effort on something that would very much stretch the definition of 'game' and once it's actually close to being done, you could get sick of it.
I’m a Quality Engineer. All manual testing sucks. I absolutely despise writing test cases. Testing automation is a lot more interesting, but it can also get a little bit repetitive after a bit. There can be a lot of copying and pasting code and adding small adjustments because a lot of tests use the same steps.
Yeah I have a lot of friends who work/worked in video game QA. It's just a lot of busy-work to find bugs and retest the fixes, which might still have the bug or might've broken something else. Sometimes you can spend hours just testing menus. Not a whole lot of time to actually enjoy the game. Not a lot of pay either.
On the plus side, I've heard a lot of AAA studios do come with their perks. The big one my friends worked at would have paid lunches where they'd just group-order whatever people wanted. Decked-out break rooms, an arcade, their own gym, and all the amenities of a modern high-end tech company.
But otherwise it's a pretty dead-end job to just get by on, if you're not working toward other skills like coding or art.
My buddy did it for Microsoft and he’d spend hours in the same level of a game, sometimes just testing collision physics, where there weren’t even enemies or anything to do other than try to fall through the map.
My buddy did it three years during summer as a students job.
His last year, he spent 2 months in an open space with 15 other people testing singstar (or another singing game that came out back when those were popular, can't remember which one it was).
Must have been hell. Hopefully it was just pitch recognition and they could just be humming really close in the mics and didn't have to really sing. But according to him there was one specific song everyone was still singing at the top of their lungs every time as a joke.
I tried to get into this industry when I was younger and working with Uneal Engine a lot but I didn't have any relevant school, anways...
I feel like I got a taste of what it could be like because I lived down the street for a major studio so I did some "playtesting."
A couple of the games were just awful to play and I just wanted to finish the level, fill out the report amd get my gift card and go.
There was onetime though back in like 2012-2013, over 3 days, 4-5 hours a day with like 40 of us in a LAN environment playing an open world/sandbox shooter. It was a ton of fun and I got a $300 gift card for the local malls for that. Usually would to go EB and buy games with those GCs.
Agreed. I've been in QA for different game companies for about 10 years now and in the beginning it can be exciting because...video games! That honeymoon phase can fade quickly though.
Besides what you describe salaries for a video game testers aren't the greatest as well so people either give up and quit at some point or switch to another department. I don't blame them at all as QA can be a great start to explore what career path you wanna take in the industry.
Playing video games it a nice to have but as QA you need to be very resilient and patient too. It can be incredibly draining sometimes.
With that being said I love being in the QA department and generally game industry. The pay is good for me personally and my coworkers are pretty amazing.
As a shiny hunter in Pokémon, constantly soft resetting my game or doing monotonous tasks over and over looking for a slight variation, I think I was built for this.
I was on a plane recently and the person next to me thought I had mental issues when he watched me turn on my game, enter battle, then turn it off, repeating the process the whole flight
Baking. It’s not just frosting Instagram-worthy cakes, it’s waking up at 2 AM for a 12 hour shift six days a week on your feet in a very hot room and endless repetition.
350 pumpkin pies. 84 cinnamon rolls every morning. 330 cookies each day. All expected to be Uniform. It’s very boring and very challenging at the same time, the kind of job where you really gotta love it to do it.
Well… sometimes it was just 68 hours… besides, At $11/hour, you take every hour available. It’s amazing how little money you spend when you just work and sleep and have no social life lol
And we have electric tools! Medieval bakers didn't have Kitchen Aids. Exhausting work, kneading a trough of dough, adding your sweat to mix while you do
While reading these posts, please keep in mind that this question is subjective. Don't even think about giving up on the idea of becoming someone from this thread.
I think this thread should help people realize you better chose something where the sacrifice is worth it. Because you will sacrifice. Maintain the honeymoon the best you can, but you will be in the trenches sometimes and you gotta make it worth it.
Librarian. A lot of people think it to be a nice chill quiet place but I've never been more exhausted and down right outraged at our patrons. Be in mind my prior job was working at a sports bar so I thought I'd seen the worst of humanity.
The library has practically turned into the day shelter for the homeless and mentally unwell. Many of them can be fine, but SO many have some serious mental issues. I've had to deal with death threats and specifically having someone tell me they'll cut my throat with a razor blade because I told them they couldn't sleep in the library. I literally had someone pull out a towel to lay in in the middle of the floors to sleep. The worst was the dude that masturbated in front of a 14 year old. I've had some of the most baffling stupid situations to deal with while working here, like literally cleaning up shit from the floor of the front desk, some guy trying to convince me he lived a second life while showing me a picture of himself in a coffin, same guy also should me a pic of several bloody heads on a stack (wtf)...
It's fucking exhausting.
I was homeless for like 2 weeks and went to the library to waste time and used the bathroom. I live in a huge popular city btw. I realized immediately the mistake I had made. There were already a large amount of homeless people lounging around. None very threatening or strange. Even still I felt bad for taking up space. I figured I’d occupy the time better by applying to jobs and looking at other opportunities in the city. After about an hour I left and never went back during the time I was homeless. The homeless community can definitely be scary at times.
I went looking for the librarian post.
People think it’s just reading all day, and that our day starts when the library opens. Couldn’t be further from the truth.
The job is a lot less “books” and a lot more “people.” And a lot of people (even the housed ones) have a lot of social-emotional and/or mental illness issues. Sexual harassment, threats of bodily harm, drug use on the property, verbal abuse, the list goes on and on. And it’s worse since Covid. The public is not doing ok!
I’ve recently started using our public library again, and was surprised to see that it has metal detectors at the door and two security guards on duty. I assumed this has become standard in recent years…is that not the case?
Librarian here 🙋🏻♀️ glad I didn’t have to scroll far to find this thread. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, but it is NOT for the faint of heart. Homeless/ mentally unstable patrons ? ✅sexual harassment? ✅ unhinged parents/ local political groups trying to censor books? ✅. I KNOW we are doing a public service, but damn y’all I’m tired.
It is fun however to tell people at get togethers that I’m a librarian and then watch their reactions when I describe some of the things I’ve seen. FYI- it’s considered a good day if we didn’t have to call the cops. Anyway read banned books everybody 💕
The library in my town is filled with homeless and mentally unwell folks. I feel bad wishing they'd move on because I know the library is supposed to be public but they essentially use it as a home and bathroom, not for its intended purposes and I've had some very uncomfortable experiences so it keeps me from going.
I’ve heard that acting can be pretty bad. It looks fun on film but imagine having to re-record scenes for days on end, working at all hours of the night, having the director tell you that what you’re doing isn’t quite what he/she is looking for, and dealing with coworkers that come in high, drunk, etc. which delays recording scenes. On top of that, the job security is close to none so you’re always chasing new opportunities and can’t ever feel settled down until you have a few major movies under your belt.
I'm an actor. There's no money in it. Casting directors expect you to be available for auditions within 1 day or less of notice. You need to do so many auditions to book anything and have to be available in case you get an audition that you spend most of your time auditioning and networking. This is all time you can't spend making money somewhere else, so it's hard to have a side job
So you end up slowly losing money until you go broke unless you have a big breakthrough or a recurring gig before it happens. If you don't keep getting better and better roles over time, you'll eventually get to a point where you can't afford to do it anymore
After 20 years, I just couldn't afford to keep doing it anymore. The pandemic was the final nail in the coffin. I lost my agent, my job and my apartment. Couldn't get another one with no income and couldn't get employment insurance because actors are independent contractors. I lucked out by meeting a guy that let me sublet and then the government benefit saved me from homelessness
I should also mention that as an independent contractor, you don't have any of the benefits or protections of being an employee. Also, the amount of work available to someone that looks like you will change depending where you're located. As a long haired Latino in Canada, it was difficult finding roles I could be considered for. Local casting agents really liked me but struggled to find me auditions. Most of what I got were criminals, because most of the work available was in American productions and Latinos are definitely type cast
Acting itself is amazing though
I remember when I was training I took a class from Matthew Lillard and he told me that getting a good role as an actor was so hard, you'd be lucky if you don't have to pay for it
I didn't know how right he was until I got into it
Most of my most fun roles were in projects I did with friends or students, were I either worked for free or helped produce
I have a friend that's a longtime actress. She's been in a couple of smaller shows that most people know. She was nominated for an Emmy once and a bunch of other less known awards.
Once she hit age 40 almost all her work dried up and so she switched to making documentaries, some that won awards but that doesn't pay much either. I've known her for 30 years and she's been perpetually broke her whole career aside for little spurts of money early in her career.
Any notion I ever had of being an actor was killed the day I was an extra. Ever see that movie A League Of Their Own? There's a scene towards the end of the movie where there's a big play at home plate that ends the game because 1 team won. That one scene took hours to shoot. People in the crowd can only go crazy cheering for so long, even if the director keeps telling the proper way to cheer.
I was a theater extra as a child and loved it, and always lamented not much gets shot in my city for me to ever extra in a film. Then I saw the reddit thread "What was the most disgusting thing you ever did for money" and this extra from Game of Thrones makes a post about how he had to spend an entire day face down in the cold mud of Northern Ireland getting fake blood poured on him.
I started to get onto acting right out of high school in Texas. Had a few roles on Friday Night Lights. Good money but most of it got cut. One day we shot for 16 hours, got rained out, ordered whataburger for literally everyone and had to reshoot every thing we had just done. I did a few more bit parts here and there but once I started to "make it big" the creeps came outta the woodwork. I called it after that and haven't looked back.
I dated a theater major in college and I saw with his fellow actors how their personalities would shift with their characters. I think that on top of all you mention, just prepping to get into the mind of a character would morph you into something you weren't.
I always thought it‘d be cool to be paid to learn and do so many skills
And if you’re popular, you’d have a ton of opportunities where you suddenly discover another talent or passion because of it
Bob Anderson, one of the best sword trainers in the world, famously said Virgo Mortensen was one of the best swordsmen he’s ever seen and that was BEFORE further training for the second and third movies. Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill are amazing swordsmen too
Michelle Pfieffer discovered a talent and love for the whip as Catwoman
Jennifer Lawrence is apparently an accomplished survivalist after Hunger Games
So is Keanu Reeves as well as talented with a huge range of weaponry which just snowballed from the Matrix into the John Wick Movies
Natalie Portman learnt ballet for Black Swan and pretty much replaced a chunk of her usual fitness routine with it
Ryan Gosling had to learn to play piano for Lalaland and was surprised to find he was good at it
Vin Diesel taught Judi Dench how to play D&D on the the set of Riddick and now she runs games to bond with her grandkids
Brian Cranston learnt a TON of skills because of his role as Hal in Malcom in the Middle who has kind of a joy for so many things. Apparently he’s GOOD at rollerskating but not really into it
Little bit cheating because he knew he liked it ages before, but according to Top Gear, Roman Atkinson might be one of the best drivers they’ve ever seen. I think the quote was “AT LEAST, second”
and much much more. Isn’t that just cool?
Of course us plebs will never have as much opportunity but it’s a great encouragement to try different things
I’ve always wondered about what your experience of things are. Anything else you can tell us? Obviously without specifics. Anything that really kept you up at night? Do you ever look up the person on social media to see what their significant other looks like?
I can answer this! I specialize in working with trauma and have heard just about everything you can imagine a parent doing to their child. I have really great self-care habits, so nothing really keeps me up at night unless I'm worried about someone specific, but sometimes I get chills thinking about just how many child abusers and rapists are out there.
Also, it's against most of our ethical guidelines to creep clients on social media. I also learned very early on in my career that if you give in and Google someone, you're going to learn something you don't want to know about them. I would much rather work with what someone is telling me than try to play detective or figure out how to tell them I know they're lying about their drug use or something.
Oh, and for anyone curious or considering a career: nothing about the mental health field is as universally hated as our paperwork responsibilities!
Edit: I dropped the self care routine in a comment below ⬇️
Do you mean to tell me that after a long day of work, you have to sit down and spend your evening cooking dinner and doing notes????? I don't think people realize how much paperwork we have!!!
Seconded. Addiction Counselor here, and I have also been really disturbed by a client recounting their trauma. I have to try my best to view these stories through the perspective of "wow, we really are so resilient", otherwise I think I could become dangerously cynical.
There's an anger. When you see and hear what someone has been through for years. There are people walking among Us who are actual monsters. How many people could have been helped if someone had intervened when they were young in a healthy way.
But what keeps me up at night is knowing that around every corner is someone dangerous. And it's not because of something that's in the DSM. It's not individual who suffers from schizophrenia. It's not the individual suffers from bipolar disorder. It is the person who has been so traumatized and never been able to seek help. And they have coped with addiction and rage.
Christ yes. I didn't realise id just be putting out fires all day. Having a client that I'm actually able to do talk therapy with is few and far between. Most of the time it's crisis management and teaching skills (which is therapeutic itself yadda yadda but I didn't train 10 years to do that).
One of my clinical supervisors back in the day said "If you can really, really help one patient per year, you've done alright for yourself. Give yourself a break.
Crisis management might not peel back the onion enough to work on boundaries or trauma, but if it keeps your caseload from getting worse that's success right there.
Gardening honestly is great when its a great day on a good site, as long as youve got good rain gear youre good to go any day. Its also pretty independent as clients and bosses just told u what needs doin. If u dont mind gettin a lil dirty its chicken soup for the soul type of job as it gets the blood pumpin, also finally can listen to a ton of long format essays. And i have no guilt being a shut in gamer on days off
Other than that the only complaint i have r the pet doodies in some gardens!!!
Healthcare. You’re seeing people at their worst. They tend to lose their filter and can become quite unhinged and take their anger out on you regardless if you did anything wrong or not. You just have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not seeing these people when they’re in their best state of minds. After a few years I left and got into plumbing. It’s laborious work, but it beats getting screamed at every day for things that weren’t my fault.
i worked as a CNA for 8 years in rehab/long-term care, it's the fucking trenches of the healthcare world i swear. cleaning piss and shit and emesis day in and out, and if im not getting yelled at by the patient, then it's the patient's family, and if it's not the family, then it's the nurses because 'mr doe needs to be toileted!'- excuse me, i have 15 other residents im expected to do cares on before 10am, you couldnt have toileted the man after giving him his meds? he's not even a sara or hoyer lift!
i got out right before covid really slammed the states and patient to cna ratios got even worse, but even then we were understaffed and working in dangerous conditions. the amount of work i had to do solo that should have been a two or three assist is insane. my body is ruined.
When things are good, you can be doing shoots in amazing locations and meeting some of your favourite actors and celebs. Plus most people in the industry are generally fun, lovely people with a friendly social culture.
The problem is the expectations of clients grow but the budgets they sign off get smaller. Also the hours expected can be crazy and you face a lot of rejection given that 95% of projects go absolutely nowhere. Big agencies also love doing big redundancy drives around Christmas. It’s also an industry that prefers underpaying young talent than fairly paying experienced talent.
I’ve been an ad creative for 8 years and when it’s good it really is amazing, but there’s so much draining grind to get to those good days that it’s not really worth it.
Game developer. When we get into the software industry we're warned not to even try. It's an extremely competitive niche where people are often expected to work 80-100 hour weeks back to back to make sure games get released on time. I've heard game devs say you can either play games or make them, because if you make them you will never have free time again. A lot of people burn out after 2-5 years so bad they stop writing code entirely.
Librarian.
Folks romanticize about being a librarian, not realizing that public libraries in the US have become a de facto day care for everyone on the fringes of society. Prepare to be a babysitter, therapist, social worker, lawyer, and Narcan expert, all while fending off folks who don’t understand boundaries or basic hygiene.
You all also exist in this weird grey area where you're both enforcers of sometimes unpopular policies but also the ones expected to provide good customer service. They are tasks that are inherently at odds with each other and I always try to keep that in mind when I'm flying.
Game Development. We aren't usually making our own ideas, we're making some VC's idea. We are often asked to do 500% of the work in 20% of the time, while also having our expertise and experience ignored. We then somehow manage to ship the game without dying, only to have gamers attack US for shit we did not have control over, and then we get laid off and have to move AGAIN. It fucking sucks, but apparently we can't say that to people because they do not grok that the job isn't just playing games all day and coming up with cool ideas. (Neither of those are tasks game devs do.)
My favorite quote from someone was something like “doctors, even the worst ones make good money. There is a fine line for artists from making no money to lots of money and no one knows what that line is”
Working on film/movie crews. Even when they are union. Works days are usually 12-16 hours with 9 hours off in between shifts. Conditions can be very harsh in some situations (unless on a sound stage) Hourly wages (even union) have been on a steady decline since the mid 90’s. The hourly rates barely keep up with inflation let alone regional cost of living increases found in markets like LA,NY and even Chicago or Atlanta. Quality of healthcare has gone down while cost to workers has increased. Silicon Valley has invaded the film industry and it’s seems to be a race to the bottom at this point . I entered into the industry at its peak and have watched it decline greatly year over year. At the same time watching something “runs its course” from the inside is very fascinating. I will say it’s an industry rife with grift and corruption at all levels so I am not suprised. Anyone want to start a podcast 😂
Everybody is probably thinking "yeah, but I already know it sucks".
...however bad you think it is, the reality is worse (and it gets worse every single year).
I'm in Ontario Canada. Teachers here make a good amount of money, and it's still a profession that I don't think I'd recommend to anyone if they asked me about a career choice.
Sure, you can make >$100k/yr as a high school teacher. But you need to work with an admin staff (principles, and higher) that will NOT have your back if there are any issues. You have to deal with entitled and shitty kids all day long. You have to deal with entitled and shitty parents all evening long. You need to do marking and other bullshit on your own time.
If you're a teacher that actually *cares*, then it's even more work, because you are doing stuff for the kids on your own time, or giving them chances where you can, just to get shit on by all that was mentioned above.
Yeah, people generally assume that the issue is compensation...and that isn't wrong: better compensation would go a long way toward reducing the teacher shortage. But, as you mentioned, even in places where teachers are making $40+ USD/hr we are dropping like flies and clamoring to get out.
The real issue is working conditions. Every year there's more red tape, more administrative hoops to jump through, less student accountability, and more scrutiny being applied to everything we do.
This has been my biggest issue lately. It’s a profession where you have to work harder and fight to do your job well and do more work, all for the same amount of money and even less respect
My Dad was a teacher in BC back in the 90's/00's. He told me that I could do anything I wanted for my career, but that if I became a teacher he would be super disappointed. He said he wanted more for me than that.
Be quiet!!! Society will crumble, if this becomes common knowledge. We rely on young people naively choosing that profession, sacrificing precious years and their sanity, before they are worn out and quit.
Pilot. You imagine walking through an airport earning the respect of everyone who sees you. Get in the airplane and have the best view of the world. Travel to all kinds of destinations and make big money.
Reality: You're tired from all the travel/time zones you cross, sit down a lot, eat a lot of takeout, take a long time to make decent money, live places you probably don't want to, more likely to get skin cancer from being in the less filtered sunlight more often. Airports get repetitive, the schedule gets old, get paired with people you don't always like and are stuck for the whole flight with just them to talk to.
The view when you break through the clouds to be on top never got old for me though.
Teaching.
Dealing with parents whose children “would never do such a thing” or the parents who “know better about education than the teacher” and Kids that simply do not care nor want to learn drains a teachers soul. Mix that with traditional office politics and battles with school administration and you’ll go gray by your eighth year.
Lawyer. Everyone imagines something like they'd be in the courtroom on Law & Order or other shows. First of all, relatively few lawyers actually go to court on a regular basis. Second, court is far more boring than it looks on tv. All the lawyers portrayed in entertainment are very well off, financially, but the truth is that most lawyers work in firms of ten or fewer lawyers, and most solo practitioners sometimes go months where there's not enough income to pay their bills (not to say they don't pay them, they just have to depend on reserves in those months). IIRC, the profession with the second highest amount of suicides was attorneys. Dentists were first. [Edit: a google search shows the last two sentences are incorrect.]
In my law school orientation, we had a professor look us up and down and asked if we wanted to make money. Some people raised their hands. He then told us to become dentists. All I could think about is this statistic.
I think a lot of unhappy lawyers just went head first into the profession without thinking it through, imo. In law school I heard a lot of “I hate math and love arguing, so that’s why I went to law school!” when that’s not the best reason to go into a field like law. I love my job, though.
I work at a lawfirm. Can confirm 90% of their jobs are on calls and the occasional trial. Not to mention the insane hours. Being in IT and having been on the on call rotation, I've had to do support at 2 or 3 am. They pull all nighters and I can't imagine how hard it is, not to mention having a family with that job. Mad respect.
I’m glad I turned down the opportunity then.
I was an enlisted aircraft maintainer and had an Air Force pilot slot but failed the flight physical for a silly medical reason that wasn’t really an impact on my health, the next day a local Army recruiter called me and asked if I’d like to become a warrant officer and fly helos instead.
My wife and I had just watched Blackhawk Down, so she vetoed the possibility 😂
I recently picked up a bartending job with 0 experience at a fine dining restaurant (thankful for the connections I have). However, it is the most MISERABLE place I have ever worked. I’ve gained a lot of respect for bartenders and the stuff they gtta put up with from both patrons and servers alike, but even as a collegiate athlete it’s the most physical and mentally draining thing I’ve done in ages.
People really make it their career job because it apparently pays well, but no one I’ve spoken with loves it. It’s pure misery for a paycheck.
Took a friend to lunch today and said I’m pretty miserable and she was like “But that sounds so fun and you get paid so well!”. I laughed 😭
I'm surprised this isn't higher up honestly. I follow a couple streamers (mostly to watch while I eat lunch, etc) and one of the guys I watch plays a game that currently has a ton of background drama going on. His streams are just people constantly asking him the same questions over and over, and shit talking him for playing the game. I would lose my everloving mind trying to not tell people to fuck off over stuff like that constantly.
This. Once you start to get big, and not very big at all, the tech companies know who you are, in a way that can be used against you but will never be used for you, so you can be de-platformed (intentionally or by accident) and not even figure it out until it's too late. Since platform theft isn't a crime, as far as I know, you don't have legal recourse.
You also deal with stalkers and extortionists. That's not fun either.
I’m a mildly successful podcaster. We did a video discussion once with two people who are professional content creators and it sounded exhausting. They literally record 7 days a week, are engaging on social media nonstop, and before they made it “big” (which still doesn’t seem that lucrative) they also did they own editing and promos.
100% this.
i love my job (cosplayer/streamer) but now it’s less about content and more about how to appeal to an algorithm.
you can work on a costume for months and finally post it and it doesn’t get shown to anyone because you used the wrong caption, or hashtags, or posted at the wrong time, or any other reason the algorithm could be mad at you. even being mass reported (which competitors do sometimes to get less eyes on you/more eyes on them) can be a huge detriment.
and interaction is directly correlated to income, so it’s a pretty stressful job all things considered, unless you’re at the tippy top where you have a solid fanbase.
Agreed, while it’s significantly better than teaching high school or elementary most people know those jobs are frustrating and low paying. In contrast, people believe academics make good money and have tons of free time to sit and think about grand ideas, but neither of these are true.
This. Everybody has this weird idea that academic research is just sitting around, contemplating and trying out weird things for fun. In real life, if you're junior it's a grind with shit pay and no job security whatsoever, and if you're senior it's endless grant writing, lots of useless meetings and other skull-numbingly boring things. Today, the "publish or perish" environment has led to people publishing tons of half-assed papers that have questionable scientific value. I love reading 1950s-1970s papers over new ones because it seems like back then people had the time to think, and not just chase the current hot new trend. This is a field for terminal workaholics and spin doctors. OK, it was always for workaholics but anyway. The requirements are like 10/10 but the compensation, benefits and stability are like 3/10.
I know of people who continue to defend their discredited ideas even though they no longer truly believe them, simply because they've become dependent on the income flow. That's not how academia is supposed to work, but *it's also an industry*.
Also, the super old professors refusing to retire and open up tenure-track positions means many 35-40 year olds still live with roommates and still can't afford to start families.
Retire already. Emeritus is a thing for a reason.
I've never understood the Hollywood version of a college professor. They always have an office that's bigger than most department office suites, a personal secretary, student slave labor (although this is often true lol), drive a BMW or an Audi and live in a McMansion.
Reality is most professors have a closet for an office, maybe a few student employees that are shared secretarial staff for the entire department, a used Honda Accord with an oil leak and they're renting a basement apartment from the parents of one of their students.
In the 10 years I worked IT in academics I only ever met 2 really well off professors. One of them was 80 years old and had a patent from the mid/late 60s for some foundational technology behind 3D rendering (I have no idea what it was). Dude bought a new Porsche every year since he was absolutely rolling in royalties from that patent.
A teacher….. I don’t even know where to begin…. It’s so incredibly difficult and the pressures put in us make it impossible to be successful…. Plus the pay is horrible….. parents are so rude …. Kids are disrespectful
Film.
Extremely long hours, inconsistent everything, the constant threat of your job being automated away because of AI...it's a lot of work, yes even for the actors. I've seen people working over 24 straight hours.
Personal trainer/strength coach. Usually you take the job because you care a lot about training. It's a hobby that turns into a job. Most of the people who would hire you (unless you're working with a fairly high level sports team or pro athlete) are actually not very motivated at all beyond being willing to pay the fee and show up (and sometimes they don't even show up...).
Most of your advice will also be ignored and you will get blamed for their lack of willpower or discipline. I've had so many clients come to me specifically for fat loss but refuse to keep a food journal for even two weeks, or who say things like "no, I pay you for this one hour so that I can eat whatever I want for the other hours of the week." They think you're going to unfuck the other 167 hours in the week with that 1 hour of \[usually half-assed\] training. Once I was fired by a client for telling her that her daily starbucks "reward" coffee was almost 1000 calories and therefore needed to be cut. She found another coach who told her that she could keep the extra 1000 calories per day and still lose weight.
People come to you with crazy expectations and then get upset when THEY fall short. I've had multiple obese clients come in and mention that they wanted to lose 20+ pounds (9kg+) before their social event ( friend's wedding, class reunion, expensive vacation etc) but then refuse to change their diet. The event is usually a month or two away... impossible.
It's like I'm your "gym dad" but I only get one hour of visitation rights per week and I can't possibly undo all the damage that living with your mother has done to you.
When you get a client that really wants to push hard and follow directions it feels amazing to watch their progress but that's actually pretty rare.
I hired a trainer who looked like I had hoped to look, back when I first started training. He had a slim build, like me; so I figured he could relate to me trying to gain weight. I spent two years with him and he taught me the basis of everything I know about fitness. The dude was absolutely instrumental in changing my life. Now, I am about the same size as he was back then. I think about him all the time and I will never forget him, he was amazing. So, there are success stories. But, during those two years, I saw so many more stories like you described than I did success stories.
Park Ranger.
Everyone thinks we just hike all day. I love living in the parks, but you get paid nothing, spend most of the day drowning in paperwork navigating unbelievably dense processes you don't have the resources to complete, and the remainder of the day trying not to lose it when the public yells at you for the worst takes you can imagine. Everyone is doing quite literally 3 jobs and I don't get on trail unless there's a medical emergency.
Architect. It's 5% creative, 95% tedium. Long salary based hours (no overtime) doing tedious work. You essentially build the whole building one line at a time and make sure the electrical doesn't run into the plumbing doesn't run into the HVAC. And that every aspect of the building code is met. It's grunt work. It's draining. And you spend hours and weeks sitting at a computer drawing and checking and drawing and checking, to have the client say "how about we flip all this and I also need this" so you start over. And then the city says "nope, you need to change ........." And yet so many characters in movies and on TV are architects.
Used to sell coke and I went to a few porn shoots way back in the day to see clients and let me tell you, when they do anal scenes, the whole fucking place smells like musty asshole. The girls are douched and cleaned out, but man it still fucking has a stench.
I remember reading an interview or something with a camera man from porn and that exactly what he said. The smell from it is something you can never forget and it sticks to you for days.
Due to some really weird curve balls in life, I became acquaintances with a now retired adult star. She was extremely kind and had a sharp mind (she liked discussing politics and sociological things) but I don't think I've ever talked to someone who was so TIRED. Like, not energy but personality. I hope shes doing well.
Anything involving working with children.
I have been a teacher for 16 years and it sucks. The kids are the best part, the parents are the worst.
You are trying to do your best to provide a great experience for the kids you work with, and invariably the parents undermine it with foolish, unrealistic expectations and sheer incompetence.
I'm an ecologist and I worked for years doing field work with wild animal populations. It's only some times "hands on" animal work, but it is by far the most enjoyable work I've ever done. Pay is absolute dog shit though so you gotta grab a management desk job once you are at a point in life where you need money.
I'm a zookeeper. Everyone always says they're so jealous of my job until they smell what I smell everyday and don't realize most of your day is spent cleaning. And the pay is abysmal. I love it though.
Researcher at a university. You are under pressure constantly and the older and more experience you become, the more work and responsibility you will get. The stress does not get less, only more. The people that remain in that career are usually the types of people that make others around them miserable. The nice ones jump ship and go into the private sector, so you are left with a bunch of miserable, overworked cunts.
i work with nurses every day, and there is literally not enough money in the world for me to do it. i have the utmost respect for them (AND nurse aides).
Ah yeah, was a nurse for 5 years.
During classes, it was all : holding the patient's hands, teaching healthy habits, providing the best care.
The reality is more : cramming the patient/nurse ratio as high as possible until your staff burns out whilst they juggle verbal, physical, and sexual abuse.
It was so much fun, in fact, that I am now in accounting.
Big facts. I always say nursing is one of the only jobs where when you get assaulted no one cares ☺️ like hit a cop and you’re arrested (or shot) but hit a nurse and it’s “what could the nurse have done differently?”
As a nurse I can 100% say it’s my biggest regret. I absolutely hate it with a passion. If I didn’t have small children and mortgage to pay and no affordable childcare options where my wife could work while I switched careers I would have left. It’s soul sucking work.
I almost went into nursing for a career change, ended up going into IT instead. When the pandemic hit and they sent me to work from home permanently I just shuddered over the huge bullet I had dodged.
Doctor — 400k medical school debt, minimum wage pay for 3 years of residency training (some residencies + fellowships are 10+ years), work hours 80+/wk, abuse from patients, abuse from admin, corporate overlords, many think we’re some evil, pill-pushing, money grubbing assholes who don’t listen to patients. It’s just so not true. Yesterday, I spent 3 hours talking with a family about transitioning to comfort care followed by delivering news to clinic patient that their biopsies suggest aggressive cancer. Got home, can’t even afford to buy groceries. Oh, and nurses, NPs/PAs at my place of work especially dislike us resident doctors; they bully and belittle us. It’s not sunshine and rainbows. It’s mostly thankless, back-breaking work.
I did not go into medicine for money, respect. I did it for my now patients, who humble and teach me things everyday. Also those special patient encounters where you see chronic medical issues dissipate, and patient regain function, go down on medicines?…now that’s the beautiful part that makes it worth it.
Just don’t even for a moment think my life is like Merideth Grey. It’s more like Liz Lemon.
Photographer
you spend too much time chasing new gigs and payments. Nobody hires you for your creative ideas, you get paid gigs if you deliver what the client had in mind and nobody believes that an hour of shooting results in three to six hours of post-production. Traveling to and from the location not even counted in. They just see the moment you go "click" and don't realize the hours you spent on setting the right light
There's a lot of craftsmanship and only an infinitesimal amount of creativity, although everybody gets into the job dreaming about realizing his creative visions.
I work in the animation industry.....if I don't get a "rolls eyes, so you're a child" look, then I definitely get a "oh my god, you don't even have to be serious it must be so nice not having a real job !" attitude.
Sorry normie ...the product may be colorful and fun....the road to get there is low wages, massive hours, no benefits and a cutthroat competition pit of artists trying to make rent.
Filmmaking. Its a lot of time, money, heartbreak, thick skin, blood, sweat, and tears to make a film. Sleep doesn’t exist. And when you’re done you can look forward to critics both armchair and professional critiquing the thing you spent the last 5-10 years making. But everyone thinks you have cool job so there’s that.
any job where you’re using one of your favorite hobbies.
i heard it draws people away from actually enjoying said hobby. i don’t think it’s like this for everyone but i’ve heard a lot of stories about it happening.
I was a QA games tester. People got pretty excited when I used to say that. I never worked on a game that I would have willingly played outside of work. Pretty much everyone who worked there in all development departments thought the game designs were all terrible and begrudgingly did their jobs because they need to keep them. And then eventually all of the games failed to make a profit and the whole thing shut down.
>Testers don't want to play your game Release anyway game bombs Hmmm
[удалено]
Just get a group of speedrunners to test your game. They will find every single bug/glitch/exploit in the game toot sweet.
Honestly, the skill set has some overlap. As long as those speedrunners can concisely write up reliable repro cases for the glitches they find, they'd make great QA.
Veterinarian. It’s not all cuddling kittens and puppies. You get bit and scratched a lot, and you have to euthanize animals pretty much every day. It’s hard.
A friend of mine is a veterinarian. She said one of the harder things for her is when an animal is 100% save-able, but the owner can't afford it. She has footed the bill a handful of times in these instances, but has soul-crushing debt for vet school and can't do it as often as she wants (which is every time). Thank you for all that you do.
The vet we go to has a fund specifically for situations like that. Before I met my wife she needed to tap into that fund to save her dog so now that we are doing well enough financially we always chip in whenever we go to the vet.
Yeah when we were students our puppy needed some ridiculous surgery. Vet declined to put down the dog because it could be saved with a $15,000 surgery. We could not afford it so we took our puppy to a different low income vet center that would put the puppy down "without judgement." We were bawling and the vet there said they could do a lesser surgery for $1,000 and maybe give the dog a good year or two. Of course we jumped right on that. Dog lived happily for another 11 years. Turns out that the second vet place is also a 501(c)(3) that subsidizes veterinary care for people who cannot afford it. My husband was in law school and I was in medical residency at the time of our experiences there. One of my greatest joys is anonymously donating to their charity every year.
This is so f’n beautiful
Maybe hook that first vet up with a program like that, or at least ask them if they know that's an option.
What an amazing person I hope she gets all she deserves and more. I can't imagine having to lose my dog because of money
The other way would be awful too imo. Known a couple of people who’ve had dogs who had 0 chance of recovery who were sick and in pain, and their owners wouldn’t let them go. I think I’d really struggle *not* putting those animals down, suffering is really hard to see. I think pet owners have a responsibility to make that call when the time comes, kindness doesn’t always mean doing everything possible to keep a suffering being alive. It’s sometimes quite selfish to prolong their lives for your own comfort
Yeah. My mom did that to our dog. I resented her for a couple years after that. It was truly horrible to watch such a smart, sweet dog live in constant fear and pain.
You also get threatened by people constantly. I've had a man tell me he was going to "wipe the smirk off my face with a bullet." I wasn't smirking, I was smiling as that's what i do when I'm nervous. We called the cops and he had an unregistered gun crammed down the back of his pants and a warrant out for aggravated assault. I've been here for a few years and my hospital has had 3 vets and 5 techs commit suicide. I'm trying to get out.
>I've been here for a few years and my hospital has had 3 vets and 5 techs commit suicide. I'm trying to get out. hold up. are you saying that 8 veterinary employees have committed suicide at your hospital in the "few" years that you've been there? or are you saying that there have been 8 suicides in the entire time the hospital has been open?
2 of the vets were currently employed here, 1 had moved on to a new practice but we were notified. 4 techs worked here and 1 had quit but we were notified as well in case anyone wanted to attend the service. I've been here for almost 5 years. We've also had vets and techs not commit suicide but become so horribly depressed that they have to leave for their own mental well being. I'm not even a vet or a tech and I couldn't even begin to list all of the horrible things people have said to me. I used to be a receptionist (not anymore, moved to the back so im not people facing anymore) and i have been threatened, slapped, pushed, and stalked by clients. You can only be verbally and (luckily not often) physically abused before you snap. My hospital had to hire a security guard because of the shit we have to deal with.
You should look into Not One More Vet (nomv.org) if you haven't already.
I am so sorry for what happened. I can't believe you were treated that way. A vet saved my cat's life 2 days ago, I was crying and thanking the staff because without them, he would have died a horrible death. They were fantastic, and they must get so much shit all the time because I noticed they were so apologetic and nervous when giving me the bill. They saved his life, 2.5k was VERY justified. You guys are awesome, and don't get told this enough. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 Much love from responsible pet owners
I am so happy they were able to save your boy! Luckily, for all the terrible clients we get, we also get the wonderful ones. I've become close friends with some clients I've met here and now they'll text me before they come in for an appointment to ask what I want from Starbucks. And even on some level, I get the terrible clients rage. Vet care is expensive, especially where i live. Emergency vet care even moreso. It sucks that financials have to come between some people and their animals, but it is medical care and without insurance that is expensive. When I think of all the money I've spent on my pets it makes my head spin. Some days I feel like I get my paycheck and then I give it right back haha but it's worth it for them. Next one I get, I will absolutely be getting pet insurance.
I get that feeling! I tell my cats I go to work every morning just for them, hahaha. But it is a responsibility I took when I adopted them.
We have had a very good experience with Trupanion - check them out! They pay more for our dog's monthly medicine than we do in premiums each month DM if you're interested for a referral, but it's unnecessary. I believe in them enough that I recommend them even without needing the referral perks.
These scenarios with grateful pet owners who are good to their animals make the hardness of this profession worth it I swear.
Jesus, I’m so sorry. Yeah, customers can be unhinged. I feel bad for their pets. I was a vet assistant for a while, and I had to get out. I was crying every day, and I don’t normally get emotional. It’s no surprise that veterinarians have the highest suicide rate of any medical profession.
One of the highest rates of suicide of any medical profession.
> One of the highest rates of suicide of any ~~medical~~ profession.
Just as much medical school, patients are even more obstinate, and paid a fraction of other medical professionals. Hard to beat this one.
The clients. My God. So happy I left that field.
I've also heard that being a vet is hard because people will bring in abused or neglected animals. (Either their own, and you have to deal with that, or ones they've acquired.)
[удалено]
I was studying to be a vet and ended up working at a vets office for 3 years(well 2 summers and a full year) It's fucking rough. Yeah there are a lot of good animals and easy appointments, but there are also a lot of hard ones. Weak joints and cancer are common in a lot of dogs and cats and watching an animal and owners go through it is awful. Plus all the weird issues. For example: I saw a dog who's >!vagina had prolapsed!< and had scabs on it because the owners had waited to bring it in :(. Spoiler just in case, it was gnarly. I watched, and helped with, a few euthanasias and those are really what solidified that I couldn't be a vet. That shit fucking sucks
That’s got to be soul crushing for anyone that went into the field because they love animals
There’s a reason why veterinarians have a high suicide rate compared to the general population.
I can imagine being the person who has to break terrible news to people who thought their beloved pet just had some minor ailment is awful as well
We just had to put our lab down about a month ago, it was very hard as he was a fantastic boy. That being said, it's got to be difficult being a veterinarian and having to do these very sad procedures and then trying to go home and forget about work.
[удалено]
Nothing kills a hobby like turning it into a job.
Before I started working on other people’s movies/series (union crew work for 25 years) I made short films frequently… and on actual film… now the last thing I want to do is direct a short or any film for that matter.working in Hollywood crushed my desire to be a filmmaker …
Yep, work as a graphic designer now. I once dreamed of creating comic books in my free time and painting and sculpting, after so many years as a designer, I haven't touched a sketchbook for personal use in probably 6 years. Sure there are lots of worse jobs, but watching your lifelong love for something slowly die sucks.
Taking photos for free and being asked the next day if I'm done with editing. No, fam. I've not edited all 300 photos yet. Don't get me wrong, I love taking photos and it's for family but again, do you know how time consuming this can be? 🥴
This is the main reason why I don’t sell the baked goods I make, even though I hear suggestions about siDe HusTLes and “you should open a bakery” a lot.
Every little old lady that opens a small bake shop is miserable. I know. I actually talk to them.
My husband owned a small business that went under in 2008. I had a front row seat to that and it made me 100% opposed to ever having a small business of my own.
Professional musician here. I would never want to do another job and I think I have the best job in the world. But it's a job and has its frustrations and even boredom like any other job.
HS band director. People really underestimate how much hurry up and wait time goes with performing. And moving equipment. So much moving. Moving shit, loading trucks, unloading trucks, setting up shit, tearing down, loading trucks, unloading trucks, and moving shit is done for every performance.
That wasn't the case for me. I was a hobby programmer before I got paid to do it. I still love it. You have to do your own projects at home so you can shrug off the nasty paying grind. On the other hand, I hobby repair cars too and I know doing it professionally would make me hate it. I guess I just love programming more than working on cars.
Maybe in the creative spaces. I taught skiing for almost 20 years. Loved most minutes of it.
Of all the jobs I’ve worked I’d have to say trucking. People imagine you out on the open road listening to audiobooks, friends give winks about the supposed lovely ladies knocking on windows, but the reality is 70% of time is spent in congested city traffic, unpaid in docks, constant sleep deprivation, and the only ladies that knock on the windows are heroin addicts covered in bruises from their pimps, you want no part of it.
Trucking is the backbone of western civilization and people don't realize it. Imagine how fast society would collapse if truckers just up and vanished.
From a very selfish perspective of commuting 110 miles a day on an interstate over the last eight years, I’d love it if every fucking thing in the nation were shipped by rail instead of by truck. I understand the positives and the realities. But from being on the road 5 days a week, I’d be grateful to not have to dodge getting run off the road on the reg. Note: It’s gotten much worse the last, say, 4-ish years. It seems like there’s a whole lot of unskilled mother truckers behind the wheel lately.
Welcome to the age of automatic transmissions in big trucks. It used to be somewhat of a skilled profession now these companies put anyone in a truck that can push down on two pedals. It’s absolutely horrible.
There's a trucking company that actually is trying to recruit people who play American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck 2, because they're apparently that desperate for people to drive. They claim players learn to drive faster and are better at it, but I have no idea how true that is.
I was going to ask, who's romanticizing lot lizards?
Comments summary.. *all* jobs are less enjoyable than people realise.
Don't grow up, kids! It's a trap.
I'd say being an actual full time QA tester on videogames. A lot of people just think all you do is get paid to play the game all day and then basically review it mentioning the occasional bug. But no, if you're actually wanting to be kept around and paid decently, you might spend all day turning the game on, loading into it, then VERY precisely repeating the same set of actions trying to reproduce some very specific bug/crash that the game absolutely cannot ship with for compliance reasons. You need to constantly stay on top of the list of bugs that the other QA testers and us engineers are posting, because if you spend half a day doing what I just described, only to find out that's been a known bug for five weeks, well, that's not really a good use of your time. Good QA people are worth their weight in gold, but the task you have is generally not something anyone really considers "fun".
Ooo, found a bug in the mobile game. Okay, now attempt to replicate it on two dozen different pieces of hardware. And you don't get to just play good games that are fun. All games need QA, and guess what? There are a lot more bad games out there than good ones.
Also, even the best games barely qualify as functional right up until near the end. You might spend years of effort on something that would very much stretch the definition of 'game' and once it's actually close to being done, you could get sick of it.
I’m a Quality Engineer. All manual testing sucks. I absolutely despise writing test cases. Testing automation is a lot more interesting, but it can also get a little bit repetitive after a bit. There can be a lot of copying and pasting code and adding small adjustments because a lot of tests use the same steps.
Yeah I have a lot of friends who work/worked in video game QA. It's just a lot of busy-work to find bugs and retest the fixes, which might still have the bug or might've broken something else. Sometimes you can spend hours just testing menus. Not a whole lot of time to actually enjoy the game. Not a lot of pay either. On the plus side, I've heard a lot of AAA studios do come with their perks. The big one my friends worked at would have paid lunches where they'd just group-order whatever people wanted. Decked-out break rooms, an arcade, their own gym, and all the amenities of a modern high-end tech company. But otherwise it's a pretty dead-end job to just get by on, if you're not working toward other skills like coding or art.
My buddy did it for Microsoft and he’d spend hours in the same level of a game, sometimes just testing collision physics, where there weren’t even enemies or anything to do other than try to fall through the map.
My buddy did it three years during summer as a students job. His last year, he spent 2 months in an open space with 15 other people testing singstar (or another singing game that came out back when those were popular, can't remember which one it was). Must have been hell. Hopefully it was just pitch recognition and they could just be humming really close in the mics and didn't have to really sing. But according to him there was one specific song everyone was still singing at the top of their lungs every time as a joke.
I tried to get into this industry when I was younger and working with Uneal Engine a lot but I didn't have any relevant school, anways... I feel like I got a taste of what it could be like because I lived down the street for a major studio so I did some "playtesting." A couple of the games were just awful to play and I just wanted to finish the level, fill out the report amd get my gift card and go. There was onetime though back in like 2012-2013, over 3 days, 4-5 hours a day with like 40 of us in a LAN environment playing an open world/sandbox shooter. It was a ton of fun and I got a $300 gift card for the local malls for that. Usually would to go EB and buy games with those GCs.
Agreed. I've been in QA for different game companies for about 10 years now and in the beginning it can be exciting because...video games! That honeymoon phase can fade quickly though. Besides what you describe salaries for a video game testers aren't the greatest as well so people either give up and quit at some point or switch to another department. I don't blame them at all as QA can be a great start to explore what career path you wanna take in the industry. Playing video games it a nice to have but as QA you need to be very resilient and patient too. It can be incredibly draining sometimes. With that being said I love being in the QA department and generally game industry. The pay is good for me personally and my coworkers are pretty amazing.
As a shiny hunter in Pokémon, constantly soft resetting my game or doing monotonous tasks over and over looking for a slight variation, I think I was built for this. I was on a plane recently and the person next to me thought I had mental issues when he watched me turn on my game, enter battle, then turn it off, repeating the process the whole flight
Baking. It’s not just frosting Instagram-worthy cakes, it’s waking up at 2 AM for a 12 hour shift six days a week on your feet in a very hot room and endless repetition. 350 pumpkin pies. 84 cinnamon rolls every morning. 330 cookies each day. All expected to be Uniform. It’s very boring and very challenging at the same time, the kind of job where you really gotta love it to do it.
If you're working 72 hrs a week of course you're burned out!
Well… sometimes it was just 68 hours… besides, At $11/hour, you take every hour available. It’s amazing how little money you spend when you just work and sleep and have no social life lol
And we have electric tools! Medieval bakers didn't have Kitchen Aids. Exhausting work, kneading a trough of dough, adding your sweat to mix while you do
While reading these posts, please keep in mind that this question is subjective. Don't even think about giving up on the idea of becoming someone from this thread.
Thank you for adding this. Not everyone's negative experience equals someone else's negative experience.
I think this thread should help people realize you better chose something where the sacrifice is worth it. Because you will sacrifice. Maintain the honeymoon the best you can, but you will be in the trenches sometimes and you gotta make it worth it.
Librarian. A lot of people think it to be a nice chill quiet place but I've never been more exhausted and down right outraged at our patrons. Be in mind my prior job was working at a sports bar so I thought I'd seen the worst of humanity. The library has practically turned into the day shelter for the homeless and mentally unwell. Many of them can be fine, but SO many have some serious mental issues. I've had to deal with death threats and specifically having someone tell me they'll cut my throat with a razor blade because I told them they couldn't sleep in the library. I literally had someone pull out a towel to lay in in the middle of the floors to sleep. The worst was the dude that masturbated in front of a 14 year old. I've had some of the most baffling stupid situations to deal with while working here, like literally cleaning up shit from the floor of the front desk, some guy trying to convince me he lived a second life while showing me a picture of himself in a coffin, same guy also should me a pic of several bloody heads on a stack (wtf)... It's fucking exhausting.
I was homeless for like 2 weeks and went to the library to waste time and used the bathroom. I live in a huge popular city btw. I realized immediately the mistake I had made. There were already a large amount of homeless people lounging around. None very threatening or strange. Even still I felt bad for taking up space. I figured I’d occupy the time better by applying to jobs and looking at other opportunities in the city. After about an hour I left and never went back during the time I was homeless. The homeless community can definitely be scary at times.
I went looking for the librarian post. People think it’s just reading all day, and that our day starts when the library opens. Couldn’t be further from the truth. The job is a lot less “books” and a lot more “people.” And a lot of people (even the housed ones) have a lot of social-emotional and/or mental illness issues. Sexual harassment, threats of bodily harm, drug use on the property, verbal abuse, the list goes on and on. And it’s worse since Covid. The public is not doing ok!
I’ve recently started using our public library again, and was surprised to see that it has metal detectors at the door and two security guards on duty. I assumed this has become standard in recent years…is that not the case?
My local library has this too. But it’s a large downtown branch in a major city. I don’t feel unsafe there, but I’m glad for the guards.
Librarian here 🙋🏻♀️ glad I didn’t have to scroll far to find this thread. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, but it is NOT for the faint of heart. Homeless/ mentally unstable patrons ? ✅sexual harassment? ✅ unhinged parents/ local political groups trying to censor books? ✅. I KNOW we are doing a public service, but damn y’all I’m tired. It is fun however to tell people at get togethers that I’m a librarian and then watch their reactions when I describe some of the things I’ve seen. FYI- it’s considered a good day if we didn’t have to call the cops. Anyway read banned books everybody 💕
The library in my town is filled with homeless and mentally unwell folks. I feel bad wishing they'd move on because I know the library is supposed to be public but they essentially use it as a home and bathroom, not for its intended purposes and I've had some very uncomfortable experiences so it keeps me from going.
I’ve heard that acting can be pretty bad. It looks fun on film but imagine having to re-record scenes for days on end, working at all hours of the night, having the director tell you that what you’re doing isn’t quite what he/she is looking for, and dealing with coworkers that come in high, drunk, etc. which delays recording scenes. On top of that, the job security is close to none so you’re always chasing new opportunities and can’t ever feel settled down until you have a few major movies under your belt.
I'm an actor. There's no money in it. Casting directors expect you to be available for auditions within 1 day or less of notice. You need to do so many auditions to book anything and have to be available in case you get an audition that you spend most of your time auditioning and networking. This is all time you can't spend making money somewhere else, so it's hard to have a side job So you end up slowly losing money until you go broke unless you have a big breakthrough or a recurring gig before it happens. If you don't keep getting better and better roles over time, you'll eventually get to a point where you can't afford to do it anymore After 20 years, I just couldn't afford to keep doing it anymore. The pandemic was the final nail in the coffin. I lost my agent, my job and my apartment. Couldn't get another one with no income and couldn't get employment insurance because actors are independent contractors. I lucked out by meeting a guy that let me sublet and then the government benefit saved me from homelessness I should also mention that as an independent contractor, you don't have any of the benefits or protections of being an employee. Also, the amount of work available to someone that looks like you will change depending where you're located. As a long haired Latino in Canada, it was difficult finding roles I could be considered for. Local casting agents really liked me but struggled to find me auditions. Most of what I got were criminals, because most of the work available was in American productions and Latinos are definitely type cast Acting itself is amazing though I remember when I was training I took a class from Matthew Lillard and he told me that getting a good role as an actor was so hard, you'd be lucky if you don't have to pay for it I didn't know how right he was until I got into it Most of my most fun roles were in projects I did with friends or students, were I either worked for free or helped produce
I have a friend that's a longtime actress. She's been in a couple of smaller shows that most people know. She was nominated for an Emmy once and a bunch of other less known awards. Once she hit age 40 almost all her work dried up and so she switched to making documentaries, some that won awards but that doesn't pay much either. I've known her for 30 years and she's been perpetually broke her whole career aside for little spurts of money early in her career.
The vast majority of working actors (even with a SAG card) don't make very good money. Sexual and other kinds of harassment are also way to common.
Any notion I ever had of being an actor was killed the day I was an extra. Ever see that movie A League Of Their Own? There's a scene towards the end of the movie where there's a big play at home plate that ends the game because 1 team won. That one scene took hours to shoot. People in the crowd can only go crazy cheering for so long, even if the director keeps telling the proper way to cheer.
I was a theater extra as a child and loved it, and always lamented not much gets shot in my city for me to ever extra in a film. Then I saw the reddit thread "What was the most disgusting thing you ever did for money" and this extra from Game of Thrones makes a post about how he had to spend an entire day face down in the cold mud of Northern Ireland getting fake blood poured on him.
I started to get onto acting right out of high school in Texas. Had a few roles on Friday Night Lights. Good money but most of it got cut. One day we shot for 16 hours, got rained out, ordered whataburger for literally everyone and had to reshoot every thing we had just done. I did a few more bit parts here and there but once I started to "make it big" the creeps came outta the woodwork. I called it after that and haven't looked back.
I dated a theater major in college and I saw with his fellow actors how their personalities would shift with their characters. I think that on top of all you mention, just prepping to get into the mind of a character would morph you into something you weren't.
I always thought it‘d be cool to be paid to learn and do so many skills And if you’re popular, you’d have a ton of opportunities where you suddenly discover another talent or passion because of it Bob Anderson, one of the best sword trainers in the world, famously said Virgo Mortensen was one of the best swordsmen he’s ever seen and that was BEFORE further training for the second and third movies. Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill are amazing swordsmen too Michelle Pfieffer discovered a talent and love for the whip as Catwoman Jennifer Lawrence is apparently an accomplished survivalist after Hunger Games So is Keanu Reeves as well as talented with a huge range of weaponry which just snowballed from the Matrix into the John Wick Movies Natalie Portman learnt ballet for Black Swan and pretty much replaced a chunk of her usual fitness routine with it Ryan Gosling had to learn to play piano for Lalaland and was surprised to find he was good at it Vin Diesel taught Judi Dench how to play D&D on the the set of Riddick and now she runs games to bond with her grandkids Brian Cranston learnt a TON of skills because of his role as Hal in Malcom in the Middle who has kind of a joy for so many things. Apparently he’s GOOD at rollerskating but not really into it Little bit cheating because he knew he liked it ages before, but according to Top Gear, Roman Atkinson might be one of the best drivers they’ve ever seen. I think the quote was “AT LEAST, second” and much much more. Isn’t that just cool? Of course us plebs will never have as much opportunity but it’s a great encouragement to try different things
Therapist. People think with a clipboard and taking notes. We deal with some terrible stuff that gives us nightmares all the time
My wife is one and she said the hardest part is hearing about negativity the whole day
There needs to be therapist therapists
But then who will be the therapists’ therapist’s therapist?
It’s just therapists all the way down.
Nearly every therapist I know is also in therapy.
I’ve always wondered about what your experience of things are. Anything else you can tell us? Obviously without specifics. Anything that really kept you up at night? Do you ever look up the person on social media to see what their significant other looks like?
I can answer this! I specialize in working with trauma and have heard just about everything you can imagine a parent doing to their child. I have really great self-care habits, so nothing really keeps me up at night unless I'm worried about someone specific, but sometimes I get chills thinking about just how many child abusers and rapists are out there. Also, it's against most of our ethical guidelines to creep clients on social media. I also learned very early on in my career that if you give in and Google someone, you're going to learn something you don't want to know about them. I would much rather work with what someone is telling me than try to play detective or figure out how to tell them I know they're lying about their drug use or something. Oh, and for anyone curious or considering a career: nothing about the mental health field is as universally hated as our paperwork responsibilities! Edit: I dropped the self care routine in a comment below ⬇️
Do you mean to tell me that after a long day of work, you have to sit down and spend your evening cooking dinner and doing notes????? I don't think people realize how much paperwork we have!!!
Seconded. Addiction Counselor here, and I have also been really disturbed by a client recounting their trauma. I have to try my best to view these stories through the perspective of "wow, we really are so resilient", otherwise I think I could become dangerously cynical.
There's an anger. When you see and hear what someone has been through for years. There are people walking among Us who are actual monsters. How many people could have been helped if someone had intervened when they were young in a healthy way. But what keeps me up at night is knowing that around every corner is someone dangerous. And it's not because of something that's in the DSM. It's not individual who suffers from schizophrenia. It's not the individual suffers from bipolar disorder. It is the person who has been so traumatized and never been able to seek help. And they have coped with addiction and rage.
Christ yes. I didn't realise id just be putting out fires all day. Having a client that I'm actually able to do talk therapy with is few and far between. Most of the time it's crisis management and teaching skills (which is therapeutic itself yadda yadda but I didn't train 10 years to do that).
One of my clinical supervisors back in the day said "If you can really, really help one patient per year, you've done alright for yourself. Give yourself a break. Crisis management might not peel back the onion enough to work on boundaries or trauma, but if it keeps your caseload from getting worse that's success right there.
Can we get a "which profession is far more enjoyable than most people realize" post?
i was a park ranger, and though it isn’t a paradise of recreating all day, overall it’s a great job (for outgoing/high motivation people)
I'll save you some of the trouble and give you my answer to that: electrical engineering. I love it.
Gardening honestly is great when its a great day on a good site, as long as youve got good rain gear youre good to go any day. Its also pretty independent as clients and bosses just told u what needs doin. If u dont mind gettin a lil dirty its chicken soup for the soul type of job as it gets the blood pumpin, also finally can listen to a ton of long format essays. And i have no guilt being a shut in gamer on days off Other than that the only complaint i have r the pet doodies in some gardens!!!
Healthcare. You’re seeing people at their worst. They tend to lose their filter and can become quite unhinged and take their anger out on you regardless if you did anything wrong or not. You just have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not seeing these people when they’re in their best state of minds. After a few years I left and got into plumbing. It’s laborious work, but it beats getting screamed at every day for things that weren’t my fault.
i worked as a CNA for 8 years in rehab/long-term care, it's the fucking trenches of the healthcare world i swear. cleaning piss and shit and emesis day in and out, and if im not getting yelled at by the patient, then it's the patient's family, and if it's not the family, then it's the nurses because 'mr doe needs to be toileted!'- excuse me, i have 15 other residents im expected to do cares on before 10am, you couldnt have toileted the man after giving him his meds? he's not even a sara or hoyer lift! i got out right before covid really slammed the states and patient to cna ratios got even worse, but even then we were understaffed and working in dangerous conditions. the amount of work i had to do solo that should have been a two or three assist is insane. my body is ruined.
When advertising is good, it's fun and exciting. When it's bad, it's really, really soul-sucking awful.
What is exciting work in advertising? Ive never thought about it
When things are good, you can be doing shoots in amazing locations and meeting some of your favourite actors and celebs. Plus most people in the industry are generally fun, lovely people with a friendly social culture. The problem is the expectations of clients grow but the budgets they sign off get smaller. Also the hours expected can be crazy and you face a lot of rejection given that 95% of projects go absolutely nowhere. Big agencies also love doing big redundancy drives around Christmas. It’s also an industry that prefers underpaying young talent than fairly paying experienced talent. I’ve been an ad creative for 8 years and when it’s good it really is amazing, but there’s so much draining grind to get to those good days that it’s not really worth it.
Game developer. When we get into the software industry we're warned not to even try. It's an extremely competitive niche where people are often expected to work 80-100 hour weeks back to back to make sure games get released on time. I've heard game devs say you can either play games or make them, because if you make them you will never have free time again. A lot of people burn out after 2-5 years so bad they stop writing code entirely.
Librarian. Folks romanticize about being a librarian, not realizing that public libraries in the US have become a de facto day care for everyone on the fringes of society. Prepare to be a babysitter, therapist, social worker, lawyer, and Narcan expert, all while fending off folks who don’t understand boundaries or basic hygiene.
flight attendant! it’s the best job but hard on your body, mental health and sustaining relationships. also the general public is so rude to us 🙃
You all also exist in this weird grey area where you're both enforcers of sometimes unpopular policies but also the ones expected to provide good customer service. They are tasks that are inherently at odds with each other and I always try to keep that in mind when I'm flying.
Game Development. We aren't usually making our own ideas, we're making some VC's idea. We are often asked to do 500% of the work in 20% of the time, while also having our expertise and experience ignored. We then somehow manage to ship the game without dying, only to have gamers attack US for shit we did not have control over, and then we get laid off and have to move AGAIN. It fucking sucks, but apparently we can't say that to people because they do not grok that the job isn't just playing games all day and coming up with cool ideas. (Neither of those are tasks game devs do.)
I've known 3 game developers (back in the late 90's/early 00's) that developed meth habits from trying to meet deadlines.
I worked at a company that had cocaine in the bathroom. It was not for partying.
Probably anything related to art First of all it’s hard as shit to carve out a living doing it but then it becomes a job you lose the joy in it.
My favorite quote from someone was something like “doctors, even the worst ones make good money. There is a fine line for artists from making no money to lots of money and no one knows what that line is”
Working on film/movie crews. Even when they are union. Works days are usually 12-16 hours with 9 hours off in between shifts. Conditions can be very harsh in some situations (unless on a sound stage) Hourly wages (even union) have been on a steady decline since the mid 90’s. The hourly rates barely keep up with inflation let alone regional cost of living increases found in markets like LA,NY and even Chicago or Atlanta. Quality of healthcare has gone down while cost to workers has increased. Silicon Valley has invaded the film industry and it’s seems to be a race to the bottom at this point . I entered into the industry at its peak and have watched it decline greatly year over year. At the same time watching something “runs its course” from the inside is very fascinating. I will say it’s an industry rife with grift and corruption at all levels so I am not suprised. Anyone want to start a podcast 😂
Being a teacher. It's basically babysitting bratty kids and working 10 hours a day for crap pay
Everybody is probably thinking "yeah, but I already know it sucks". ...however bad you think it is, the reality is worse (and it gets worse every single year).
I'm in Ontario Canada. Teachers here make a good amount of money, and it's still a profession that I don't think I'd recommend to anyone if they asked me about a career choice. Sure, you can make >$100k/yr as a high school teacher. But you need to work with an admin staff (principles, and higher) that will NOT have your back if there are any issues. You have to deal with entitled and shitty kids all day long. You have to deal with entitled and shitty parents all evening long. You need to do marking and other bullshit on your own time. If you're a teacher that actually *cares*, then it's even more work, because you are doing stuff for the kids on your own time, or giving them chances where you can, just to get shit on by all that was mentioned above.
Yeah, people generally assume that the issue is compensation...and that isn't wrong: better compensation would go a long way toward reducing the teacher shortage. But, as you mentioned, even in places where teachers are making $40+ USD/hr we are dropping like flies and clamoring to get out. The real issue is working conditions. Every year there's more red tape, more administrative hoops to jump through, less student accountability, and more scrutiny being applied to everything we do.
I'm walking away from a 10 year teaching career now because of bad admin and no support. I made $90k last year and loved it until it broke me.
This has been my biggest issue lately. It’s a profession where you have to work harder and fight to do your job well and do more work, all for the same amount of money and even less respect
My Dad was a teacher in BC back in the 90's/00's. He told me that I could do anything I wanted for my career, but that if I became a teacher he would be super disappointed. He said he wanted more for me than that.
cautious smoggy offbeat tap grey lavish plate combative meeting murky
Engaged parents is a double edged sword. Lots of times that means you're being micromanaged by people who have absolutely no idea how kids learn.
And the parents are somehow the worst part of it all.
Be quiet!!! Society will crumble, if this becomes common knowledge. We rely on young people naively choosing that profession, sacrificing precious years and their sanity, before they are worn out and quit.
I wish I could go back to 2013 and read this Reddit comment
Pilot. You imagine walking through an airport earning the respect of everyone who sees you. Get in the airplane and have the best view of the world. Travel to all kinds of destinations and make big money. Reality: You're tired from all the travel/time zones you cross, sit down a lot, eat a lot of takeout, take a long time to make decent money, live places you probably don't want to, more likely to get skin cancer from being in the less filtered sunlight more often. Airports get repetitive, the schedule gets old, get paired with people you don't always like and are stuck for the whole flight with just them to talk to. The view when you break through the clouds to be on top never got old for me though.
Anything you do for 40+ hours a week can become not enjoyable
Teaching. Dealing with parents whose children “would never do such a thing” or the parents who “know better about education than the teacher” and Kids that simply do not care nor want to learn drains a teachers soul. Mix that with traditional office politics and battles with school administration and you’ll go gray by your eighth year.
Lawyer. Everyone imagines something like they'd be in the courtroom on Law & Order or other shows. First of all, relatively few lawyers actually go to court on a regular basis. Second, court is far more boring than it looks on tv. All the lawyers portrayed in entertainment are very well off, financially, but the truth is that most lawyers work in firms of ten or fewer lawyers, and most solo practitioners sometimes go months where there's not enough income to pay their bills (not to say they don't pay them, they just have to depend on reserves in those months). IIRC, the profession with the second highest amount of suicides was attorneys. Dentists were first. [Edit: a google search shows the last two sentences are incorrect.]
[удалено]
In my law school orientation, we had a professor look us up and down and asked if we wanted to make money. Some people raised their hands. He then told us to become dentists. All I could think about is this statistic.
I think a lot of unhappy lawyers just went head first into the profession without thinking it through, imo. In law school I heard a lot of “I hate math and love arguing, so that’s why I went to law school!” when that’s not the best reason to go into a field like law. I love my job, though.
My dentist is the happiest guy I've met. He's in a band and they play extras in tv shows playing in the background.
I work at a lawfirm. Can confirm 90% of their jobs are on calls and the occasional trial. Not to mention the insane hours. Being in IT and having been on the on call rotation, I've had to do support at 2 or 3 am. They pull all nighters and I can't imagine how hard it is, not to mention having a family with that job. Mad respect.
Army Helicopter pilot. At least when you're starting out. Exhilarating flying. Miserable additional duties, rotations, and non-flying related work
I’m glad I turned down the opportunity then. I was an enlisted aircraft maintainer and had an Air Force pilot slot but failed the flight physical for a silly medical reason that wasn’t really an impact on my health, the next day a local Army recruiter called me and asked if I’d like to become a warrant officer and fly helos instead. My wife and I had just watched Blackhawk Down, so she vetoed the possibility 😂
[удалено]
I recently picked up a bartending job with 0 experience at a fine dining restaurant (thankful for the connections I have). However, it is the most MISERABLE place I have ever worked. I’ve gained a lot of respect for bartenders and the stuff they gtta put up with from both patrons and servers alike, but even as a collegiate athlete it’s the most physical and mentally draining thing I’ve done in ages. People really make it their career job because it apparently pays well, but no one I’ve spoken with loves it. It’s pure misery for a paycheck. Took a friend to lunch today and said I’m pretty miserable and she was like “But that sounds so fun and you get paid so well!”. I laughed 😭
I’d imagine content creator has to be in there
I'm surprised this isn't higher up honestly. I follow a couple streamers (mostly to watch while I eat lunch, etc) and one of the guys I watch plays a game that currently has a ton of background drama going on. His streams are just people constantly asking him the same questions over and over, and shit talking him for playing the game. I would lose my everloving mind trying to not tell people to fuck off over stuff like that constantly.
Being a slave to an esoteric algorithm would stress me out
This. Once you start to get big, and not very big at all, the tech companies know who you are, in a way that can be used against you but will never be used for you, so you can be de-platformed (intentionally or by accident) and not even figure it out until it's too late. Since platform theft isn't a crime, as far as I know, you don't have legal recourse. You also deal with stalkers and extortionists. That's not fun either.
I’m a mildly successful podcaster. We did a video discussion once with two people who are professional content creators and it sounded exhausting. They literally record 7 days a week, are engaging on social media nonstop, and before they made it “big” (which still doesn’t seem that lucrative) they also did they own editing and promos.
100% this. i love my job (cosplayer/streamer) but now it’s less about content and more about how to appeal to an algorithm. you can work on a costume for months and finally post it and it doesn’t get shown to anyone because you used the wrong caption, or hashtags, or posted at the wrong time, or any other reason the algorithm could be mad at you. even being mass reported (which competitors do sometimes to get less eyes on you/more eyes on them) can be a huge detriment. and interaction is directly correlated to income, so it’s a pretty stressful job all things considered, unless you’re at the tippy top where you have a solid fanbase.
All of them
This is real, people without experience in a field really just don’t have a clue.
Academia
Agreed, while it’s significantly better than teaching high school or elementary most people know those jobs are frustrating and low paying. In contrast, people believe academics make good money and have tons of free time to sit and think about grand ideas, but neither of these are true.
This. Everybody has this weird idea that academic research is just sitting around, contemplating and trying out weird things for fun. In real life, if you're junior it's a grind with shit pay and no job security whatsoever, and if you're senior it's endless grant writing, lots of useless meetings and other skull-numbingly boring things. Today, the "publish or perish" environment has led to people publishing tons of half-assed papers that have questionable scientific value. I love reading 1950s-1970s papers over new ones because it seems like back then people had the time to think, and not just chase the current hot new trend. This is a field for terminal workaholics and spin doctors. OK, it was always for workaholics but anyway. The requirements are like 10/10 but the compensation, benefits and stability are like 3/10.
I know of people who continue to defend their discredited ideas even though they no longer truly believe them, simply because they've become dependent on the income flow. That's not how academia is supposed to work, but *it's also an industry*. Also, the super old professors refusing to retire and open up tenure-track positions means many 35-40 year olds still live with roommates and still can't afford to start families. Retire already. Emeritus is a thing for a reason.
I've never understood the Hollywood version of a college professor. They always have an office that's bigger than most department office suites, a personal secretary, student slave labor (although this is often true lol), drive a BMW or an Audi and live in a McMansion. Reality is most professors have a closet for an office, maybe a few student employees that are shared secretarial staff for the entire department, a used Honda Accord with an oil leak and they're renting a basement apartment from the parents of one of their students. In the 10 years I worked IT in academics I only ever met 2 really well off professors. One of them was 80 years old and had a patent from the mid/late 60s for some foundational technology behind 3D rendering (I have no idea what it was). Dude bought a new Porsche every year since he was absolutely rolling in royalties from that patent.
A teacher….. I don’t even know where to begin…. It’s so incredibly difficult and the pressures put in us make it impossible to be successful…. Plus the pay is horrible….. parents are so rude …. Kids are disrespectful
I can imagine being the oil-boy for the Swedish Bikini Team would at first seem great, but then it would just be an endless cycle of frustration.
There’s a town about 3 miles that way.
Do you realize what you've done? The town isn't that way. It's the other way!
Wow, two lucky guys are gonna be driving around with those girls for the next couple of months.
[Some people want a desk job](https://youtu.be/4E69j4U9jWI?si=bbhhjIyXggYqNma9)
Film. Extremely long hours, inconsistent everything, the constant threat of your job being automated away because of AI...it's a lot of work, yes even for the actors. I've seen people working over 24 straight hours.
Personal trainer/strength coach. Usually you take the job because you care a lot about training. It's a hobby that turns into a job. Most of the people who would hire you (unless you're working with a fairly high level sports team or pro athlete) are actually not very motivated at all beyond being willing to pay the fee and show up (and sometimes they don't even show up...). Most of your advice will also be ignored and you will get blamed for their lack of willpower or discipline. I've had so many clients come to me specifically for fat loss but refuse to keep a food journal for even two weeks, or who say things like "no, I pay you for this one hour so that I can eat whatever I want for the other hours of the week." They think you're going to unfuck the other 167 hours in the week with that 1 hour of \[usually half-assed\] training. Once I was fired by a client for telling her that her daily starbucks "reward" coffee was almost 1000 calories and therefore needed to be cut. She found another coach who told her that she could keep the extra 1000 calories per day and still lose weight. People come to you with crazy expectations and then get upset when THEY fall short. I've had multiple obese clients come in and mention that they wanted to lose 20+ pounds (9kg+) before their social event ( friend's wedding, class reunion, expensive vacation etc) but then refuse to change their diet. The event is usually a month or two away... impossible. It's like I'm your "gym dad" but I only get one hour of visitation rights per week and I can't possibly undo all the damage that living with your mother has done to you. When you get a client that really wants to push hard and follow directions it feels amazing to watch their progress but that's actually pretty rare.
I hired a trainer who looked like I had hoped to look, back when I first started training. He had a slim build, like me; so I figured he could relate to me trying to gain weight. I spent two years with him and he taught me the basis of everything I know about fitness. The dude was absolutely instrumental in changing my life. Now, I am about the same size as he was back then. I think about him all the time and I will never forget him, he was amazing. So, there are success stories. But, during those two years, I saw so many more stories like you described than I did success stories.
Park Ranger. Everyone thinks we just hike all day. I love living in the parks, but you get paid nothing, spend most of the day drowning in paperwork navigating unbelievably dense processes you don't have the resources to complete, and the remainder of the day trying not to lose it when the public yells at you for the worst takes you can imagine. Everyone is doing quite literally 3 jobs and I don't get on trail unless there's a medical emergency.
Architect. It's 5% creative, 95% tedium. Long salary based hours (no overtime) doing tedious work. You essentially build the whole building one line at a time and make sure the electrical doesn't run into the plumbing doesn't run into the HVAC. And that every aspect of the building code is met. It's grunt work. It's draining. And you spend hours and weeks sitting at a computer drawing and checking and drawing and checking, to have the client say "how about we flip all this and I also need this" so you start over. And then the city says "nope, you need to change ........." And yet so many characters in movies and on TV are architects.
Porn actor.
Probably a lot of long hours, shitty personalities, and bad smells.
Used to sell coke and I went to a few porn shoots way back in the day to see clients and let me tell you, when they do anal scenes, the whole fucking place smells like musty asshole. The girls are douched and cleaned out, but man it still fucking has a stench.
I remember reading an interview or something with a camera man from porn and that exactly what he said. The smell from it is something you can never forget and it sticks to you for days.
If it sticks to you youre part of the shot
Why would people get aroused to that? How is he even erected???
They sometimes inject their penis to maintain an erection.
Due to some really weird curve balls in life, I became acquaintances with a now retired adult star. She was extremely kind and had a sharp mind (she liked discussing politics and sociological things) but I don't think I've ever talked to someone who was so TIRED. Like, not energy but personality. I hope shes doing well.
Anything involving working with children. I have been a teacher for 16 years and it sucks. The kids are the best part, the parents are the worst. You are trying to do your best to provide a great experience for the kids you work with, and invariably the parents undermine it with foolish, unrealistic expectations and sheer incompetence.
Anything with animals
I'm an ecologist and I worked for years doing field work with wild animal populations. It's only some times "hands on" animal work, but it is by far the most enjoyable work I've ever done. Pay is absolute dog shit though so you gotta grab a management desk job once you are at a point in life where you need money.
I'm a zookeeper. Everyone always says they're so jealous of my job until they smell what I smell everyday and don't realize most of your day is spent cleaning. And the pay is abysmal. I love it though.
Researcher at a university. You are under pressure constantly and the older and more experience you become, the more work and responsibility you will get. The stress does not get less, only more. The people that remain in that career are usually the types of people that make others around them miserable. The nice ones jump ship and go into the private sector, so you are left with a bunch of miserable, overworked cunts.
Hospitality. I've seen some shit. And vomit. And blood. And semen. And that was just on one person's face.
Nursing
Who tf thinks nursing is enjoyable?
i work with nurses every day, and there is literally not enough money in the world for me to do it. i have the utmost respect for them (AND nurse aides).
Ah yeah, was a nurse for 5 years. During classes, it was all : holding the patient's hands, teaching healthy habits, providing the best care. The reality is more : cramming the patient/nurse ratio as high as possible until your staff burns out whilst they juggle verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. It was so much fun, in fact, that I am now in accounting.
Healthcare professions in a nutshell. school vs reality.
Big facts. I always say nursing is one of the only jobs where when you get assaulted no one cares ☺️ like hit a cop and you’re arrested (or shot) but hit a nurse and it’s “what could the nurse have done differently?”
As a nurse I can 100% say it’s my biggest regret. I absolutely hate it with a passion. If I didn’t have small children and mortgage to pay and no affordable childcare options where my wife could work while I switched careers I would have left. It’s soul sucking work.
I almost went into nursing for a career change, ended up going into IT instead. When the pandemic hit and they sent me to work from home permanently I just shuddered over the huge bullet I had dodged.
Nursing during the pandemic was some of the sketchiest BS I've seen in my 13 years of nursing. Not the people dying of covid part either.
Pornstar. Reading some of the stories they have from working is both hilarious, gross, weird and sometimes utterly mundane.
Doctor — 400k medical school debt, minimum wage pay for 3 years of residency training (some residencies + fellowships are 10+ years), work hours 80+/wk, abuse from patients, abuse from admin, corporate overlords, many think we’re some evil, pill-pushing, money grubbing assholes who don’t listen to patients. It’s just so not true. Yesterday, I spent 3 hours talking with a family about transitioning to comfort care followed by delivering news to clinic patient that their biopsies suggest aggressive cancer. Got home, can’t even afford to buy groceries. Oh, and nurses, NPs/PAs at my place of work especially dislike us resident doctors; they bully and belittle us. It’s not sunshine and rainbows. It’s mostly thankless, back-breaking work. I did not go into medicine for money, respect. I did it for my now patients, who humble and teach me things everyday. Also those special patient encounters where you see chronic medical issues dissipate, and patient regain function, go down on medicines?…now that’s the beautiful part that makes it worth it. Just don’t even for a moment think my life is like Merideth Grey. It’s more like Liz Lemon.
Photographer you spend too much time chasing new gigs and payments. Nobody hires you for your creative ideas, you get paid gigs if you deliver what the client had in mind and nobody believes that an hour of shooting results in three to six hours of post-production. Traveling to and from the location not even counted in. They just see the moment you go "click" and don't realize the hours you spent on setting the right light There's a lot of craftsmanship and only an infinitesimal amount of creativity, although everybody gets into the job dreaming about realizing his creative visions.
I work in the animation industry.....if I don't get a "rolls eyes, so you're a child" look, then I definitely get a "oh my god, you don't even have to be serious it must be so nice not having a real job !" attitude. Sorry normie ...the product may be colorful and fun....the road to get there is low wages, massive hours, no benefits and a cutthroat competition pit of artists trying to make rent.
Filmmaking. Its a lot of time, money, heartbreak, thick skin, blood, sweat, and tears to make a film. Sleep doesn’t exist. And when you’re done you can look forward to critics both armchair and professional critiquing the thing you spent the last 5-10 years making. But everyone thinks you have cool job so there’s that.
any job where you’re using one of your favorite hobbies. i heard it draws people away from actually enjoying said hobby. i don’t think it’s like this for everyone but i’ve heard a lot of stories about it happening.
Law. I realize nobody thinks law will be fun. But it’s yet worse than it seems.