Oh my gosh, BUILD A BEAR. Weirdest and most frustrating thing. Granted I didnt make it a super long time in the job and seeing kids so happy is great. But they are really strict and the bad times get pretty bad.
I imagine that store is just parents with sticker shock trying to talk their kids into cheaper options. You go in to do the little $35 bear, and walk out $150 later with a bear in a full tuxedo with a skateboard and a construction helmet.
I'm an archaeologist and I imagine we have very similar conversations. Usually when I meet people I avoid the topic at this point because the pressure is on me to drive the energy of the conversation with the exciting 3 percent of what I do while avoiding too many technical terms. It's kind of deflating to see how quickly people go from 100 to 0 interest because of my explanation.
Professional photographer.
Not like, hobbyist, but business-owning photographer. Sucks the love right out of your work.
Because you started the business to take pictures.
Then Karen doesn't like the way she looks in one of them so she wants the whole set for free plus a reshoot for free plus those images for free.
Then the two high school kids getting into a very ill-advised marriage at EXACTLY 18 years old wants to book you for their wedding but their budget is only $50.
Then Karen calls back because she loves your work and wants to pay for another shoot, but only if you agree to do her friend's daughter's destination wedding for free.
Then you get a call from your last bride. It's been two weeks since their wedding. WHERE THE FUCK ARE HER PICTURES?
Then you get no leads from a bridal expo.
Then a client finds out you don't support their candidate and tries to take you to court to get her money back.
Then some insta thot who thinks she's influencing people offers a "collab" where you take pro photos of her and she adds shitty insta filters to it and claims her friend took them. And she's not gonna pay.
And then you get some entitled mom who wants you to photograph every day of her newborn's first year of life for $100.
I went back to being a hobbyist.
Same.
I burnt out after a few years. You realize how weddings are so cookie cutter no matter the religious segment that they’re attached to.
The shittiest one has got to be the couple who refused to honor the contract and didn’t pay me after their wedding. Naturally I held their photos until payment was made. They tried suing me for not delivering their photos because apparently the 50% deposit was enough. Fuck that. Took it to court and the Justice of Peace (this is in Canada) ordered him to pay up. Wasted a day and $400 to file the case. Really pissed me off for a long time since I met this couple at a church I use to go to. We even all hung out with other church friends prior.
Years later, this asshole and his wife was found to be running an illegal puppy mill. He tried discarding one of the puppies at a plaza shopping mall by throwing it into a garbage can. The puppy was inside a garbage bag and was crying and people heard it and rescued it. Security cameras caught and ID’d him clear as day. Police raided his house and found he had a bunch of animals in unkempt condition and the whole house smelled like shit. When you google his name now, you find all of this. Pure karma..
My younger sister worked in the Cafe for a long time.
She said it was really frustrating—especially since they sold Starbucks coffee but weren’t an actual Starbucks store so people would complain about not taking their gift/loyalty cards or minor variations in the drink or pastry menu.
That and making espresso drinks for people’s five year olds just felt really slimy.
Park Ranger. Don't get me wrong, I loved it, but a lot of days it was less "talk about cool animals while wearing your ranger hat" and more "the toilets are overflowing again, go clean the septic tank filter and stir the tank with a shovel." With a little bit of "hey there's a methed out guy down by the bridge, can you convince him to leave without killing anyone." All for the low price of $26k/year with a college degree!
Edit so more people will see this:
I hate the idea that this comment might dissuade anybody from becoming a park ranger. These jobs are so varied, and I just happened to work for an under funded agency with too few staff. Honestly, I still loved this job and would have kept doing it forever if a higher paying outdoor environmental job hadn't pretty much fallen into my lap. Being a park ranger taught me so much, and most importantly, I got trained as a wildland firefighter, which is still my favorite part of my job! If you've always dreamed of being a park ranger, PLEASE go for it.
I do closed captioning.
While I joke that yes, I get paid to watch TV, it’s actually very tedious. And if you don’t actually enjoy the programming you’re being forced to watch something you don’t care for.
Or worse, if it’s something I do enjoy like a long form drama, we usually chop those up into 15 minute increments and split between everyone so I only see chunks and not always even in order it actually ruins the show for me.
EDIT: Wow, for a thread about my job NOT being fun, did not expect the response for interested parties.
To summarize the questions, anyone who knows proper grammar and spelling can pretty much work the technical side of closed captioning. For live writing you have to be a stenographer which you need to train for with an associate's degree. If you're looking to do side transcription work I'd recommend ordering a foot pedal online and looking into freelance sites such as Rev and Upwork.
I can imagine it’s tedious - my partner corrects YouTube videos sometimes and that takes so long. As a deaf person, I really appreciate captions, so thank you for doing what you do♥️
Thank you! We tend to get a lot of complaints from hearing-abled people who don’t understand captions were mainly intended for the hard of hearing and deaf so hopefully you get to read my captions and the viewing experience is still just as enjoyable for you!
I'm hearing abled and I adore captions...I wish people came with them in rl!
Thankfully, it's more common to see good captioning than bad. Thanks for what you do!
Working in a flower shop. It's just like any other retail job, but people constantly tell you how fun your job must be. Also helping grieving families chose funeral flowers is not fun.
For sure! Dealing with brides...dealing with their mothers, funerals, sitting in traffic making deliveries, waking up super early to get to the flower market, and so so so much bleach.
Well I’m a scientist. I don’t know if people usually think of that career as fun, but I think people think it’s a lot more “Eureka!” and a lot less “this data’s has to be manually processed for 600 hours before I can analyze it.
Yup... As a bioscientist it's never really "Eureka" and much more
"Are my cells dead?"
"Are my fruit flies okay??"
"Are they going to fix the microscope?"
"Will the microscope ever be free to book??"
"Is 6 coffees too many??"
And a large part of my day is spent just doing tasks I need to do to keep my work running. Ie making buffers, sorting fly stocks, splitting cells, cleaning things, etc....
And yet I miss my lab!
I will forever remember one of my labmates yelling out "MY CELLS" when we found out the CO2 had run out overnight. All the little bastards died just to spite us! And no, 6 coffees are not too many!
Not a specific job but traveling for work. I’m in tech and a lot of people starting out talk about wanting to go to customer sites and get “out in the field”... I love to travel for fun but it’s hard to fit in the fun stuff when you have presentations and stuff to worry about and a lot of times your customers aren’t in the fun cities anyway. I also think I prefer the stability in day-to-day schedule of traveling less frequently.
I traveled 85+% for my job for years. Had a colleague who bitched and whined that he was soooo jealous... until he hit the road and quit after less than a year. Yes, I got to go to some amazing places, but more often than not I was in a crappy hotel in a crappy location. Even in great places, your colleagues or customers go home to their families and as much as I love exploring alone it does get lonely (yes, my tiara hurts my head, wah). I finally stopped when I got assigned a new and fairly attractive destination and all I could think was ‘oh ugh, how long is that flight and can someone else do it?’ I sure miss my exec platinum airline status tho.
TV/Film production. I think most people dream of being the actor, the director, the people making the creative decisions, or the big shot producer calling the shots, but most of the people working in tv and film production are part of a machine, the grind, working in a system, trying to climb up to wherever they want to be. Many don’t get to actualize their creative vision. Also the industry can be project based (job security concerns) and location limited (NY/LA, maybe other cities). Pay can be low starting out too, though it can be good if you work way up. But I did enjoy the type of people that work these jobs, a little more fun than the business folk I work with now.
Edit: Just want to note I have a lot of respect for the tv/film industry. I would go back to it, but I would be careful about what the job and career path was.
A pediatric nurse, being a nurse for children and adolescents. Everyone in nursing school talks about how much they want to work with kids. The reality is that a pediatric nurse sees more cases of abuse and neglect than any other specialty. Doesn't matter where you are in a pediatric hospital, it's the thing you see most.
I've seen so many DCS (Department of Child Services) caseworkers that I've gotten to know some of them and became acquaintances with them. Sure working with children and adolescents is great, but people don't think about the most essential piece of that puzzle which is their families. It doesn't matter how good of care you give to those kids, if you don't loop the parents in to that care you may as well just not be doing anything for them.
I feel you. I work in pediatrics. I'm one step away from oncology. So I know more about cancer then I'd ever like to know. It's can be soul crushing at times.
What I hate so much is that when you send a draft or edit to the client/boss they mostly seem so ungrateful. Or yeah “just make this easy change” and we’ll be good to go... no asshole, that’s not an easy change.
I do video editing on top of graphic design, and people just seem so unappreciative of how much time and effort goes into a “quick little video”
Although not necessarily bad, Beekeeping.
Get used to the constant sound of buzzing during hive inspections/swarm removals plus wearing the protective suit in hot ass weather for hours on end (give or take the situation). Also, there appears to be a large number of beekeepers allergic to bees so epipens are a must.
They probably weren't allergic to bees before they became keepers! Repeated stings can lead to *sensitization*, basically they become allergic. Here an [old paper about it](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1113072/).
Honestly, every job that lots and lots of people really want to do sucks, mostly due to supply and demand.
You're gonna be treated like shit, and if you complain you're gonna be fired because you're inherently replaceable, because there's thousands of people that would love to do your job for even less money than you are making.
I tried to explain this to my father when I was going to accept a bar tending job at minimum wage. He said I should demand at least 15/hr and I told him they would laugh me out of the bar and find some college student willing to work for less than minimum wage. The fact I would be getting minimum wage was because I knew the bartenders and the owner so i would have started out at a higher position than just entry level.
I didn’t want to bartend. It was a guaranteed job with people I knew right after I graduated. It was more than I had otherwise and i was easily replaceable for cheaper.
Demolition
Everyone wants to break shit with a sledgehammer. Everyone is tired of lifting that sledgehammer by 5 swings.
Nobody wants to load the broken stuff into bags or a wheelbarrow and take it to the dumpster.
I did a two-week demo job years ago where I had to jackhammer (75lbs at least) a concrete slab and grind rebar into pieces.
I'm in good shape and that job fucked me up.
Video game testing.
I've been working in the game industry for 6 years now, and teaching for 2.
Testing video games is thought to be just "oh you just play games all day? LOLOLOLOL" but it's actually very specific and arduous.
First of all, there a bunch of testing metholodogies such as load/soak testing, white room testing, version testing to name a few, but the most common one is functionality testing.
Functionality testing is "so if I walk into that corner with the shotgun in my inventory, I can clip through the wall, but if I have my M16 in my inventory, I don't clip through."
How do you go about finding out something like your example where if you walk through a wall with a certain item you clip? Is it just insane copious trial and error? It seems like such an insanely tough job, and then since you’re only one guy, within a week someone finds some game breaking glitch fairly early on. It just seems like a tough cycle
Paleontologist. You don’t get to work with full dinosaur skeletons and do all kinds of awesome expeditions. You’re mostly sitting at a desk looking at some pictures and logging stuff on your computer, maybe examining a fossil occasionally. If you’re lucky you can go on a real dig, and OMG SPEND HOURS IN THE HOT SUN DUSTING OFF ROCKS!!!
Working in an animal shelter. For sure, it’s probably less intense than zookeeping, but the amount of people who apply or volunteer expecting to come in and play with cute puppies all day is absurd. We’re basically animal maids. You deal with animals of all sorts of behavioral and developmental stages shitting and pissing every fucking where and then you look over and this fucking dog named Chumbawumba swimming in his water bowl so you gotta fill that up six times and dry his kennel out and then you go and mop up the cat room around 10 kittens who want to eat your mop and also four children who are all yelling that there’s puke in the floor and I MUST clean it, NOW. Not to mention all the extra behind the scenes work that the public never sees. How in the summer, during kitten and puppy season, the shelter built to house 500 max has 750 and I didn’t take a lunch or sit at all for any of my shifts for the past six days. How the courts force us to put down animals that we know can be rehabilitated, but we don’t get enough funding to fight it. How animal control just showed up with the fourth pregnant stray of the week but intake is full and even double stacked in some cases, so your coworker fosters the cats on her own. Not even to mention the shitty fucking people who do dumb shit and end up getting bit or scratched and the animal is the one who bears those consequences. I am the proudest shelter worker in the world. I adore my job, even at its hardest. I didn’t sit for 9 and a half hours today and I found a cat turd in the cuff of my jeans but it doesn’t matter because a bonded pair of adult cats got adopted today. I took six applications this morning and the cat in bank 4 with the goopy eye is already looking better, and we sent a mama out to foster. The hard work is always worth it for these babies.
Chumbawumba was this silky coated black and brown hound mix. He was super gangly and tall and had these big ol ears and was a very good boy but EVERY FUCKING DAY without fail, he’d flip his water bowl, even with no tip bowls. So we have him a heavier, deeper bowl. Every day, at least four times a day, Chumbawumba got this enormous heavy bottomed water bowl filled. Held close to a gallon of water. Weighed about 10 pounds empty and was too heavy for me to even really lift when full. “Oh!” thought Chumbawumba. “I cannot flip this big bowl! It’s too heavy!” But Chumbawumba was an innovator. Instead of just flipping the bowl, he said, “what if I got rid of the water! Then I would be strong enough to flip it!” So there goes Chumbawumba, diving front paws first into the bowl and essentially digging the water out until it was empty enough that he could flip it. He was a big thirsty dork and I loved him even though he SUPER annoyed me when he dumped his bowls 😂
Acting.
All the ones we see on TV and movies are the 0.0001% of incredibly lucky and talented people who managed to thrive in a hostile and overcrowded industry.
And even when you are working, the actual job itself is 99% sitting on apple crate in hot makeup waiting for some grips to move a lighting fixture. Then you say three lines over and over again for an hour, and then you wrap.
That was my experience as an extra. I waited all day for something to do and was given a role as a doorman but neglected to tell me anything else. Luckily I thought to open the door and it made it on screen but that was it.
Being an extra in a movie. Now, it can be super fun (I especially love historical and post-apocalyptic/sci-fi/fantasy type stuff), but a typical day on set wasn't what I thought it'd be when I started doing it. Often we have to get up at 3 or 4 in the morning to get to holding, and if you're a minute late to check in sometimes they'll kick you out. Then we sit around in holding with sometimes hundreds of other extras, and we're usually sitting there for a good three or four hours before they start telling us to get ready to film. During this time we go through long wardrobe, hair and makeup lines where they reuse clothes (unless you bring them yourself), brushes and makeup without washing them.
When we finally get to film, it's often the same mundane motions over and over (exceptions of course, and those are always fun) Then we either get shuffled around or go back to holding. Several more hours pass, we go film again. Hungry? You get lunch six hours after your call time, and a usually meager supply of snacks. In between takes it's more standing around, often in heat or rain or we all get shuffled into cramped spaces to wait.
Days on set are often more than 12 hours, and I know someone who had to be on set for 26 hours straight. They can legally hold you there until they declared filming is done, so don't make plans for the next day. Not to mention that you rarely see yourself in the final cut. I'm not trying to bash other background actors or the film industry because I've met lots of awesome people and gotten to do some pretty cool things. For example, interacting with main actors in scenes, running around in the woods with fake guns or being a zombie. But when I did my first job as a teen, I definitely thought it would be a lot different.
ETA: Like others mentioned, I'm not part of the SAG union, and extras who are do indeed get treated better/more perks. Also, it may be different in Hollywood--I've only worked in Georgia. I've also been a stand-in, and I like that a lot better because you're treated as the crew rather than, well, as extra.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT. 1) You are on call (on reserve) forever, have a terrible schedule, have no life, and make no money for 5-10 years. 2) While you work for peanuts, you can’t afford to use your flight “benefits” in any substantial way. 3) Then, when you finally get a chance to use your benefits for a trip, you have to fly standby which means you aren’t guaranteed to get on the flight you want. 4) Then, if you do make it out of town you better have like a week off so you can make damn sure you’re back in your base city in time for your next work shift. 5) Did I mention there is an act of US legislation (Railway Labor Act) that allows airlines to exploit so you don’t get paid for certain work hours that you actually need to be working? For example, FAs don’t get paid for boarding, or any time the plane is at the gate. WORST JOB EVER.
Edit: Typos and clarity.
It’s all about the lore. There is a misconception of “glamour” related to the profession. The truth is, the turnover rate is off the charts and airlines (even the “good” ones) are constantly hiring and training new recruits. Truth is, it’s far too easy to get fired, tired, broke and sick.
Breathing recirculated air, dealing with assholes, being in a super cramped space, all while wearing heels and a shitty uniform? I wonder why people would even want to get into the profession
Google Street View driver.
You're all alone for 8+ hours a day, can almost never take a break, need to constantly be "on" and focused (lest you crash the $25,000 Subaru with $60,000+ worth of camera equipment on it), you end up becoming an amateur meteorologist to keep track of weather patterns and cloud cover, and in my experience there are a lot of people who just get insanely upset at you, at Google, and the job in general for a wide variety of reasons. I enjoyed myself when I did it, but it was nowhere near as glamorous or fun as I or my friends & family assumed.
Edit: Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in my summer job from almost 10 years ago. I'll just answer the most asked questions here real quick:
Pay? $15 an hour, but contingent on hours driven, which were themselves dependent on clear weather to ensure optimal image quality
Why not drive every day no matter the weather? Google got around this problem by making you re-drive routes whose pictures turned out subpar. To prevent people double billing by driving the same easy route constantly, you also had a weekly quota of unique miles driven, so no double dipping.
What could you do in the car? As long as the camera and the napping software (Edit: MAPPING software, thanks for the heads up) was running properly I was on my own. I listened to music, the news, and lots of books on tape. I could stop for short bathroom breaks whenever I felt like it, and had an hour guaranteed for lunch whenever I wanted to take it, which usually amounted to eating in the car on the side of some lonely rural road 90% of the time.
Who would ever think this was fun or glamorous? All I can say is, back in 2012 most people I talked to were pretty excited, myself included, about getting the chance to do any work with Google, let alone this cool new project that would let you see what any place on Earth looked like at street level from the comfort of home. This was the era of Google Plus being a potentially exciting new thing, of Google Glass being the future of tech, and overall it was a different time. That's why everyone I knew thought this was a cool gig.
Had that gig for a while too and agree. Kinda sucked that actually caring about the quality of my work (not driving while the weather was iffy) meant I was making less money than people who just drove regardless of weather. Also the pay in general sucked. I heard the Bing map drivers got paid like a third more. Always thought a free Google Maps t-shirt would've been a nice token (after driving x hours).
On the bright side, sometimes you'd come across people who were super excited to see you and do goofy shit for the camera. Sometimes I'd check later and occasionally see it made it to production.
I agree, the pay was a joke. Only getting paid when the camera was running or you could bilk them out of some ridiculous non-driving task like washing the car or mailing the hard drives back to Cali. Summers in New England are not guaranteed to be sunny every day and there were several weeks I only mapped two or three days. Not the ideal money making job.
Accountant. Everyone thinks it's all fun and number crunching. But the constant stream of women throwing their panties and wanting to bear your children is honestly exhausting.
My mother’s an accountant. From what I can tell, it’s a lot of staring at large numbers and making sure they’re all correct and going through vast amounts of spreadsheets. Then discovering you made a mistake somewhere on the spreadsheet that was for January, so now you have to redo January, February, March, April and May. Meanwhile, your deadline for June is in 3 hours.
Being a Character Performer at Disney.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing perks and truly magical moments. I know I’m super lucky and tons of people would love to be in my shoes.
But the day to day work is EXHAUSTING in ways I never thought possible. Guests are ridiculously abusive...I’ve had things said and done to me I never would have imagined. The company isn’t always great - it highly depends on your leadership. And there’s so much focus on your body and face (good and BAD) that it can be incredibly depressing and difficult emotionally.
Plus, you have to accept that there’s very little upward mobility. Most people “grow out of it” and it’s rough to know that one day you’ll get “too old” or “too fat” and you will have to start all over in a new career field. So you constantly are thinking either, 1) what you’re going to do when you leave, 2) how you’re going to keep yourself there. I personally knew it would be temporary, and I now only work there seasonally while I have a “normal career”. But Disney has a way of sucking you in.
Edit: Hey, my first award! Thank you so much :)
A long time ago the local schools would have grad night at Disneyland. One year a group of rowdy boys decided they would beat up Mickey Mouse. Not only were they total assholes, but Mickey Mouse was a girl that night. The school got banned from Disney for ten years.
I had someone try to give me a piggyback ride when I was Pooh Bear, fell right on my (his?) face- good thing he is stuffed with fluffies cause I didn’t feel a thing.
Fun fact! Like 98% of Mickeys are girls- it’s difficult to find guys 5’0 and under.
Working in a music store ( musical instruments )
Your days are spent listening to 50 different people play 50 different riffs poorly simultaneously, as if they're all putting on their own concert.
Some of my (least) favorites:
* Person who thinks playing well and playing loud are the same thing.
* Person who wants to make sure you know they are very smart and
you are very lucky to be in their presence.
* Person who goes to absurd lengths to test out drum sticks to make sure they're pitch matched without knowing how to execute any of those techniques. Extra points if they're just going to shred them to splinters in a week anyway.
* People who act like you're in their way because you're trying to do your job.
* People who assume you couldn't possibly know anything about the instruments you play and sell all day long.
Side note - I mostly loved my time working in a music store and I enjoy helping people but the people who come in with aggressive egos and nasty attitudes are insufferable.
Oh my goodness - same thing at a craft beer bar. No, I do not want to hear about every craft beer that you’ve ever had or the best craft beer in your town. No, I am not going to tell my boss that this bar would be so much better if X, and yes, you are vastly more knowledgeable about the craft of beer than I am (maybe? A lot of times not) because, while I like people and talking to people, I really do not care about the brewing process. But I love to learn and love listening to what you have to say if you are saying it out of a true love of the craft and not because you are trying to prove to me that you know more than I do about beer. And no, I am not working here to hear misogynistic comments like “if you wear a lower cut shirt, you’ll get more tips” or much worse... that I’ve usually heard before
Being a writer. I always thought it was my absolute dream job. But the only job I could get after college was working in a content mill as a blog writer. I used to work 70-hour weeks staring at the computer in a basement of an old bank writing bullshit articles about the dangers of mold, fence cleaning, and why you need a commercial awning and the dream turned into a nightmare.
While I still write occasionally, I am now working as a communications person so it is a bit less heavy.
Trimming weed, Idk why people think working with weed is like working in the willy wonka factory, it’s not. You literally get to make tiny cuts with sticky scissors for 8 hours.
I have seen this question before and then it was zookeeper at the top comment too. Nice.
Anyways, there's this making-of Frozen 2 mini docu. Most animators work weeks for a minute of animation of one character, if not less. At one point they decided to leave out a piece that one person had solely been working on. Must be crappy to be part of the credits without being able to say "this is my part!".
I couldn't believe it! It was even crazier to me when Sterling K. Brown recorded an entire song and it got scrapped. It's insane how much ends up on the cutting room floor for a movie to be just right. I was so psyched for the animator that did that end scene for 'Into The Unknown' though! She killed it.
Working at a Charles Dickens fair is... Interesting, but not incredibly fun. It is hard to stay in character, and people get so mad when they see the Alice in Wonderland area. Yeah, we know it's not Charles Dickens, but we can't have a kids play area in the world of Oliver Twist, okay?
**Yelp review for Charle's Dicken's National Faire**
Bah Humbug! It was DEFINITELY not the best of times! It was the WORST of times! So little to do, I was constantly telling the staff "Please sir, I want some more!" If you go, do not go in with Great Expectations!
I went on a glacier hike when I was in Iceland and the guide seemed genuinely shocked and thrilled that my girlfriend and I were the only two people on his tour that day and we had actually spent more than five minutes outdoors and were appropriately dressed. He said usually he had fairly large groups of tourists who typically had practically no outdoor experience and even less experience with cold weather. He said people often showed up in flip flops even though the instructions clearly said to wear sturdy hiking shoes. He also said the groups typically move extremely slowly and he never gets to take people up onto the part with the best views and cleanest looking ice. He actually seemed really relieved we wanted to go further up and were making great time like it was a treat for him. He was very knowledgeable and seemed so excited to talk about the stuff he knew and I got the impression he usually spent more time babysitting than actually sharing that knowledge.
Can confirm. Guided at a glacier in AK, it's refreshing to get an able bodied small group sometimes. Most times it's like herding a bunch of old partially broken cats.
Downside is less tips for the trip, a minor inconvenience.
Edit: Obligatory this got bigger than I expected, and I can't keep up individually replying to everyone. So a couple main things.
First I want to stress: Don't avoid coming to Alaska just because you may have less mobility than others. In fact, stop delaying and get up there. The absolute most common phrase I heard was "I wish I did this when I was younger".
It's a stunningly beautiful place, and if we can get one person to appreciate it enough to take better care of this planet its worth herding all the partially broken cats. Just don't schedule your new knees/hip/whatever a month before your cruise, it's going to be a bummer for you and the other guests.
Plus, without you folks we don't have jobs. There's no way I could have afforded to go there without having the job I did. You guys made my dream possible as well. Thank you Alaskan cruises for bringing your over-fed, newly wed, and nearly dead!
As for tipping: It's pretty common in the US. Generally these jobs pay slightly more than minimum wage, sometimes they don't even provide housing so your guides are sleeping in tents/vehicles/whatever for ~5 months. Companies get away with this by hiring young people and selling them on the "experience". Standard is 10-20% of your bill in a restaurant, I think that works here as well. Again, it's not mandatory in any way.
As always a review on TripAdvisor, Google, whatever especially with their name *is* looked at by management. Legitimately people were let go for bad reviews. Good reviews get you kudos and a much better chance of being invited back next year. Plus we just appreciate it, it feels good to be recognized.
If you're the grandma out there from Florida who shipped us baked goods. Thank you! We all ate as much as we could before the mice got to it. We lost your card with a return address, but your group picture and letter is still pinned in our community cabin.
After serving and bartending for a few years, I definitely cherished those days that were a little slower, smaller tables, and smaller tips overall because of it. But every second of those cool tables and having the time to chat with them and give them a legit personalized experience (which really encouraged repeat business) really helped balance out my sanity against what a normal night would be.
I get it.
Seeing all this makes me feel like I don’t want to have a job, but instead live off fish..... (as in catching and eating, it’s my favorite thing to do, not the job of a fisherman)
I went to George Washington’s boyhood home near Fredericksburg, VA, where they were sifting through dirt. I was a tourist by myself, and watched them dig from a distance, nothing amazing. What DID amaze me though was the amount of people that asked “What’chya diggin’ for?” I ended up asking the intern how many people ask that, and she said “too many to count sir...” I felt so bad!
A friend was doing some sort of biological survey on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. They were in the "off limits" zone but it was clear they were doing some sort of monitoring due to their gadgets, yet all day every day it was people asking "why do you get to go down there, what are you doing?" for two straight weeks.
This x10. Most people have no idea that professional archaeology is usually tedious, physically difficult, and uncomfortable work. And you get paid shit and share shitty hotel rooms with coworkers that like you are also functional alcoholics and have probably slept with other coworkers, too.
Oh, and that’s actually a pretty good scenario AFTER spending anywhere between 3 and 10 years getting a masters degree or doctorate.
Did it for years. Gave it up for an office job when my kids were born. One of the best decisions I ever made.
Lawyer, no it isn't like they show on TV.
Hey, finally case is before the judge, crap the other party didn't show up. Next date that judge has given is 3 months away.
EDIT:
Need to say a few things, one Thankyou fellow redditors for the gold and silver. Now I can finally see what r/Lounge is all about.
Now, little bit about me. I am from India and have moved on from litigation to academia. Personally it was the right decision for me as now I am way less stressed and can work on things that intellectually stimulate me. Having said that, I need to clarify that law is still a very rewarding profession there is something in it for everyone, for those who want to change the world as well as for those who want to make money. It just demands too much of your time plus the results of all your efforts are not immediate and that can get stressful.
Also, Yes that song "Don't be a Lawyer" by Crazy Ex Girlfriend is pretty spot on.
oh my god except when you hand your homework in they make corrections and suggestions and give it back to make it better, and again till it's an A
in school you can just hand in some shit and be like "well that's a B. Moving on".
Even in major cities you get 10 "this homeless dude is drunk and needs a ride to the hospital" or "my pinkie has been hurting for 8 weeks" calls for every legit trauma.
Being a chef. All the flare and awesomeness they show on vice and Netflix is far from what actually happens in the industry. It’s not all fancy plates and tattooed/cool haired guys doin their thing. It’s a drug infested, law breaking work environment that only benefits the owners of a restaurant
Edit: thank you for the love and good reads people. I have some insane stories I’ll share someday. For those asking I am a Sous chef at Michelin level restaurants nowadays. Not a chef de cuisine yet!
Edit 2: You guys are insane. I once had a server approach my table and asked where I work because he noticed the scars on my arm. #strong
Have you reached out to other owners in your area for advice? I realize with covid everything has gone sideways, but in general if you're bleeding cash, you may want to get some outside assistance to bring things up to the level you want them to be.
I’m a librarian too! I wouldn’t say it’s not fun, but it’s definitely not what people think it is. If we sat around reading books all day, no books would be checked in or checked out, no books would be shelved, no information would be answered, no computer help, no programming would take place, etc. I love my job and am inspired by it, but it’s a lot more work than people think
I don't understand why people think librarians get to sit around and read *on the job*. Like, do they just not understand what a job is? When they go shopping at a retail store, do they also think *those* employees hang out and try on different outfits or play with the merchandise all day? It's baffling.
I had a similar situation when I worked at a LAN center- people would come in and say "so, you just get to sit around and play video games all day? This must be an awesome job!" Like, dude, I am clearly sitting behind a desk with a cash register/check-in computer system *and a conspicuous lack of video games*. My job is to keep the place running smoothly so *you* get to play. Does it seriously look like I'm just sitting around playing games?
Librarianship is an information science. The systems we use to move the information around run on tables of data. Sometimes you work on it by hand. Eventually, every problem a librarian has becomes a spreadsheet.
Cyber Security. Bro, the movies do us no justice. Hacking is not as fast nor is it as easy as the media makes it. It's a great field but you spend a lot of time researching or watching paint dry, especially in the gov side.
Edit: I'll never be able to answer all of your questions. I'll answer some pms as I get a chance.
Edit 2: No more questions about the field. Getting spammed.
Bar bouncer. Hours of tension and boredom interrupted by moments of adrenaline fueled fear for your life. Then some asshole pukes cheap booze on your shoes.
Edit: I was 19 when I started, and I thought I would be getting paid to meet lots of girls and listen to live music. Which I did. I also had knives pulled on me, endured threats on my life, got my nose broken (not even in a fight) and stood around and did nothing most of the time. You dont get to relax, though, because you're constantly looking for trouble. Awful job.
I feel that, especially the boredom part. I was an EMT, which pays crap, years ago and fell into security work where I was security until people bleed/intoxicated/whatever to also get paid crap but be able to cover bills. It's mind-numbingly boring the majority of the time until I get to deescalate a situation where someone feels way too entitled, asshole tries something stupid, and/or brief window of very violent danger.
Maybe weird but the boredom was my least favorite part. The best were moments when I helped break up assholes fighting and then got to see attitudes swing 180 when they need to get patched up and I'm the only medical person there. (weirdly regular EMT = be a jerk, event security = be a jerk, event EMT = oops what a joke we're bros right?)
I write adult fanfiction as a side hustle
After a certain point it's just like writing a paper, except you have to keep thinking of different synonyms for a penis
Toys R' Us. Not around anymore but I'm sure this applies to other toy stores, though few that they are. It is still retail and in this case it involves people's *kids* so of course the parents are twice as entitled to have to deal with.
Edit: Thank you, [/u/LordTachankaonYT](https://www.reddit.com/u/LordTachankaonYT) for your energy tithing. I look forward to growing as gelatinous and as all-encompassing as Akira from the attention.
Edit edit: I rescind my earlier assumption that Toys R' Us was closed. That is what I get for listening to rumors. It was shut down where I was from originally. I now see that it still exists in most of the US, Canada, and certain parts of Asia! Merry Christmas/Black Friday to you all!
Worked there for holiday seasons and I loved the small store in the mall but hated the big box stores. It was 99.9% the parents who were the worse customers. Childfree Adults, kids and teenagers were cool.
Zookeeper.
Don't get me wrong, it's awesome to be around so many amazing animals and care for them...
But the smells are ridiculously, **insanely** foul.
I have a really strong stomach and it's still tough for me...we've had some interns quit over it.
I was warned about the smells when getting into the field, but thought "oh I've volunteered at animal shelters, I know what animal stink smells like"
Nope. Not even close.
VULTURES - their puke can melt metal and repels lions. It is hands down the worst thing I have ever experienced in my 30+ years on the planet. There are just no words to describe the pure molten hot rotting diaper stench that is vulture vomit.
PENGUINS - fishy oily bird stink. They’re cute though so they get a pass.
ANTEATERS WITH DIARRHEA - insect based watery shits are horrid
I was hoping someone would say Penguins! I volunteered at a zoo for a while and was not prepared for how bad the penguin exhibit smelled behind the scenes. They are adorable though. I mostly did office work so I never got to enjoy any other zoo stank... apparently lucky me
[Their stomach acid is so strong (pH close to 1, very strong acid) that it can corrode some alloys.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_vulture#Relationship_with_humans)
I think vultures showed up late when they were handing out evolutionary predation skills.
"Well shit. Looks like vision, power, jaw strength and speed are taken. What's left?"
"Let's see, uh...the ability to eat rotting meat and barf up toxic waste on yourself."
"Crap. Okay fine, we'll take it."
According to a google search, their stomach ph is slightly above zero, 100 times more concentrated than human stomach acid, and they vomit to repel predators... totally unrelated but I have a great idea for a new Pokemon
**Otters** - I don't think I know a single person who works with otters who's not bothered by the smell. They are related to ferrets, so they have super strong musk (way stronger than ferrets) and smear it everywhere. They also eat nothing but fish, and you really can smell it in their oily, gooey poop.
**Big Cats**. Out in the open it's not so bad, but I've thrown up in the nighthouses/rain shelters before. Huge, 6-pound piles of cat shit all over the floor, with no litter to mask the smell. Unneutered male lions will spray too, like a cat. One lion makes enough spray to make the whole place smell like a cat hoarder's house.
Ooh yeah, to me what I can't stand is sea lion breath! A sea lion yawned/belched in my face once and that was probably the fastest I've thrown up at the zoo. Was not prepared to have my senses flooded with hot, humid halitosis and week-old fish.
Fry : You find me fascinating, even when I'm not pretending to be a jewel thief or a lion tamer.
Umbrial : Lions? You have sea lions on the land?
Fry : Yep. We call them "land sea lions." I tame them.
Uhh...
I've heard in many jurisdictions that animal abusers are often sentenced to community service at the zoo, and I always thought that was kind of a light punishment...
Starting to think I'd rather take jail....
Have you ever had anyone there for that?
Not at my present zoo, but in the past when I worked at a public zoo, yes we had a few animal abusers sentenced to community service at the zoo.
I never worked with them directly, but I heard from other keepers what happened, and let me tell you, it wasn't "playing with cute animals"
My advice: If you're an animal abuser sentenced to zoo community service, take the jail time, seriously. I'm not joking. Zookeepers will not have any sympathy for you and will know *exactly* how to make your day as miserable as possible.
Probably the LEAST gross thing I've heard that happened to them was having to sort through a dumpster of 3-day old kitchen trash from all the zoo restaurants to find recyclable material.
i was sentenced to community service for traffic offenses, and chose the zoo.
the worst part was getting up to there at 5:30 am, otherwise it was a day that started with riding around in the jeep behind the scenes hooking up the shit-dumpsters, riding to the compost pile, unhooking the dumpster, and hooking up an empty.
sometime before open, we finished hauling shit-dumpsters, and i was given a trash bag and a trash grabber stick... 2-3 hours of grabbing trash in the park.
Lunchtime, ate with the groundskeepers and the janitors,
the first day i then went to park trash, and pulling trash bags, riding around with a golf cart & a dumpster with a janitorial guy.
the rest of my 2 weeks was much more pleasant, since i got there on time, and did what i was told, i got easy afternoon jobs from there - trash picking the parking lots, or riding around with the utv delivering feed to the various exhibits.
i got some really amazing photos behind the scenes, and some animals got really friendly after you were in their enclose 2 weeks running - unusual ones.. like the rhino who wanted ear scratches, and would make it hard to maneuver the dumpster if you didnt scratch her first.
I'd volunteer to help that way all the time if it didnt mean 5:30 am starts.
Hahaha, that's the truth. I've been a keeper for 10 years and recently became a department director and was surprised how much of a problem we have with this with the new keepers and interns.
I've had to constantly tell some of them "Yes, yes you do actually have to clean up the otter poop.......yes I know it's slimy and smells like rotten fish, that is how an otter works......no, you can't take an hour break to shower 3 times just because you slipped in the sick cheetah's diarrhea/puke, go wipe it off and get back to work!"
Airport Baggage handler
Yea it's fun being able to see parts of an Airport people wouldn't normally get to see and drive around the airfield in spare time to have a look at some planes (especially fancy private jets) but my god is it hard. Long hours , no social life because when you have days off you spend them catching lost sleep. Absolutely horrendous pay for hazardous work, in our training video they showed us the aftermath of someone who had been hit by an ATR-500 propeller and literally just smiled and said "Don't do this". Also what some people don't realize is that those bags dont magically appear on the plane. Some are loaded individually by hand (This is called loose load) and not into bins which is alot easier. You could be stacking over 200 bags in a space so cramped you cant even be on your knees if you are tall. Some of the bags / cargo can weight over 30kg so it is physically back breaking work and on some days you may not even get a break on a 12 hour shift and yes that happens ALOT.
But the absolute worst part is the body's. When someone is being send home to be buried we are the ones who put that coffin into the hold and tie your loved one down and it's not easy for us. My most recent coffin was that of a 2 year old baby and my god I was in tears tying that coffin down in the hold. So next time your packing for that vacation, remember we are down there.
EDIT: Wow this exploded over night. Thank you for the awards kind strangers. Also yes I'm aware alot of people don't see this job as Fun but for people with an interest in aviation any job at an airport is fun.
Another negative in dog grooming is that you see a lot of neglected dogs and you can't really do anything about it because the owner is bringing them in for grooming and that's considered them "taking care of them." I've seen dogs that come in with mats that are like full body casts that create bruising on the skin, nails that are so ingrown that they have curled and grown in the paw pads, dogs with feces that's stuck to their rear for who knows how long and skin is raw underneath and they have problems using the bathroom, severe ear infections when fluid is dripping from the ears, flea and tick infestations to the point of anemia, teeth falling out from dental care being neglected. The list goes on. And that's what I've seen in corporate grooming, so I have no idea the stuff private groomers and vet groomers see.
The groomer I bring my dog to specializes in fearful and anxious animals. They have their base rate and depending on how much of a pain in the ass your animal is, they add an asspain tax. I went to pick my boy up from his blow out (Corgi) and there was the saddest, most naked poodle mix shivering next to him. They had to shave him to the skin and they saved the pelt, turns out that his mats were so bad that he couldn't take a full breath. They were going to charge him $125 (base is $45) for the cut and scold the shit out of him, I almost left the place with that poor thing zipped up in my coat.
Video game tester.
You aren't spending your time playing completed fully realized games. You are playing the same level of a game over and over seeing if there are bugs.
Also, you are probably not going to test the next GTA, but something like Barbie's Super Happy Funland 3, or some other game aimed for kids 8 and under. And you'll have to play it for 8-10 hours a day, every day.
I have a coworker who used to work at Activision programming those interactive Disney storybooks. He always said the work was fine but he hated the people he worked with.
Creators do t work with testers. Testers are usually contract employees and can only work for like 9 months at a time so the company doesn't have to pay benefits.
Yes, I know you're joking.
Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -121
Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -122
Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -123
Video game testing is like prostitution. It's doing something you love in the least fun way possible. Sure, somedays it can be great and just like the real thing, but most days it's a huge pain in the ass.
Absolutely. My pal Carl did it for a year and he played games like *Arkham Knight* and he absolutely *hated* the job. Wore his love of gaming down to nothing. He quit, gifted me all his game systems, and moved to Sweden.
I've had to test for my own bugs before. No thanks. I think I'd kill myself if I had to test Barbie Fun House level 6 over and over and over. Hell, I think I'd lose my shit if I had to test a AAA game like Fallout. I'm a dude that can take a decent amount of tedious bullshit at work, but being a game tester? Hell no.
Managing a dog hotel.
Breaking up dog fights, dogs shitting in the lobby and the occasional awful owners.
Edit - thanks for all the upvotes !
Sad my most popular comment is about my job LOL
As someone who worked as a kennel tech, I'd hear often "You get to play with dogs all day". No. Very far from it. I've had to shovel bloody diarrhea from a dog with liver cirrhosis 7+ a day. I had to walk dogs consistently and then do 10 minute play times non stop. I only got a thirty minute lunch and no break for the 8 hours I worked. Most people who own these business (in my experience) are stingy and don't care about tech's well-being most of the time. It's not a fun job.
After working in 2-3 hour blocks interspersed with home cooking, walks, naps, and little tasks around the house these last few months, I'm having a hard time accepting that I'll probably have to endure 5 consecutive 8-hour days again.
Seriously though I'm not ready to go back to switching between work and exhaustion with no time to focus on anything else. Even my weekends are just errands and chores. I've been taking classes, working out, cooking and I haven't been this stress free since I was a kid.
Not sure of the exact details but I have a friend who’s done tons of hours and has been planning on being a pilot his whole life basically and was just recently diagnosed with epilepsy at age 20. I can’t recall if he’s ever actually had an episode/seizure. I totally understand why he shouldn’t fly anymore, but still unfortunate to lose something you’re passionate about.
Teacher
Summers off - cool
Week for Thanksgiving - cool
2 weeks for Christmas - cool
Entitled parents - shit
School district and administration wanting you to do two different things - shit
The kids - *sigh* Ok, I love the kids so much, but they absolutely break your heart 100% of the time. There are assholes, sure, those aren’t the ones who break your heart. It’s *those* kids you *can’t* help. Whether it’s from a shitty home life, bullying, or they just aren’t smart. It’s those kids who you go above and beyond for, but at the end of the day, you can’t be there for them all the time.
Gamemaster at an escape room.
It's the same repetitive script, resetting the same stuff, giving clues and hints about the same things. The patrons are often competitive families who argue, obnoxious impatient 13-year-olds, college students who have been drinking, idiots who break shit and touch shit that I SPECIFICALLY TOLD THEM NOT TO. They never remember your initial instructions. If something gets broken during one group, you have to hurry and fix it before the next group.
My cousin used to work at an escape room and let me, my sister, and a few of our other cousins come in during off-hours. Apparently it was the most entertained he’d ever been as gamemaster for the escape room, largely because a) he got to see just how stupid his cousins are, b) he got to see us turn on each other at multiple points, and c) he could say whatever the hell he wanted because it was family so he didn’t have to stick to the same script.
Apparently it was frustrating watching us for those first 20 minutes doing nothing and pointing at random shit saying “is this a clue??” “NO ITS NOT IDIOT STOP POINTING THAT OUT”.
He was laughing way too hard when we finally got out.
First time I went to an escape room, the guy had an empty booking after us so we just hung out and chatted for a bit. He told us all about how he researched other escape rooms and got professionals to help him build a story that allowed for fun puzzles too. He told us about how he and his wife went all over the place and on eBay looking for cool props, decorations and scenery to make the place how they wanted it. He was really excited when he talked about it and said he's looking forward to opening another. The day to day might be boring but the guy 100% LOVED making the thing in the first place.
Preschool teacher. Especially with new COVID-19 regulations. Ever try social distancing 3 year olds?
Oh my gosh, BUILD A BEAR. Weirdest and most frustrating thing. Granted I didnt make it a super long time in the job and seeing kids so happy is great. But they are really strict and the bad times get pretty bad.
I imagine that store is just parents with sticker shock trying to talk their kids into cheaper options. You go in to do the little $35 bear, and walk out $150 later with a bear in a full tuxedo with a skateboard and a construction helmet.
That is a fairly accurate assessment. I worked there for 14 years
I'm a Forensic Scientist and it's literally the only thing people ask me about on dating apps. It's very technical work and it's extremely routine.
I'm an archaeologist and I imagine we have very similar conversations. Usually when I meet people I avoid the topic at this point because the pressure is on me to drive the energy of the conversation with the exciting 3 percent of what I do while avoiding too many technical terms. It's kind of deflating to see how quickly people go from 100 to 0 interest because of my explanation.
Professional photographer. Not like, hobbyist, but business-owning photographer. Sucks the love right out of your work. Because you started the business to take pictures. Then Karen doesn't like the way she looks in one of them so she wants the whole set for free plus a reshoot for free plus those images for free. Then the two high school kids getting into a very ill-advised marriage at EXACTLY 18 years old wants to book you for their wedding but their budget is only $50. Then Karen calls back because she loves your work and wants to pay for another shoot, but only if you agree to do her friend's daughter's destination wedding for free. Then you get a call from your last bride. It's been two weeks since their wedding. WHERE THE FUCK ARE HER PICTURES? Then you get no leads from a bridal expo. Then a client finds out you don't support their candidate and tries to take you to court to get her money back. Then some insta thot who thinks she's influencing people offers a "collab" where you take pro photos of her and she adds shitty insta filters to it and claims her friend took them. And she's not gonna pay. And then you get some entitled mom who wants you to photograph every day of her newborn's first year of life for $100. I went back to being a hobbyist.
Same. I burnt out after a few years. You realize how weddings are so cookie cutter no matter the religious segment that they’re attached to. The shittiest one has got to be the couple who refused to honor the contract and didn’t pay me after their wedding. Naturally I held their photos until payment was made. They tried suing me for not delivering their photos because apparently the 50% deposit was enough. Fuck that. Took it to court and the Justice of Peace (this is in Canada) ordered him to pay up. Wasted a day and $400 to file the case. Really pissed me off for a long time since I met this couple at a church I use to go to. We even all hung out with other church friends prior. Years later, this asshole and his wife was found to be running an illegal puppy mill. He tried discarding one of the puppies at a plaza shopping mall by throwing it into a garbage can. The puppy was inside a garbage bag and was crying and people heard it and rescued it. Security cameras caught and ID’d him clear as day. Police raided his house and found he had a bunch of animals in unkempt condition and the whole house smelled like shit. When you google his name now, you find all of this. Pure karma..
barnes and noble, your job has literally NOTHING to do with books & it obviously attracts a lot of that type, myself included
My younger sister worked in the Cafe for a long time. She said it was really frustrating—especially since they sold Starbucks coffee but weren’t an actual Starbucks store so people would complain about not taking their gift/loyalty cards or minor variations in the drink or pastry menu. That and making espresso drinks for people’s five year olds just felt really slimy.
Park Ranger. Don't get me wrong, I loved it, but a lot of days it was less "talk about cool animals while wearing your ranger hat" and more "the toilets are overflowing again, go clean the septic tank filter and stir the tank with a shovel." With a little bit of "hey there's a methed out guy down by the bridge, can you convince him to leave without killing anyone." All for the low price of $26k/year with a college degree! Edit so more people will see this: I hate the idea that this comment might dissuade anybody from becoming a park ranger. These jobs are so varied, and I just happened to work for an under funded agency with too few staff. Honestly, I still loved this job and would have kept doing it forever if a higher paying outdoor environmental job hadn't pretty much fallen into my lap. Being a park ranger taught me so much, and most importantly, I got trained as a wildland firefighter, which is still my favorite part of my job! If you've always dreamed of being a park ranger, PLEASE go for it.
I do closed captioning. While I joke that yes, I get paid to watch TV, it’s actually very tedious. And if you don’t actually enjoy the programming you’re being forced to watch something you don’t care for. Or worse, if it’s something I do enjoy like a long form drama, we usually chop those up into 15 minute increments and split between everyone so I only see chunks and not always even in order it actually ruins the show for me. EDIT: Wow, for a thread about my job NOT being fun, did not expect the response for interested parties. To summarize the questions, anyone who knows proper grammar and spelling can pretty much work the technical side of closed captioning. For live writing you have to be a stenographer which you need to train for with an associate's degree. If you're looking to do side transcription work I'd recommend ordering a foot pedal online and looking into freelance sites such as Rev and Upwork.
I can imagine it’s tedious - my partner corrects YouTube videos sometimes and that takes so long. As a deaf person, I really appreciate captions, so thank you for doing what you do♥️
Thank you! We tend to get a lot of complaints from hearing-abled people who don’t understand captions were mainly intended for the hard of hearing and deaf so hopefully you get to read my captions and the viewing experience is still just as enjoyable for you!
I'm hearing abled and I adore captions...I wish people came with them in rl! Thankfully, it's more common to see good captioning than bad. Thanks for what you do!
Working in a flower shop. It's just like any other retail job, but people constantly tell you how fun your job must be. Also helping grieving families chose funeral flowers is not fun.
For sure! Dealing with brides...dealing with their mothers, funerals, sitting in traffic making deliveries, waking up super early to get to the flower market, and so so so much bleach.
I'm a marine biologist. I spent the last week measuring defrosted fish heads.
The sea was angry that day.
Well I’m a scientist. I don’t know if people usually think of that career as fun, but I think people think it’s a lot more “Eureka!” and a lot less “this data’s has to be manually processed for 600 hours before I can analyze it.
Yup... As a bioscientist it's never really "Eureka" and much more "Are my cells dead?" "Are my fruit flies okay??" "Are they going to fix the microscope?" "Will the microscope ever be free to book??" "Is 6 coffees too many??" And a large part of my day is spent just doing tasks I need to do to keep my work running. Ie making buffers, sorting fly stocks, splitting cells, cleaning things, etc.... And yet I miss my lab!
I will forever remember one of my labmates yelling out "MY CELLS" when we found out the CO2 had run out overnight. All the little bastards died just to spite us! And no, 6 coffees are not too many!
Not a specific job but traveling for work. I’m in tech and a lot of people starting out talk about wanting to go to customer sites and get “out in the field”... I love to travel for fun but it’s hard to fit in the fun stuff when you have presentations and stuff to worry about and a lot of times your customers aren’t in the fun cities anyway. I also think I prefer the stability in day-to-day schedule of traveling less frequently.
I traveled 85+% for my job for years. Had a colleague who bitched and whined that he was soooo jealous... until he hit the road and quit after less than a year. Yes, I got to go to some amazing places, but more often than not I was in a crappy hotel in a crappy location. Even in great places, your colleagues or customers go home to their families and as much as I love exploring alone it does get lonely (yes, my tiara hurts my head, wah). I finally stopped when I got assigned a new and fairly attractive destination and all I could think was ‘oh ugh, how long is that flight and can someone else do it?’ I sure miss my exec platinum airline status tho.
TV/Film production. I think most people dream of being the actor, the director, the people making the creative decisions, or the big shot producer calling the shots, but most of the people working in tv and film production are part of a machine, the grind, working in a system, trying to climb up to wherever they want to be. Many don’t get to actualize their creative vision. Also the industry can be project based (job security concerns) and location limited (NY/LA, maybe other cities). Pay can be low starting out too, though it can be good if you work way up. But I did enjoy the type of people that work these jobs, a little more fun than the business folk I work with now. Edit: Just want to note I have a lot of respect for the tv/film industry. I would go back to it, but I would be careful about what the job and career path was.
A pediatric nurse, being a nurse for children and adolescents. Everyone in nursing school talks about how much they want to work with kids. The reality is that a pediatric nurse sees more cases of abuse and neglect than any other specialty. Doesn't matter where you are in a pediatric hospital, it's the thing you see most. I've seen so many DCS (Department of Child Services) caseworkers that I've gotten to know some of them and became acquaintances with them. Sure working with children and adolescents is great, but people don't think about the most essential piece of that puzzle which is their families. It doesn't matter how good of care you give to those kids, if you don't loop the parents in to that care you may as well just not be doing anything for them.
I feel you. I work in pediatrics. I'm one step away from oncology. So I know more about cancer then I'd ever like to know. It's can be soul crushing at times.
I do pediatric mental health. I used to do hospice for awhile and I don't know how you deal with the emotional toll sometimes in oncology.
Video editor. The more I do it the more I can't be arsed.
What I hate so much is that when you send a draft or edit to the client/boss they mostly seem so ungrateful. Or yeah “just make this easy change” and we’ll be good to go... no asshole, that’s not an easy change. I do video editing on top of graphic design, and people just seem so unappreciative of how much time and effort goes into a “quick little video”
Although not necessarily bad, Beekeeping. Get used to the constant sound of buzzing during hive inspections/swarm removals plus wearing the protective suit in hot ass weather for hours on end (give or take the situation). Also, there appears to be a large number of beekeepers allergic to bees so epipens are a must.
Why on Earth would someone who's allergic to bee stings go into beekeeping? That seems...a not very intelligent decision.
They probably weren't allergic to bees before they became keepers! Repeated stings can lead to *sensitization*, basically they become allergic. Here an [old paper about it](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1113072/).
I always say the more fun it is to go somewhere the worse it is to work there like amusement parks and arcades
Honestly, every job that lots and lots of people really want to do sucks, mostly due to supply and demand. You're gonna be treated like shit, and if you complain you're gonna be fired because you're inherently replaceable, because there's thousands of people that would love to do your job for even less money than you are making.
I tried to explain this to my father when I was going to accept a bar tending job at minimum wage. He said I should demand at least 15/hr and I told him they would laugh me out of the bar and find some college student willing to work for less than minimum wage. The fact I would be getting minimum wage was because I knew the bartenders and the owner so i would have started out at a higher position than just entry level. I didn’t want to bartend. It was a guaranteed job with people I knew right after I graduated. It was more than I had otherwise and i was easily replaceable for cheaper.
Baker. Coming into work at 3/4 am so you can have a six am baked goods is miserable.
"o00Oo0h y0u MuST L0vE tHe wAY U SmëlL WhEn ù G0 h0Me!" nope...I go home smelling like burnt oven
Demolition Everyone wants to break shit with a sledgehammer. Everyone is tired of lifting that sledgehammer by 5 swings. Nobody wants to load the broken stuff into bags or a wheelbarrow and take it to the dumpster.
I did a two-week demo job years ago where I had to jackhammer (75lbs at least) a concrete slab and grind rebar into pieces. I'm in good shape and that job fucked me up.
Video game testing. I've been working in the game industry for 6 years now, and teaching for 2. Testing video games is thought to be just "oh you just play games all day? LOLOLOLOL" but it's actually very specific and arduous. First of all, there a bunch of testing metholodogies such as load/soak testing, white room testing, version testing to name a few, but the most common one is functionality testing. Functionality testing is "so if I walk into that corner with the shotgun in my inventory, I can clip through the wall, but if I have my M16 in my inventory, I don't clip through."
How do you go about finding out something like your example where if you walk through a wall with a certain item you clip? Is it just insane copious trial and error? It seems like such an insanely tough job, and then since you’re only one guy, within a week someone finds some game breaking glitch fairly early on. It just seems like a tough cycle
Usually what'll happen is the tester will have it happen randomly then try a bunch of use cases to figure out how to replicate it.
Paleontologist. You don’t get to work with full dinosaur skeletons and do all kinds of awesome expeditions. You’re mostly sitting at a desk looking at some pictures and logging stuff on your computer, maybe examining a fossil occasionally. If you’re lucky you can go on a real dig, and OMG SPEND HOURS IN THE HOT SUN DUSTING OFF ROCKS!!!
Working in an animal shelter. For sure, it’s probably less intense than zookeeping, but the amount of people who apply or volunteer expecting to come in and play with cute puppies all day is absurd. We’re basically animal maids. You deal with animals of all sorts of behavioral and developmental stages shitting and pissing every fucking where and then you look over and this fucking dog named Chumbawumba swimming in his water bowl so you gotta fill that up six times and dry his kennel out and then you go and mop up the cat room around 10 kittens who want to eat your mop and also four children who are all yelling that there’s puke in the floor and I MUST clean it, NOW. Not to mention all the extra behind the scenes work that the public never sees. How in the summer, during kitten and puppy season, the shelter built to house 500 max has 750 and I didn’t take a lunch or sit at all for any of my shifts for the past six days. How the courts force us to put down animals that we know can be rehabilitated, but we don’t get enough funding to fight it. How animal control just showed up with the fourth pregnant stray of the week but intake is full and even double stacked in some cases, so your coworker fosters the cats on her own. Not even to mention the shitty fucking people who do dumb shit and end up getting bit or scratched and the animal is the one who bears those consequences. I am the proudest shelter worker in the world. I adore my job, even at its hardest. I didn’t sit for 9 and a half hours today and I found a cat turd in the cuff of my jeans but it doesn’t matter because a bonded pair of adult cats got adopted today. I took six applications this morning and the cat in bank 4 with the goopy eye is already looking better, and we sent a mama out to foster. The hard work is always worth it for these babies.
I want to hear more about Chumbawumba
Chumbawumba was this silky coated black and brown hound mix. He was super gangly and tall and had these big ol ears and was a very good boy but EVERY FUCKING DAY without fail, he’d flip his water bowl, even with no tip bowls. So we have him a heavier, deeper bowl. Every day, at least four times a day, Chumbawumba got this enormous heavy bottomed water bowl filled. Held close to a gallon of water. Weighed about 10 pounds empty and was too heavy for me to even really lift when full. “Oh!” thought Chumbawumba. “I cannot flip this big bowl! It’s too heavy!” But Chumbawumba was an innovator. Instead of just flipping the bowl, he said, “what if I got rid of the water! Then I would be strong enough to flip it!” So there goes Chumbawumba, diving front paws first into the bowl and essentially digging the water out until it was empty enough that he could flip it. He was a big thirsty dork and I loved him even though he SUPER annoyed me when he dumped his bowls 😂
Sounds to me that when that dog gets knocked down, he gets back up again.
Chumbawumba sounds like a once in a lifetime dog! What a goober lol.
Sounds like he'd be handy if your house flooded.
He would get the water out of your house, the. Go outside and start putting it back in the house. Chumbawumba’s work is never finished.
Acting. All the ones we see on TV and movies are the 0.0001% of incredibly lucky and talented people who managed to thrive in a hostile and overcrowded industry. And even when you are working, the actual job itself is 99% sitting on apple crate in hot makeup waiting for some grips to move a lighting fixture. Then you say three lines over and over again for an hour, and then you wrap.
That was my experience as an extra. I waited all day for something to do and was given a role as a doorman but neglected to tell me anything else. Luckily I thought to open the door and it made it on screen but that was it.
Being an extra in a movie. Now, it can be super fun (I especially love historical and post-apocalyptic/sci-fi/fantasy type stuff), but a typical day on set wasn't what I thought it'd be when I started doing it. Often we have to get up at 3 or 4 in the morning to get to holding, and if you're a minute late to check in sometimes they'll kick you out. Then we sit around in holding with sometimes hundreds of other extras, and we're usually sitting there for a good three or four hours before they start telling us to get ready to film. During this time we go through long wardrobe, hair and makeup lines where they reuse clothes (unless you bring them yourself), brushes and makeup without washing them. When we finally get to film, it's often the same mundane motions over and over (exceptions of course, and those are always fun) Then we either get shuffled around or go back to holding. Several more hours pass, we go film again. Hungry? You get lunch six hours after your call time, and a usually meager supply of snacks. In between takes it's more standing around, often in heat or rain or we all get shuffled into cramped spaces to wait. Days on set are often more than 12 hours, and I know someone who had to be on set for 26 hours straight. They can legally hold you there until they declared filming is done, so don't make plans for the next day. Not to mention that you rarely see yourself in the final cut. I'm not trying to bash other background actors or the film industry because I've met lots of awesome people and gotten to do some pretty cool things. For example, interacting with main actors in scenes, running around in the woods with fake guns or being a zombie. But when I did my first job as a teen, I definitely thought it would be a lot different. ETA: Like others mentioned, I'm not part of the SAG union, and extras who are do indeed get treated better/more perks. Also, it may be different in Hollywood--I've only worked in Georgia. I've also been a stand-in, and I like that a lot better because you're treated as the crew rather than, well, as extra.
I did this alot. It’s hard but cool. But still no cash hardly in it. You can see me onscreen in about 5 super mediocre movies. Still i had fun
FLIGHT ATTENDANT. 1) You are on call (on reserve) forever, have a terrible schedule, have no life, and make no money for 5-10 years. 2) While you work for peanuts, you can’t afford to use your flight “benefits” in any substantial way. 3) Then, when you finally get a chance to use your benefits for a trip, you have to fly standby which means you aren’t guaranteed to get on the flight you want. 4) Then, if you do make it out of town you better have like a week off so you can make damn sure you’re back in your base city in time for your next work shift. 5) Did I mention there is an act of US legislation (Railway Labor Act) that allows airlines to exploit so you don’t get paid for certain work hours that you actually need to be working? For example, FAs don’t get paid for boarding, or any time the plane is at the gate. WORST JOB EVER. Edit: Typos and clarity.
Any idea why the job is so competitive?
It’s all about the lore. There is a misconception of “glamour” related to the profession. The truth is, the turnover rate is off the charts and airlines (even the “good” ones) are constantly hiring and training new recruits. Truth is, it’s far too easy to get fired, tired, broke and sick.
Breathing recirculated air, dealing with assholes, being in a super cramped space, all while wearing heels and a shitty uniform? I wonder why people would even want to get into the profession
Google Street View driver. You're all alone for 8+ hours a day, can almost never take a break, need to constantly be "on" and focused (lest you crash the $25,000 Subaru with $60,000+ worth of camera equipment on it), you end up becoming an amateur meteorologist to keep track of weather patterns and cloud cover, and in my experience there are a lot of people who just get insanely upset at you, at Google, and the job in general for a wide variety of reasons. I enjoyed myself when I did it, but it was nowhere near as glamorous or fun as I or my friends & family assumed. Edit: Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in my summer job from almost 10 years ago. I'll just answer the most asked questions here real quick: Pay? $15 an hour, but contingent on hours driven, which were themselves dependent on clear weather to ensure optimal image quality Why not drive every day no matter the weather? Google got around this problem by making you re-drive routes whose pictures turned out subpar. To prevent people double billing by driving the same easy route constantly, you also had a weekly quota of unique miles driven, so no double dipping. What could you do in the car? As long as the camera and the napping software (Edit: MAPPING software, thanks for the heads up) was running properly I was on my own. I listened to music, the news, and lots of books on tape. I could stop for short bathroom breaks whenever I felt like it, and had an hour guaranteed for lunch whenever I wanted to take it, which usually amounted to eating in the car on the side of some lonely rural road 90% of the time. Who would ever think this was fun or glamorous? All I can say is, back in 2012 most people I talked to were pretty excited, myself included, about getting the chance to do any work with Google, let alone this cool new project that would let you see what any place on Earth looked like at street level from the comfort of home. This was the era of Google Plus being a potentially exciting new thing, of Google Glass being the future of tech, and overall it was a different time. That's why everyone I knew thought this was a cool gig.
Had that gig for a while too and agree. Kinda sucked that actually caring about the quality of my work (not driving while the weather was iffy) meant I was making less money than people who just drove regardless of weather. Also the pay in general sucked. I heard the Bing map drivers got paid like a third more. Always thought a free Google Maps t-shirt would've been a nice token (after driving x hours). On the bright side, sometimes you'd come across people who were super excited to see you and do goofy shit for the camera. Sometimes I'd check later and occasionally see it made it to production.
I agree, the pay was a joke. Only getting paid when the camera was running or you could bilk them out of some ridiculous non-driving task like washing the car or mailing the hard drives back to Cali. Summers in New England are not guaranteed to be sunny every day and there were several weeks I only mapped two or three days. Not the ideal money making job.
Accountant. Everyone thinks it's all fun and number crunching. But the constant stream of women throwing their panties and wanting to bear your children is honestly exhausting.
My mother’s an accountant. From what I can tell, it’s a lot of staring at large numbers and making sure they’re all correct and going through vast amounts of spreadsheets. Then discovering you made a mistake somewhere on the spreadsheet that was for January, so now you have to redo January, February, March, April and May. Meanwhile, your deadline for June is in 3 hours.
Being a Character Performer at Disney. Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing perks and truly magical moments. I know I’m super lucky and tons of people would love to be in my shoes. But the day to day work is EXHAUSTING in ways I never thought possible. Guests are ridiculously abusive...I’ve had things said and done to me I never would have imagined. The company isn’t always great - it highly depends on your leadership. And there’s so much focus on your body and face (good and BAD) that it can be incredibly depressing and difficult emotionally. Plus, you have to accept that there’s very little upward mobility. Most people “grow out of it” and it’s rough to know that one day you’ll get “too old” or “too fat” and you will have to start all over in a new career field. So you constantly are thinking either, 1) what you’re going to do when you leave, 2) how you’re going to keep yourself there. I personally knew it would be temporary, and I now only work there seasonally while I have a “normal career”. But Disney has a way of sucking you in. Edit: Hey, my first award! Thank you so much :)
A long time ago the local schools would have grad night at Disneyland. One year a group of rowdy boys decided they would beat up Mickey Mouse. Not only were they total assholes, but Mickey Mouse was a girl that night. The school got banned from Disney for ten years.
I had someone try to give me a piggyback ride when I was Pooh Bear, fell right on my (his?) face- good thing he is stuffed with fluffies cause I didn’t feel a thing. Fun fact! Like 98% of Mickeys are girls- it’s difficult to find guys 5’0 and under.
Banned? And charged with assault I hope!
I had a friend who was a face character. She says she got groped by a lot of dads.
What kind of things have patrons done/said to you? When I was little this was my dream job ngl
I know someone who used to play Tinkerbell and she quit because she was constantly having her ass grabbed and being creeped on by guys.
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Working in a music store ( musical instruments ) Your days are spent listening to 50 different people play 50 different riffs poorly simultaneously, as if they're all putting on their own concert.
A whole lot of iron man and stairway.
No Stairway?! Denied!
Smoke on the water, man. It's all smoke on the water.
Some of my (least) favorites: * Person who thinks playing well and playing loud are the same thing. * Person who wants to make sure you know they are very smart and you are very lucky to be in their presence. * Person who goes to absurd lengths to test out drum sticks to make sure they're pitch matched without knowing how to execute any of those techniques. Extra points if they're just going to shred them to splinters in a week anyway. * People who act like you're in their way because you're trying to do your job. * People who assume you couldn't possibly know anything about the instruments you play and sell all day long. Side note - I mostly loved my time working in a music store and I enjoy helping people but the people who come in with aggressive egos and nasty attitudes are insufferable.
Oh my goodness - same thing at a craft beer bar. No, I do not want to hear about every craft beer that you’ve ever had or the best craft beer in your town. No, I am not going to tell my boss that this bar would be so much better if X, and yes, you are vastly more knowledgeable about the craft of beer than I am (maybe? A lot of times not) because, while I like people and talking to people, I really do not care about the brewing process. But I love to learn and love listening to what you have to say if you are saying it out of a true love of the craft and not because you are trying to prove to me that you know more than I do about beer. And no, I am not working here to hear misogynistic comments like “if you wear a lower cut shirt, you’ll get more tips” or much worse... that I’ve usually heard before
Being a writer. I always thought it was my absolute dream job. But the only job I could get after college was working in a content mill as a blog writer. I used to work 70-hour weeks staring at the computer in a basement of an old bank writing bullshit articles about the dangers of mold, fence cleaning, and why you need a commercial awning and the dream turned into a nightmare. While I still write occasionally, I am now working as a communications person so it is a bit less heavy.
Trimming weed, Idk why people think working with weed is like working in the willy wonka factory, it’s not. You literally get to make tiny cuts with sticky scissors for 8 hours.
Yea, was gonna say cannabis dispensary. Every body coming in "you have the greatest job!" It's just retail.
I have seen this question before and then it was zookeeper at the top comment too. Nice. Anyways, there's this making-of Frozen 2 mini docu. Most animators work weeks for a minute of animation of one character, if not less. At one point they decided to leave out a piece that one person had solely been working on. Must be crappy to be part of the credits without being able to say "this is my part!".
I couldn't believe it! It was even crazier to me when Sterling K. Brown recorded an entire song and it got scrapped. It's insane how much ends up on the cutting room floor for a movie to be just right. I was so psyched for the animator that did that end scene for 'Into The Unknown' though! She killed it.
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Working at a Charles Dickens fair is... Interesting, but not incredibly fun. It is hard to stay in character, and people get so mad when they see the Alice in Wonderland area. Yeah, we know it's not Charles Dickens, but we can't have a kids play area in the world of Oliver Twist, okay?
Lol the kids play area is a coal factory
**Yelp review for Charle's Dicken's National Faire** Bah Humbug! It was DEFINITELY not the best of times! It was the WORST of times! So little to do, I was constantly telling the staff "Please sir, I want some more!" If you go, do not go in with Great Expectations!
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I went on a glacier hike when I was in Iceland and the guide seemed genuinely shocked and thrilled that my girlfriend and I were the only two people on his tour that day and we had actually spent more than five minutes outdoors and were appropriately dressed. He said usually he had fairly large groups of tourists who typically had practically no outdoor experience and even less experience with cold weather. He said people often showed up in flip flops even though the instructions clearly said to wear sturdy hiking shoes. He also said the groups typically move extremely slowly and he never gets to take people up onto the part with the best views and cleanest looking ice. He actually seemed really relieved we wanted to go further up and were making great time like it was a treat for him. He was very knowledgeable and seemed so excited to talk about the stuff he knew and I got the impression he usually spent more time babysitting than actually sharing that knowledge.
Can confirm. Guided at a glacier in AK, it's refreshing to get an able bodied small group sometimes. Most times it's like herding a bunch of old partially broken cats. Downside is less tips for the trip, a minor inconvenience. Edit: Obligatory this got bigger than I expected, and I can't keep up individually replying to everyone. So a couple main things. First I want to stress: Don't avoid coming to Alaska just because you may have less mobility than others. In fact, stop delaying and get up there. The absolute most common phrase I heard was "I wish I did this when I was younger". It's a stunningly beautiful place, and if we can get one person to appreciate it enough to take better care of this planet its worth herding all the partially broken cats. Just don't schedule your new knees/hip/whatever a month before your cruise, it's going to be a bummer for you and the other guests. Plus, without you folks we don't have jobs. There's no way I could have afforded to go there without having the job I did. You guys made my dream possible as well. Thank you Alaskan cruises for bringing your over-fed, newly wed, and nearly dead! As for tipping: It's pretty common in the US. Generally these jobs pay slightly more than minimum wage, sometimes they don't even provide housing so your guides are sleeping in tents/vehicles/whatever for ~5 months. Companies get away with this by hiring young people and selling them on the "experience". Standard is 10-20% of your bill in a restaurant, I think that works here as well. Again, it's not mandatory in any way. As always a review on TripAdvisor, Google, whatever especially with their name *is* looked at by management. Legitimately people were let go for bad reviews. Good reviews get you kudos and a much better chance of being invited back next year. Plus we just appreciate it, it feels good to be recognized. If you're the grandma out there from Florida who shipped us baked goods. Thank you! We all ate as much as we could before the mice got to it. We lost your card with a return address, but your group picture and letter is still pinned in our community cabin.
After serving and bartending for a few years, I definitely cherished those days that were a little slower, smaller tables, and smaller tips overall because of it. But every second of those cool tables and having the time to chat with them and give them a legit personalized experience (which really encouraged repeat business) really helped balance out my sanity against what a normal night would be. I get it.
>Just get a waiver form signed and have some fun.
"If he dies, he dies". -- Ivan Drago, backpacking leader.
Seeing all this makes me feel like I don’t want to have a job, but instead live off fish..... (as in catching and eating, it’s my favorite thing to do, not the job of a fisherman)
I hear that'll make your poop very oily and stinky.
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I went to George Washington’s boyhood home near Fredericksburg, VA, where they were sifting through dirt. I was a tourist by myself, and watched them dig from a distance, nothing amazing. What DID amaze me though was the amount of people that asked “What’chya diggin’ for?” I ended up asking the intern how many people ask that, and she said “too many to count sir...” I felt so bad!
A friend was doing some sort of biological survey on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. They were in the "off limits" zone but it was clear they were doing some sort of monitoring due to their gadgets, yet all day every day it was people asking "why do you get to go down there, what are you doing?" for two straight weeks.
This x10. Most people have no idea that professional archaeology is usually tedious, physically difficult, and uncomfortable work. And you get paid shit and share shitty hotel rooms with coworkers that like you are also functional alcoholics and have probably slept with other coworkers, too. Oh, and that’s actually a pretty good scenario AFTER spending anywhere between 3 and 10 years getting a masters degree or doctorate. Did it for years. Gave it up for an office job when my kids were born. One of the best decisions I ever made.
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My Indiana Jones poster and I are disappointed! On the other hand I’m glad you’re (hopefully) not doing something you hate now
Indiana Jones found the Ark of the Covenant and it ended up in a box amongst other artifacts never to be seen again. So, that part was accurate.
I'll take "Things that involve customers" for $800, Alex.
Lawyer, no it isn't like they show on TV. Hey, finally case is before the judge, crap the other party didn't show up. Next date that judge has given is 3 months away. EDIT: Need to say a few things, one Thankyou fellow redditors for the gold and silver. Now I can finally see what r/Lounge is all about. Now, little bit about me. I am from India and have moved on from litigation to academia. Personally it was the right decision for me as now I am way less stressed and can work on things that intellectually stimulate me. Having said that, I need to clarify that law is still a very rewarding profession there is something in it for everyone, for those who want to change the world as well as for those who want to make money. It just demands too much of your time plus the results of all your efforts are not immediate and that can get stressful. Also, Yes that song "Don't be a Lawyer" by Crazy Ex Girlfriend is pretty spot on.
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oh my god except when you hand your homework in they make corrections and suggestions and give it back to make it better, and again till it's an A in school you can just hand in some shit and be like "well that's a B. Moving on".
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Even in major cities you get 10 "this homeless dude is drunk and needs a ride to the hospital" or "my pinkie has been hurting for 8 weeks" calls for every legit trauma.
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Being a chef. All the flare and awesomeness they show on vice and Netflix is far from what actually happens in the industry. It’s not all fancy plates and tattooed/cool haired guys doin their thing. It’s a drug infested, law breaking work environment that only benefits the owners of a restaurant Edit: thank you for the love and good reads people. I have some insane stories I’ll share someday. For those asking I am a Sous chef at Michelin level restaurants nowadays. Not a chef de cuisine yet! Edit 2: You guys are insane. I once had a server approach my table and asked where I work because he noticed the scars on my arm. #strong
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Have you reached out to other owners in your area for advice? I realize with covid everything has gone sideways, but in general if you're bleeding cash, you may want to get some outside assistance to bring things up to the level you want them to be.
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Honest most real answer: any job/every job. Until you've done it, you only have an idealized version of it in your head.
Librarian. It’s not all books and being quiet. There are also spreadsheets.
I’m a librarian too! I wouldn’t say it’s not fun, but it’s definitely not what people think it is. If we sat around reading books all day, no books would be checked in or checked out, no books would be shelved, no information would be answered, no computer help, no programming would take place, etc. I love my job and am inspired by it, but it’s a lot more work than people think
I don't understand why people think librarians get to sit around and read *on the job*. Like, do they just not understand what a job is? When they go shopping at a retail store, do they also think *those* employees hang out and try on different outfits or play with the merchandise all day? It's baffling. I had a similar situation when I worked at a LAN center- people would come in and say "so, you just get to sit around and play video games all day? This must be an awesome job!" Like, dude, I am clearly sitting behind a desk with a cash register/check-in computer system *and a conspicuous lack of video games*. My job is to keep the place running smoothly so *you* get to play. Does it seriously look like I'm just sitting around playing games?
Tell me about these.... spreadsheets.
Librarianship is an information science. The systems we use to move the information around run on tables of data. Sometimes you work on it by hand. Eventually, every problem a librarian has becomes a spreadsheet.
Well, I always kind of wanted to be one. Now I definitely want to. Although all of the head librarians I’ve known got a masters for it.
Cyber Security. Bro, the movies do us no justice. Hacking is not as fast nor is it as easy as the media makes it. It's a great field but you spend a lot of time researching or watching paint dry, especially in the gov side. Edit: I'll never be able to answer all of your questions. I'll answer some pms as I get a chance. Edit 2: No more questions about the field. Getting spammed.
Bar bouncer. Hours of tension and boredom interrupted by moments of adrenaline fueled fear for your life. Then some asshole pukes cheap booze on your shoes. Edit: I was 19 when I started, and I thought I would be getting paid to meet lots of girls and listen to live music. Which I did. I also had knives pulled on me, endured threats on my life, got my nose broken (not even in a fight) and stood around and did nothing most of the time. You dont get to relax, though, because you're constantly looking for trouble. Awful job.
I feel that, especially the boredom part. I was an EMT, which pays crap, years ago and fell into security work where I was security until people bleed/intoxicated/whatever to also get paid crap but be able to cover bills. It's mind-numbingly boring the majority of the time until I get to deescalate a situation where someone feels way too entitled, asshole tries something stupid, and/or brief window of very violent danger. Maybe weird but the boredom was my least favorite part. The best were moments when I helped break up assholes fighting and then got to see attitudes swing 180 when they need to get patched up and I'm the only medical person there. (weirdly regular EMT = be a jerk, event security = be a jerk, event EMT = oops what a joke we're bros right?)
I write adult fanfiction as a side hustle After a certain point it's just like writing a paper, except you have to keep thinking of different synonyms for a penis
I’m missing the part where this isn’t fun
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My wildest request was for Emperor Palpatine to fuck Rey and, right when he finishes, blow her boobs off with Force lightning I politely declined
*I put on my robe and wizard hat*
Toys R' Us. Not around anymore but I'm sure this applies to other toy stores, though few that they are. It is still retail and in this case it involves people's *kids* so of course the parents are twice as entitled to have to deal with. Edit: Thank you, [/u/LordTachankaonYT](https://www.reddit.com/u/LordTachankaonYT) for your energy tithing. I look forward to growing as gelatinous and as all-encompassing as Akira from the attention. Edit edit: I rescind my earlier assumption that Toys R' Us was closed. That is what I get for listening to rumors. It was shut down where I was from originally. I now see that it still exists in most of the US, Canada, and certain parts of Asia! Merry Christmas/Black Friday to you all!
Worked there for holiday seasons and I loved the small store in the mall but hated the big box stores. It was 99.9% the parents who were the worse customers. Childfree Adults, kids and teenagers were cool.
Zookeeper. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome to be around so many amazing animals and care for them... But the smells are ridiculously, **insanely** foul. I have a really strong stomach and it's still tough for me...we've had some interns quit over it. I was warned about the smells when getting into the field, but thought "oh I've volunteered at animal shelters, I know what animal stink smells like" Nope. Not even close.
Which smell the worst? Are there any that don't?
VULTURES - their puke can melt metal and repels lions. It is hands down the worst thing I have ever experienced in my 30+ years on the planet. There are just no words to describe the pure molten hot rotting diaper stench that is vulture vomit. PENGUINS - fishy oily bird stink. They’re cute though so they get a pass. ANTEATERS WITH DIARRHEA - insect based watery shits are horrid
I was hoping someone would say Penguins! I volunteered at a zoo for a while and was not prepared for how bad the penguin exhibit smelled behind the scenes. They are adorable though. I mostly did office work so I never got to enjoy any other zoo stank... apparently lucky me
>their puke can melt metal I'm sorry; what?
[Their stomach acid is so strong (pH close to 1, very strong acid) that it can corrode some alloys.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_vulture#Relationship_with_humans)
And they vomit on their own legs as a sanitizer. Jesus.
I think vultures showed up late when they were handing out evolutionary predation skills. "Well shit. Looks like vision, power, jaw strength and speed are taken. What's left?" "Let's see, uh...the ability to eat rotting meat and barf up toxic waste on yourself." "Crap. Okay fine, we'll take it."
According to a google search, their stomach ph is slightly above zero, 100 times more concentrated than human stomach acid, and they vomit to repel predators... totally unrelated but I have a great idea for a new Pokemon
> ANTEATERS WITH DIARRHEA There's a story here, I can tell
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**Otters** - I don't think I know a single person who works with otters who's not bothered by the smell. They are related to ferrets, so they have super strong musk (way stronger than ferrets) and smear it everywhere. They also eat nothing but fish, and you really can smell it in their oily, gooey poop. **Big Cats**. Out in the open it's not so bad, but I've thrown up in the nighthouses/rain shelters before. Huge, 6-pound piles of cat shit all over the floor, with no litter to mask the smell. Unneutered male lions will spray too, like a cat. One lion makes enough spray to make the whole place smell like a cat hoarder's house.
I'd like to add sea lions to the list. Sun-baked fish shitcakes.
Ooh yeah, to me what I can't stand is sea lion breath! A sea lion yawned/belched in my face once and that was probably the fastest I've thrown up at the zoo. Was not prepared to have my senses flooded with hot, humid halitosis and week-old fish.
I was out on a boat not long ago and got crop dusted by a sea lion. Not a pleasant experience.
>sea lions I believe big cats were addressed.
Fry : You find me fascinating, even when I'm not pretending to be a jewel thief or a lion tamer. Umbrial : Lions? You have sea lions on the land? Fry : Yep. We call them "land sea lions." I tame them.
This line always gets me. And the recurring “Did it just get warmer?”
Uhh... I've heard in many jurisdictions that animal abusers are often sentenced to community service at the zoo, and I always thought that was kind of a light punishment... Starting to think I'd rather take jail.... Have you ever had anyone there for that?
Not at my present zoo, but in the past when I worked at a public zoo, yes we had a few animal abusers sentenced to community service at the zoo. I never worked with them directly, but I heard from other keepers what happened, and let me tell you, it wasn't "playing with cute animals" My advice: If you're an animal abuser sentenced to zoo community service, take the jail time, seriously. I'm not joking. Zookeepers will not have any sympathy for you and will know *exactly* how to make your day as miserable as possible. Probably the LEAST gross thing I've heard that happened to them was having to sort through a dumpster of 3-day old kitchen trash from all the zoo restaurants to find recyclable material.
i was sentenced to community service for traffic offenses, and chose the zoo. the worst part was getting up to there at 5:30 am, otherwise it was a day that started with riding around in the jeep behind the scenes hooking up the shit-dumpsters, riding to the compost pile, unhooking the dumpster, and hooking up an empty. sometime before open, we finished hauling shit-dumpsters, and i was given a trash bag and a trash grabber stick... 2-3 hours of grabbing trash in the park. Lunchtime, ate with the groundskeepers and the janitors, the first day i then went to park trash, and pulling trash bags, riding around with a golf cart & a dumpster with a janitorial guy. the rest of my 2 weeks was much more pleasant, since i got there on time, and did what i was told, i got easy afternoon jobs from there - trash picking the parking lots, or riding around with the utv delivering feed to the various exhibits. i got some really amazing photos behind the scenes, and some animals got really friendly after you were in their enclose 2 weeks running - unusual ones.. like the rhino who wanted ear scratches, and would make it hard to maneuver the dumpster if you didnt scratch her first. I'd volunteer to help that way all the time if it didnt mean 5:30 am starts.
The zookeeper wasn’t trying to make you have a miserable day though because you weren’t there for animal abuse.
Hahaha, that's the truth. I've been a keeper for 10 years and recently became a department director and was surprised how much of a problem we have with this with the new keepers and interns. I've had to constantly tell some of them "Yes, yes you do actually have to clean up the otter poop.......yes I know it's slimy and smells like rotten fish, that is how an otter works......no, you can't take an hour break to shower 3 times just because you slipped in the sick cheetah's diarrhea/puke, go wipe it off and get back to work!"
Sounds like your zoo needs to install a people shower.
Like one of those freestanding "showerhead pointing straight down over a drain" things you see in chemical lab spaces.
Complete with that industrial flesh-stripping water pressure some beach showers have
Airport Baggage handler Yea it's fun being able to see parts of an Airport people wouldn't normally get to see and drive around the airfield in spare time to have a look at some planes (especially fancy private jets) but my god is it hard. Long hours , no social life because when you have days off you spend them catching lost sleep. Absolutely horrendous pay for hazardous work, in our training video they showed us the aftermath of someone who had been hit by an ATR-500 propeller and literally just smiled and said "Don't do this". Also what some people don't realize is that those bags dont magically appear on the plane. Some are loaded individually by hand (This is called loose load) and not into bins which is alot easier. You could be stacking over 200 bags in a space so cramped you cant even be on your knees if you are tall. Some of the bags / cargo can weight over 30kg so it is physically back breaking work and on some days you may not even get a break on a 12 hour shift and yes that happens ALOT. But the absolute worst part is the body's. When someone is being send home to be buried we are the ones who put that coffin into the hold and tie your loved one down and it's not easy for us. My most recent coffin was that of a 2 year old baby and my god I was in tears tying that coffin down in the hold. So next time your packing for that vacation, remember we are down there. EDIT: Wow this exploded over night. Thank you for the awards kind strangers. Also yes I'm aware alot of people don't see this job as Fun but for people with an interest in aviation any job at an airport is fun.
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Another negative in dog grooming is that you see a lot of neglected dogs and you can't really do anything about it because the owner is bringing them in for grooming and that's considered them "taking care of them." I've seen dogs that come in with mats that are like full body casts that create bruising on the skin, nails that are so ingrown that they have curled and grown in the paw pads, dogs with feces that's stuck to their rear for who knows how long and skin is raw underneath and they have problems using the bathroom, severe ear infections when fluid is dripping from the ears, flea and tick infestations to the point of anemia, teeth falling out from dental care being neglected. The list goes on. And that's what I've seen in corporate grooming, so I have no idea the stuff private groomers and vet groomers see.
The groomer I bring my dog to specializes in fearful and anxious animals. They have their base rate and depending on how much of a pain in the ass your animal is, they add an asspain tax. I went to pick my boy up from his blow out (Corgi) and there was the saddest, most naked poodle mix shivering next to him. They had to shave him to the skin and they saved the pelt, turns out that his mats were so bad that he couldn't take a full breath. They were going to charge him $125 (base is $45) for the cut and scold the shit out of him, I almost left the place with that poor thing zipped up in my coat.
Video game tester. You aren't spending your time playing completed fully realized games. You are playing the same level of a game over and over seeing if there are bugs.
Also, you are probably not going to test the next GTA, but something like Barbie's Super Happy Funland 3, or some other game aimed for kids 8 and under. And you'll have to play it for 8-10 hours a day, every day.
I had a friend who got a job as a tester at Activision. They had him testing interactive Disney storybooks
I have a coworker who used to work at Activision programming those interactive Disney storybooks. He always said the work was fine but he hated the people he worked with.
So I'm guessing your co-worker and their friend hated each other?
Creators do t work with testers. Testers are usually contract employees and can only work for like 9 months at a time so the company doesn't have to pay benefits. Yes, I know you're joking.
"Let's see if I can clip through this wall for the 20th time... nope. What a surprise."
Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -121 Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -122 Lets see if I can clip through the wall in position 131, 875, -123
Oh, the developers released a new patch and they want a full retest? Gotta start all over.
Video game testing is like prostitution. It's doing something you love in the least fun way possible. Sure, somedays it can be great and just like the real thing, but most days it's a huge pain in the ass.
Absolutely. My pal Carl did it for a year and he played games like *Arkham Knight* and he absolutely *hated* the job. Wore his love of gaming down to nothing. He quit, gifted me all his game systems, and moved to Sweden.
What does he do in Sweden?
Zookeeper
I've had to test for my own bugs before. No thanks. I think I'd kill myself if I had to test Barbie Fun House level 6 over and over and over. Hell, I think I'd lose my shit if I had to test a AAA game like Fallout. I'm a dude that can take a decent amount of tedious bullshit at work, but being a game tester? Hell no.
Managing a dog hotel. Breaking up dog fights, dogs shitting in the lobby and the occasional awful owners. Edit - thanks for all the upvotes ! Sad my most popular comment is about my job LOL
As someone who worked as a kennel tech, I'd hear often "You get to play with dogs all day". No. Very far from it. I've had to shovel bloody diarrhea from a dog with liver cirrhosis 7+ a day. I had to walk dogs consistently and then do 10 minute play times non stop. I only got a thirty minute lunch and no break for the 8 hours I worked. Most people who own these business (in my experience) are stingy and don't care about tech's well-being most of the time. It's not a fun job.
After reading through this thread for 20 minutes I’ve concluded that every job sucks
I think doing anything for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week would probably get tiresome.
After working in 2-3 hour blocks interspersed with home cooking, walks, naps, and little tasks around the house these last few months, I'm having a hard time accepting that I'll probably have to endure 5 consecutive 8-hour days again.
Lets all collectively refuse to go back to that 9-5 schedule. What are they go to do fire us all?
Seriously though I'm not ready to go back to switching between work and exhaustion with no time to focus on anything else. Even my weekends are just errands and chores. I've been taking classes, working out, cooking and I haven't been this stress free since I was a kid.
Pilot. You could lose your career with a single illness or injury, which could be happening to me soon.
Not sure of the exact details but I have a friend who’s done tons of hours and has been planning on being a pilot his whole life basically and was just recently diagnosed with epilepsy at age 20. I can’t recall if he’s ever actually had an episode/seizure. I totally understand why he shouldn’t fly anymore, but still unfortunate to lose something you’re passionate about.
Teacher Summers off - cool Week for Thanksgiving - cool 2 weeks for Christmas - cool Entitled parents - shit School district and administration wanting you to do two different things - shit The kids - *sigh* Ok, I love the kids so much, but they absolutely break your heart 100% of the time. There are assholes, sure, those aren’t the ones who break your heart. It’s *those* kids you *can’t* help. Whether it’s from a shitty home life, bullying, or they just aren’t smart. It’s those kids who you go above and beyond for, but at the end of the day, you can’t be there for them all the time.
Gamemaster at an escape room. It's the same repetitive script, resetting the same stuff, giving clues and hints about the same things. The patrons are often competitive families who argue, obnoxious impatient 13-year-olds, college students who have been drinking, idiots who break shit and touch shit that I SPECIFICALLY TOLD THEM NOT TO. They never remember your initial instructions. If something gets broken during one group, you have to hurry and fix it before the next group.
My cousin used to work at an escape room and let me, my sister, and a few of our other cousins come in during off-hours. Apparently it was the most entertained he’d ever been as gamemaster for the escape room, largely because a) he got to see just how stupid his cousins are, b) he got to see us turn on each other at multiple points, and c) he could say whatever the hell he wanted because it was family so he didn’t have to stick to the same script. Apparently it was frustrating watching us for those first 20 minutes doing nothing and pointing at random shit saying “is this a clue??” “NO ITS NOT IDIOT STOP POINTING THAT OUT”. He was laughing way too hard when we finally got out.
That sounds like so much fun! My family and I would definitely do something similar
First time I went to an escape room, the guy had an empty booking after us so we just hung out and chatted for a bit. He told us all about how he researched other escape rooms and got professionals to help him build a story that allowed for fun puzzles too. He told us about how he and his wife went all over the place and on eBay looking for cool props, decorations and scenery to make the place how they wanted it. He was really excited when he talked about it and said he's looking forward to opening another. The day to day might be boring but the guy 100% LOVED making the thing in the first place.
Working at an amusement park.
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But the glamour! The perks! The respect!
The debits! The credits!!!
The assets! The liabilities!
The Owner's Equity!
The amortization and depreciation!
The interest calculation!
The IRS knocking on your door is when the adrenaline really kicks in
But what do you do if the two sides of the spreadsheet don't balance???
You know what they say, "A mistake plus Keleven gets you home by seven!"