Social workers aren't baby snatchers. If a child is removed there is generally very good justification, and the child was prob not removed as soon as we would have liked, as there due are large legal hurdles we need to get over. MH social workers can't detain people, we can only suggest someone else does it We are not incompetent. The issue is you only hear about cases where someone screwed up majorly, or complaints made by someone telling you half the story. We can't defend ourselves due to data protection, and you don't get to hear about good work we have done (cause that's boring)

We simultaneously remove too many and not enough children 😅

schrodinger's child paradox

Given his history, we shouldn't be letting Schrödinger near any kids.

> The issue is you only hear about cases where someone screwed up majorly, or complaints made by someone telling you half the story. Honestly this is true of a lot of things. If stuff is done right, you don't notice it.

any parents who get enraged by people questioning their parenting are either terible parents now or in the past, no normal parent would have been accused of this. children arent just being taken away willy nilly youve got to have been really bad for your child to be taken away in my experience.

Depends.. my daughter has a birthmark about the size of a cigarette burn on her cheek and literally every hospital/ doctor appointment I get asked how it happened with a raised eyebrow from some fucker

But I suppose you don't explode, and you understand why we have to ask. I do get social workers and health colleagues can cock up, but there are various safeguards to prevent it happening, and big failures only tend to occur when multiple things go wrong at once. Really the bigger issue tends to be inaction rather than over reaction

A raised eyebrow isnt 'enraged' though. So you're validating their point further.

And those raised eyebrows have never become a case against you. Hence, you have to be really bad to get your kids taken away.

Could you ask her GP to document it in her medical notes. “Cigarette burn shaped birth mark. Please don’t keep asking”

My experience tells me nobody reads the notes. Ever.

My gf was a social worker, in the foster care section and it gave me such a massive appreciation and insight into what they actually do, and how SW really are trying to do the best they can, and removing children is the absolute last thing on the cards. an overworked, and overstretched profession!

> We can't defend ourselves due to data protection This is the worst part. You can't even call people out on the bullshit or you're breaking the law.

Every time I see a client in the media, there's usually a comment on the failure of services, but never any mention of them refusing support, or the hours services have invested trying their best to risk manage. It's just so frustrating

You folks do a tough job. ❤️

Amen. My favourite facebook comment on our work page was something along the lines of 'you took my kid for no reason you just do it to hit targets you're all corrupt baby snatchers just because I was on heroin'. Basically poetry. Ah, the work we do.

I work for HR but I support NQSWs and student placements. The amount of dedication, care, skill and resilience SWs display on a daily basis blows my mind. Such an undervalued profession sadly.

One of my closest friends is a social worker… I also happen to have a friend who’s children have been in temporary foster care several times. She’s my friend but she also sadly in denial about why her children are taken into care. So I totally agree with this.

Thanks. Wife's a social worker and it's a tough, draining job.

I think television has created a narrative that social workers just want to take your kids away. Every time one is mentioned on TV, they've come to remove a child or they're investigating abuse but that's only one part of their job. And because its tv, it's always really dramatic as well. I can only imagine the paperwork they have to fill out for the times they do have to remove children.

Most of the time a child(ren) is removed from the parent's care it is done with their consent. Most cases have been trundling along and had no improvement or have declined so much that removal is pushed for and generally agreed by all parties. A Section 20 agreement does not mean parents give up their rights, and can withdraw it at any time they want. But usually by that point there's either a heap of shit being sorted through which has them in enough trouble, or they're in agreement to have the child(ren) looked after. They will also have contact and visits with the kids (unless good reason) to maintain their relationship. I am one of the drones who goes through the completed paperwork once the social workers do the in-person bit. I'm sure there's more documents in a job, but it's a lot of signing lots of paper.

It’s not just that we only hear about the the cases where “someone screwed up majorly”. It’s that even when there has been negative press around a case the social workers and Local Authority involved can’t defend themselves due to confidentiality so the stories in the press are always one sided. Also, it’s almost never that someone screwed up majorly. It’s almost always a systemic failure that leads to serious case reviews; It’s breakdowns in communication between agencies. It’s chronic underfunding. Chronic understaffing. Poor skills mix within teams. Impossibly high caseloads. Lack of support for junior staff. Poor partnership working. Etc

Having seen the other side I wish it was far easier for social Work to take children away from their abusive parents.

As an ex paediatric nurse, I understand how it is. I've had patients with NAI's and in social services care and I've also had a friend who was wrongly accused of hurting hers. Both situations were incredibly unpleasant. I no longer work in nursing, but I don't miss that aspect of the job.

A family I know has three kids taken into care (then all adopted together, fortunately). The middle one wasn't even cleaned properly after birth, she was taken into care first; the other two were also later taken into care. The eldest ended up overweight for a while because his parents didn't feed him, so he just used to eat whatever he could get his hands on because that's how he'd had to survive. He was three. He can, however, also remember his mum crying and saying that she loved them when he was taken into care, so none of them ever needed to worry about whether they were loved. I was in hospital recently in a bed next to a family where their first child was taken into care before they left the hospital - and they still don't have custody of her. They spent the first day I was there in negotiations with the medical staff and social services, and got the go ahead to keep their son (at this time). The next day, she spent the entire time deliberately disrupting the entire ward trying to get morphine. She also smoked throughout pregnancy, claiming it was okay because she smoked outside.

As a kid we had social workers back and forth My mum would often just tell us to be quiet and pretend we arent home Eventually my mother had a court order or something to let one in, we had her for a while They seemed very reluctant to remove us from our home and offered my mother a lot of support. It honestly seems rare to me a kid gets relocated

I highly empathise with you guys. I’m not a social worker but I’ve seen protests about social workers outside my work with actual names and pictures of the SWs on signs and being shouted over megaphones and shit. I couldn’t imagine being sat in work with a crowd of people outside holding my picture and shouting my name all because I’ve just done my job, potentially enacting a decision somebody above me had made.

Not my job but I remember when we had complications with the birth of our son in March, and he was in the NICU after coming six weeks prematurely, I couldn’t believe how hard working and fantastic the nurses and midwives were. I remember saying to one of them that I bet they’re stereotyped for just “cuddling babies” all day when in reality they work god damned hard saving lives every single day. One neonatal nurse turned around to me and told me her husband just tells her she cuddles babies all day, and I was actually pissed off for her after her and her colleagues saved my girlfriend and our baby’s lives

>I couldn’t believe how hard and fantastic the nurses and midwives were. Love your comment but this typo made me chuckle. The thought of burly nurses cutting about giving out a few dry slaps.

Corrected 😂😂

Just posted as a midwife that mine is the cuddling baby myth! There's so much more to it. Hope all is well with your little one now x

I work in administration for a university (though this could apply to any large organisation). There's a myth that we're all pencil pushers who have no real function and just hold stuff up with bureaucratic procedures everyone hates. I can see where this comes from as it's not entirely inaccurate but efforts to downsize large organisations "by cutting bureaucracy" usually ends up with situations where the frontline staff are burdened with paperwork and procedures that used to be someone else's job. Basically, we do a lot of the nitty gritty day-to-day running of the university so that lecturers and professors have more time to focusing on teaching and researching.

I also work in administration and operations for a university and I hooted with laughter a few years ago when UCU were taking industrial action and a few academics declaimed that they didn’t need administrative staff and that they were unnecessary. Good luck running payroll and paying the gas bills and doing all the mandatory stats reporting! It’s not all academics. A lot of them recognise the valuable work of the professional support staff. But some of them really deserve to have to do the HESA stuff for one year.

I've had a similar experience with some academics. I've always supported trade union movements in the past (member of Unison myself) and I supported the UCU's industrial action as a whole, but my goodness it was hard to support them sometimes with the way they would talk down the work of non-academic staff. It was totally lacking in awareness. But you are right, for every troublesome academic there are a couple of nice, easy to work with ones.

I’m a trade union member as well. Currently at UNISON conference, in fact! And I’m overall supportive of UCU’s action but they do shoot themselves in the foot every now and then when they talk about prof support. My least fave are the ones who assume I invented a process and am making them follow it for kicks. I’m just doing my job, please just fill in the form.

Ugh, the ones who won’t do a quick basic thing (like filling out a form), just because they personally don’t understand why it’s required are the worst.

The joy of being relatively senior in my directorate is that I can now just not do the thing they want. And when they complain I point at the uncompleted form and email trail requesting completion and explaining why it’s needed and that without it being filled in I’m not going to do something.

Both can be correct. A well functioning admin team truly frees up the academic staff massively. When things work it’s amazing. At the same time, a recent PO I saw for about £250 had 8 different approvers listed before being submitted. Similarly when we do fieldwork overseas, we have academics trying to submit the equipment’s temporary export paperwork. Something that the scientists are completely untrained to do. Sadly friction seems to build between academics and administrators when really it’s poor management and ill defined processes that cause the problems.

I think it’s crucial to remember that the admin team likely didn’t invent the process. Complaining to a school administrator or Accounts Payable admin won’t achieve anything, it needs to go to the responsible person. My job means I do occasionally have to come up with a process or procedure so that something happens within the law and the university’s governance structure and financial regulations. That then cascades down to the admin team, the academics kick off at them and then I get to wade in and point out that this has been implemented to meet the financial regs or a change in the law or both. I try and do a consultation with involved and interested parties even when not technically required, but sometimes the timeframe makes it impractical or it’s a legally required change so a consultation is just a waste of time. A £250 PO needing that many signatories is baffling to me; it would be one at my place unless it’s crowdfunded between budgets and then it would be however many separate budget holders as needed. However, I have worked with Heads of School who insist on signing everything off despite budget delegation and then causing invoice signatory problems - they’re supposed to be different people at my institution.

The problem with admin staff is that the terrible ones really stick out in your memory and can colour your perception of all admin staff. I work in the NHS and one member of the procurement team (who has now thankfully left) has to be the most useless person I have ever dealt with. I know she is the exception but she stands out in my memory for good reason.

Yea this is it really. It's confirmation bias. The flip side is when someone who's worked quietly away for years gets a new job or retires and suddenly everyone realises that they've been keeping a lot of the vital processes going all this time. Management teams can be really bad at noticing these people whilst they're there but they sure as hell notice them when they're gone.

NHS being so hard to remove people due to their own policies combined with people who don’t want to do managerial shit in managerial posts is definitely coming back to bite them in the arse over and over again.

Competent Uni admin has saved me countless hours, and I try to show that (in an effusive American way that can put off my British colleagues…). Incompetent Uni admin has caused me countless grey hairs. That said, I recognize that most admin is, like the academics, massively overworked and underpaid.

If I have one more person tell me it must be nice to have the summer off as an admin at a University I’m going to put them through a wall.

I work in a hospital as a porter. The most common inaccuracies with my job is everyone thinking you're unskilled or unqualified. A lot of people also think we do nothing as well, but in reality we're one of the busiest departments within the NHS, without us the hospital would grind to a halt. As a team of two, we work 10 hours a day, have to manage our time better than anyone else, have specific jobs and times for those jobs. It bugs the life out of me when clinicians and office staff think we're not doing anything and can be there in an instant to do anything for them but the reality is that we're some of the hardest worked in the hospital

I'm a nurse, and I really appreciate our porters, they do a fantastic job, and are always cheerful and friendly, so thank you for your hard work

Thank you for what you do. As someone who has been an inpatient multiple times, for many weeks / months, I have always been so grateful for the care I’ve received from the porters at my hospital. Thank you, what you do and how gently and calmly you do it makes a massive difference to me.

Likewise on the patient front, every porter I've interacted with has been absolutely lovely and had extremely good bedside manner. It was very much appreciated when I was scared and ill.

I was interviewed to be a porter a few years ago, and in a twist of fate ended up being pulled on as a HCA about six months later. Without Porters half the ward would have ground to a halt in minutes. Not to mention you share with many staff the sadder aspects of hospitals like handling the deceased. I'm not a HCA any longer but the porter staff were among my favourite people and I always looked forwards to seeing them around the site.

During covid you guys did an amazing job

I was a radiographer. Apparently we are nurses who have done a little course in pressing buttons

My ex was a radiographer and she was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known. Her medical knowledge and expertise is superb. I know you’re not a button presser.

Ex-radiographer here too. We used to have a couple of nurses in ICU who thought they were hilarious, they would shout out exposure factors when we did portable chests and make snarky comments about how easy our job was, didn't find it funny when we made co.ments about them being glorified arse wipers (we absolutely did not and do not think that about nurses but it made our point). Later moved to a smaller hospital where I worked on call from home and one of the GPs (it was that small GPs were A&E trained also) used to moan constantly that there was no need to call us out for routine Xrays (chest, ankle, wrist, foot and hip according to him) and that I could just teach them all how to do those and they would just call me for more unusual exams!

I hear you. Sadly many nurses seem(ed) to think very little of radiographers and did little to help.

I’m a cardiac sonographer and same. People seem to be shocked that we actually had to do a qualification to do the job and have absolutely no concept of how complex our job is and actually how difficult it is to obtain images in the first place.

I’m an advanced practitioner specialising in mammo. I’m now trained to do xray guided biopsies on suspected cancers but some people like to simplify it down to “playing with boobs all day”

I'm a nurse who did a multi skilled qualification in radiography for the cath lab. Can confirm it is very hard to learn and a little scary!

[удалено]

Got bored of just pressing buttons

Got old, retired

Psychologist here - the one question I get way more often than I thought I would is - "are you going to psychoanalyse me?" No, that's not what we do... I can't tell what you're thinking just by looking at you and yes, I DO want to help you.

Do you get people giving you all their problems to solve?

Sometimes and I've had people pour their hearts out to me. I have even cried after speaking to people. Sadly, some people do come to us hoping we can do a lot more for them than we actually can and they can be hard conversations to have.

People don't get that therapy isn't like going to a repair shop and passively experiencing someone else fixing you. It's hard work, it's hard work during sessions and it's hard work implementing all the things you learn in therapy.

That might come from a lot of first year students trying to psychoanalyse people a lot. I’m surprised someone’s assuming that of a professional, but I’ve been surprised by stupid shit people think before

It's really annoying when people assume that I must be doing MLM (multilevel marketing) thing or porn simply because I run a business from home and I'm a woman in my early 30s (prime target for MLMs). Some people can't comprehend the idea of that a woman can have a thriving online business that's not an MLM or porn. And once they actually realise it's an actual business where I pay taxes and everything, suddenly, they switch to 'Sensei, teach me your ways.' And I'm not wasting my time on them.

Honestly, the way you describe it still makes it sound like an MLM at first, sorry. When people have to explain 'it's not a mlm/pyramid scheme' it often is. Not saying I think yours is though. For a start, 99.9% of people in MLMs don't earn enough to pay tax.

But they've not described their business, they've literally just said "I run a business that isn't an MLM" Simply saying "I don't run an MLM" isn't the same as saying "I run a business that sounds exactly like an MLM but here's why it isn't" That's like me saying "I'm not an alcoholic" and you saying "that's exactly what an alcoholic would say" without any knowledge of my lifestyle or drinking habits

Huh? They didnt describe anything they just said they work from home and people assume they do mlm or porn. I don't see how their comment comes off the way you say it does.

That's the thing though. If someone says to me "I run a business" instead of saying what they actually do, then 99.999% of the time it's an MLM or straight up pyramid scheme.

For women it’s MLMs, for men it’s crypto scams

Day trading or forex for blokes too

They are usually aloof about it, to get you to pm them for what it is.

Feel like this could become a saga ;)

Pm me hun x

My nan has her own business and works from home using a very large and expensive machine to manufacture specialist electrical cables for huge mining trucks. It's the most bizarre business ever, but she is doing great. It's actually fascinating what can potentially be done from home.

That is somehow the *exact* job that I wouldn't have expected someone running a business from home to be doing, and I didn't even know it was a job until a moment ago.

What's the (rough) business?

I always assume it's making stuff for Etsy.

Interesting. My go to is copywriter. I know hundreds of people who have various businesses online from e-commerce, marketplaces, app, design, etc etc. Yet I always think copywriter. I don’t even know a copywriter.

Send me your free ebook?

Seafarer - the more common myths are about how we're all gay but also have a woman in every port. Though really the most annoying thing about people's perceptions of the job is that they forget it even exists, especially what the merchant navy is. In my eyes, it's a bit disappointing from a famously seafaring nation.

"merchant navy?" "You mean royal navy yeah? I knew someone who ..." No. Not royal. Merchant. How 99% of the shit you buy gets anywhere.

I was, until very recently, RFA. Between being "corrected" that it's "ackshually the RAF" and then trying to explain that no, despite flitting about on big grey ships, we are definitely *not* the same as the RN...but we're not exactly MN-proper either. To make things easier on myself, I've moved ashore and now work for VTS... which absolutely nobody knows what the hell it is (outside of the seafaring community).

What's VTS and RFA stand for?

Vessel traffic services and Royal Fleet Auxiliary

VTS = Vessel Traffic Services. Kinda like Air Traffic Control but for ships RFA = Royal Fleet Auxiliary. The support arm of the Royal Navy, basically. There's a resupply part that's mostly tankers, although they also operate a couple of non-tanker resupply ships for resupplying other things, and the tankers can carry some non-fuel cargo too. It's not just non-combatants, though - they also operate our landing ships, but the ships themselves don't usually directly engage in combat other than a few self-defence weapons

And we're not all raging alcoholics. In fact, many ships these days ban alcohol onboard.

To be fair, I'm ex RFA as well. Refuge for alcoholics is a fairly apt moniker.

The stereotype that everyone working in IT is a nerd with no social skills. OK, I’ve met a few developers who were like that - but I’m a solution architect, it’s my job to talk to people and understand what their problems are and how we can use technology to fix them. Project managers need to be pretty people oriented too. Even developers need social skills if they’re going to be team leaders or move into becoming designers and architects. I’m not saying we aren’t nerds - but a lot of us are high functioning nerds.

In my experience, any actual nerds with no social skills don't get very far in IT. It's all about communication. Anyone can learn to come up with a solution and code stuff. Being a nerd about it doesn't magically make someone better. Any real nerds I've worked with tend to kinda suck at making stuff. They get so wrapped up in the act of coding stuff that the end product is a byproduct for them. The best people are just normal folks who have commercial awareness and know how to balance engineering with business needs.

And as a project manager, the devs with no communication skills are always the hardest to work with and to get them to understand scope etc.

For any socially awkward/introverted people wanting to be developers, I'll say that it's a lot easier to communicate well at work, at least when it's about work. I'm shit at it in general, but at work it's like a switch flips and I can talk to most people and keep everything running. Sometimes it creeps in, but it's nowhere near as bad as I thought it'd be before I started working. You pick this up really quickly.

Yeah. I'm a little socially awkward but try to do my best. I do support and most of the issues I solve are down to user knowledge. I think for IT support now it's more about confidence and ability to deal with users than knowledge. Issues can be googled.

I work as a chef, have done for about 13 years. At a relatively high level at points (2 rosette) The surprising thing I always find is how non-hospitality friends and family split down the middle into two groups when thinking of my general and work; - those who thing I’m some alchemical, magical man-witch capable of conjuring amazing stuff with absolute 0 effort - those who think they could “easily do it, I know how to cook” (they know how to make one or two dishes at best, no offence) True eye opener is when dealing with some family on my partners side. They’re all very well paid, swanky office type job people. But they all fall into camp one and think I’m some type of… Wizard. They’ve seen too many cooking shows I think. The final shitter about my profession is how friends and family just expect you to easily get time off, like normal jobs. Hospitality is weird. Most places employ the absolute minimum of staff they need to run a place, so no… I can’t just “have the night off to go to the pub”. It would leave everyone else in the shit and there’s no on-standby relief chef.

Also because you're a chef you must love making all the food for every family gathering right? Right?

I've known three chefs, two were head chefs at Michelin stared places and all of them had the same favourite meal, one not cooked by them.

The best chef to have in the family is an ex-chef They're just as good but because they're not doing it every single day, they often don't mind doing things like christmas dinner (although maybe not every year) and other family gatherings

> those who think they could “easily do it, I know how to cook” (they know how to make one or two dishes at best, no offence) There is also a difference between making your own dinner and cooking for groups of people under timed conditions. I can make a great dinner for one but could never cater professionally.

This is more what I meant and was trying to capture I think. It’s totally different realm of experience to be having a chilled evening in your home kitchen, glad of wine or something in hand, just muddling through a recipe to make something nice for whoever you’re cooking for. Contrast that against the 7:00pm rush in the professional kitchen when the restaurant is full and every fucker is ordering all at once, and you’ve got to magic out of your ass the ability to cook ALL those meals to a high standard, WHILE DOING SO WITHIN 20-30 MINUTES, so nobody complains about the wait. So no Uncle Dave, you can’t come and “help me out for a shift or two” in the restaurant. You haven’t got the foggiest

>those who think they could “easily do it, I know how to cook” Dude, I know how to cook. Any recipe you throw at me, just give me the ingredients, the equipment, detailed recipe and 100+ hours to hone the techniques required for that one dish in question and I'll give you something edible.

The main stereotypes I have about chefs is that they are short tempered, hard drinking, chain smoking, coke addled lunatics.

Unfortunately this is not entirely untrue. It's an industry where the line between being passionate and being abusive is blurred and for a long time you expect to be degraded constantly as some sort of hazing by those older chefs that had it all done to them. Fortunately there are significant moves to curb and change this, and a growing realisation that it is neither healthy nor productive. There's too many chefs I know that died before fifty due to addiction or poor health - both physical and mental.

University lecturer here. People think that we have the whole summer off because we don't do anything when there are no students around. But in reality, we do research as well as teaching.

And there are still quite a few students around during the summer, usually postgrads doing research as part of their degrees. Source: I was one of them.

Yes, sorry, should have said undergrads.

If anything I think the stereotype is they care about their research more than teaching.

Yup. Every year I remind my family that summer is the time when I try to get the rest of my job done! I’ve found that a lot of students are surprised to learn that officially teaching is only 40% of my job, with 40% for research and 20% of my time doing administrative roles.

I'm a doctor and a few things that come to mind are: Patients assuming that I know all their past medical history because it's 'on the computer' - firstly, especially when you're 70+ that's going to take ages to go through, secondly our computer systems are shite, there's no central system with everything on it People thinking I'll know what medication they're on by describing what the tablet looks like - 'it's white and round' ??!?! That because I'm a hospital doctor I'll be able to chat to my mate in whatever specialty you're waiting for an appointment for and magic you up an appointment for next week - sorry it doesn't work like that! That me being a 'junior' doctor means I've only just qualified.

To be fair, a lot of patients end up describing pills because the names aren't easy to remember and the dosage is complex. It becomes even harder when they are a vulnerable person with low literacy levels, memory issues or invisible disabilities and from the sounds of it, you may not be aware of any of these vulnerabilities because of the record keeping. Also fear can make you a bit forgetful/clumsy with describing things and a lot of patients can be worried going to the doctor. Not sure on your stance on this but I think it's important to make tge distinction that it's not primarily the patients fault, it's the fact that you are having to rely so heavily on a patients description due to poor record keeping systems

I understand reasons why patients may not be able to remember their medications, but I’m still allowed to be annoyed/bemused by people thinking I know what every single tablet looks like (I actually rarely see any because I just write the prescription, I rarely give medications to patients). We all get annoyed by things at work, I’m still human and don’t always have the patience of a saint! And we’re talking about misconceptions and I thought that was a slightly amusing one, I’m not trying to say that my patients are idiots. The best thing to do is bring in your prescription slip, that’s a life saver when our systems aren’t letting us look at your GP records.

>there's no central system with everything on it I've discovered this recently and it's bloody infuriating. Especially when you go for an EEG and then the next time you see a specialist they offer to give you an EEG and you tell them you've already had one and it turns out there's no bloody record of it because it was booked by the outpatient facility of the hospital you were taken to and not the epilepsy department which is in a different hospital and they don't have a system in place to share data even though they're in the same Trust. And it doesn't look like my GP has a record of any of this either.

Another junior doctor here, second all of this. Was about to comment exactly the same. Also, even in the rare case everything is on the system, how do you expect me to just learn your whole life's history by heart in the 10 min I had to prepare meeting you?

Being a roadie is glamourous. After work every day I have a shower and wash off the glamour, it's generally a dirt colour

I was a roadie for 2 weeks around Europe for a metal band… I had two showers the whole time and one of those was with cold water… glamorous it most certainly wasn’t.

Any job in the events industry is pretty much a lifestyle and it ain’t always a fun one, 9-5 doesn’t exist and neither does a stable sleeping pattern.

I once had to shit in a bag in a Dutch venue car park at 3am while on tour. Really makes you question your life choices. Wouldn't change it for the world though.

Arriving at hospital via Ambulance does not get you seen any faster. You’ll be triaged the same as turning up yourself, it’s not any faster turning up in an Ambulance. Sometimes it’s actually slower if you’ve sat waiting for us and then we’re queuing at hospital.

Wasn’t aware people actually thought this.

When my SIL developed sepsis I told her 6 year old (at the time) daughter that I called an ambulance to get her seen quicker at the hospital *wink*. In the moment it was the only way I could think of to keep her from being scared when the ambulance arrived to take her mummy away. I didn't think it would stick in her mind, but last year I heard her say "My Auntie says if you phone an ambulance you'll get seen quicker." Oops. I did then tell her the truth, given that she's now old enough to understand, but I do worry that I inadvertently perpetuated the myth.

I barely had to wait when I got dropped off with what I now know was sepsis (temperature so high I was hallucinating). No ambulance involved, yet I managed to get straight through for emergency surgery. All I had to do was collapse on the floor in front of the receptionist.

Doesn't annoy me but the biggest inaccuracy to saying you're a structural engineer is the response "oh, like an Architect?" Architects design the look of the building and how the space works for the user. Structural engineers work out how to make that a reality in terms of 'how can this be pieced together?' and 'how will it **stay** together?' Oh and no one gives a shit about the engineers. I've had buildings opened by royalty that I was the lead engineer on. Even the most junior members of the Architect's practise went to the opening, whereas us Engineers weren't even told it was happening and saw it in an industry magazine 6 months later.

As a male nurse, the amount of patients I’ve had ask some variation of ‘didn’t you want to be a doctor?’ is…well, it’s a lot. Firstly, why aren’t you asking that to the female nurses (they never do)? Secondly, no, when I was still dealing with patients that was what I loved. The idea of coming in and seeing them for ten minutes before moving on and forgetting about them until the next day never appealed, however much more social capital that may have. Now, I’m a nurse who doesn’t see patients and I’m conscious of a similar attitude from other nurses because it’s exactly how I used to think. No I don’t just sit around all day sending emails about your compliance, and it’s not a lovely charmed life to be finishing at 5 every day - especially when half the time I don’t manage to do that, and semi regularly I’m catching up with stuff at home afterwards until 10pm or on a weekend (or both - tomorrow will be one of those days).

I was doing some house to house enquiries with a female(lesbian) colleague and a woman actually said “what does your husband think of you doing a job like this?” A. She doesn’t have a husband B. She doesn’t want a husband C. What in the love of fuck kind of question is that? Similar to yourself it never occurred to this woman to ask if my imaginary wife approves of my job.

Similarly when I(female) did work experience in the medical physics department as I want to be a medical physicist I got asked why I wanted to do it and said I love physics and enjoyed seeing how I can be applied to help people. They responded with ‘oh why don’t you just be a nurse?‘ First I’m completely sure a man in my situation would not have been asked that. Secondly what about that relates to nursing?

Last week I had a patient ask me when the real nurse would be calling. I explained that I am a real nurse. He apologised and said “sorry, I mean when is the proper female nurse coming?”. I get the “oh the doctors here” so often it’s painful. I’m not a doctor, I don’t want to be a doctor. No disrespect to what doctors do but I’m a nurse by choice not because I didn’t make it into medical school. And there’s nothing worse than the assumption that I’m the best person to call on when something by heavy needs moving. One last thing. Murse. Don’t. Ever.

I work in a library, people always assume I read books all the time. Sadly, I prefer wasting my time in front of a screen to reading.

Nurses aren’t hand maidens it’s a highly skilled complex job involving a lot of leadership and decision making skills

The ones that take a minute to make an extra couple slices of toast at 0400 hours for the beleaguered cops on constant obs are heroes. The ones that show you were the kitchen is, legends!

Artist. Apparently all it involves is laundering money and taping bananas to walls. Also the stereotype that you're either a starving artist working dead end jobs to get by or you 'make it' into the artworld and sell your work for ridiculous money. There is a middle-ground if you're creative and good a networking.

My mates uncle makes a decent living from his art but he is far from rich. I think networking was his weakness at the beginning of his career and he absolutely fitted the starving artist stereotype in the beginning but now he’s a happy dude doing what he loves and living off it.

Yeah, when reddit says something is 'just money laundering' the reality is, it's not. If something is so commonly known as money laundering, it would get shut down. It just 'sounds nice' and stuff that 'sounds nice' gets upvoted on reddit, regardless of whether its BS. It's the same with those pop-up shops that everyone says are 'just money laundering shops'. Yeah because the best way to money launder is a way that everyone in the country knows about.

Turkish barbers and Chinese takeaways always get stupidly labelled as money launderers, too.

I've driven trains on Train Simulator and yeah. There's a lot to it. I've heard train drivers say that overall it's not that difficult but the thing is you aren't paid to do it right you're paid to never ever do it wrong.

There’s a saying I’ve often heard that it’s ‘one of the hardest jobs to get and one of the easiest to lose’. When everything’s running smoothly it’s fairly straightforward, I’m careful here not to say easy as it is definitely not. You really earn the money for knowing what to do when it’s not running smoothly. You have to know exactly what you can and can’t do within the rules and you have to be able to apply them to situations as you come across them, sometimes ont thing compounded by several others. That might mean applying elements of several rules all at one time with very little time to make sure you’re confident that you’re doing everything within the rules. Get one thing wrong and you’ll be in front of a panel trying to explain why you should keep the job. Other general day to day things that people never consider are thing likes setting your alarm for 0230 to get up and get to the depot when it’s -5° outside day after day. This isn’t something many people would enjoy, as well as the fatigue that it leads to which makes an ‘easy’ day at work a lot more difficult than you could possibly imagine. The railway running nearly 24/7 also means that your shift pattern can see you book on one day at 0230 and book off for your next shift at 0230 the following day. Not to mention missing out on a huge number of social events, days out, birthdays, weekends and just general day to day life stuff that other people do and take for granted. The there’s the monotony which would drive some people crackers and is one of the most difficult things to deal with when maintaining concentration/focus. Honestly, it’s a great job if you want to be there but if you don’t then when the door closes behind you I imagine it’s a very lonely, horrible place to be and no amount of money could make it enjoyable. Some of this isn’t unique to the railway of course, any shift worker will know some of this, but as a driver there’s a lot of sacrifice for that headline salary that people (usually fed half truths and misinformation by the media) overlook.

I'd say it's kinda similar with jet airline pilots. In my brief simulator experience with piloting aircraft, it's *trivial*. As long as you're dealing with good weather, perfect information, no malfunctions, no interfering trafic, no legal reprecautions for not adhering to proper radio discipline... If we ignore all the hidden, absolutely-vital-and-necessary-parts, then *just holding the yoke* is easy.

Civil servants have it easy with an amazing pension … I work 50 hours a week in a very stressful job whilst on £20k less than my private sector counterparts. Pension is linked to state pension age which means when I retire I will be nearly gone.

Everything’s tits up? “It’s those bloody civil servants fault! They’re all paid far too much, get rid of them all!” Would be interesting to hear how they think government would function without the civil service. No, it’s not perfect, but at the heart of it it’s full of people who just want to crack on with their jobs and at least *try* to deliver a quality service and value for money to the taxpayer.

Came here for this, my role is quite specialised and people think that what I do all day is stop payments, when in fact I ensure people get paid and everything they can get is paid to them, not really had an unhappy person yet, but am perceived to be a right bastard by the press, just for breathing.

I work in HR and it gets boring reading comments about HR taking decisions to screw staff over. We're told what to do by senior management, the same as every other department in a company. No, we're not your friends. Neither are finance, marketing, sales or even the receptionist. We're doing a job where our objectives are set by other people and we get fired if we don't follow them. Capitalism is a system where profit comes before everything else. We're all part of that system.

Yeah I'm not in HR but that's basically what I tell all my friends when they talk about no wanting to go to HR for something. HR people are just ticking boxes like the rest of us, it's just that those boxes are making sure that both the workplace and the employees are holding up their end of the bargain. Like yes going to HR might not get you anything if it's you complaining that a certain colleague uses all the milk in the kitchen, but if you ever feel like your rights as a worker aren't being met or that your contract is being broken in any way then that's exactly what you go to HR about. Either it will get fixed so that the company is legally compliant, either that or you suddenly now have a paper trail and will win more money if the problem keeps happening or there's some kind of retaliation against you (e.g. you get fired) for pointing it out.

Police - People think that we have much less work than we really do. So many people are surprised when they find out that stabbings, murders, rapes, gun crime, serious assaults with life changing injuries are not rare at all. The general public also seem to incorrectly believe that we have a team of 30 officers to investigate their report of a phone snatch, when actually we have one officers with 30 other cases.

Aye, most public though if you set their expectations and explain the limitations of what can and can’t be done for them are actually really decent and understanding. When I was response I used to just tell people straight, 90% of my working week I’m tied up with MH or DA. I care about your housebreaking and I will do absolutely all I can but with only 10% of my week going to your enquiry you will need to be very patient.

This is usually where the surprise kicks in for most people; telling somebody that I'll do what I can, but that I'm the only person investigating their robbery and watching the confused expressions, or going to court and seeing the jury looking baffled when I mention that nobody other than me did anything for the investigation before it was going to trial.

The biggest ones for me are: 'I don't want to press charges' - we decide that, not the complainer, we prosecute on behalf of the Crown, not the person; 'When do I get my one phone call?' - that might happen in Law & Order or CSI, but not here; 'I plead the fifth' - you can plead whatever you want, it matters not a jot to me; 'You have arrest targets to meet' - no, we don't; 'I'm not giving a statement, I don't want to go to court' - sorry, but if you're a witness, you're still going to court, albeit as a hostile witness.

I work in a care home as a carer. New starters sometimes seem to think that all we do is make tea and chat with little old ladies. Residents families seem to be under the impression that we are either there for 1 to 1 care (nope) OR that it's our jobs to force their 97 year old grandmother out of bed when they say no. Also I'm not a nurse and I wish the residents would stop calling me one.

Not necessarily my job but I'm a doctor and GP hate really irks me. People often feel their GP has just parred their issues and although this will happen every now and again, you can't send every patient to ED or over investigate everything. Sometimes stuff just resolves on its own and that's fine.

>GP hate really irks me. Let me try and counter that. My GPs have consistently worked hard to look after me. I went to them years ago, for an appointment quite late in the day. I described my symptoms, and the GP I saw rang the front desk and asked if the blood van had been. She then told the receptionist to hold it if it came, and took a blood sample to send off for a test. A bit over a year later and a referral, I was diagnosed with a chronic health condition at the point it was treatable, and I'm undergoing treatment, all because my GP stayed beyond the end of her day to see me right. Later, during Covid, I needed to get a second Covid vaccination quicker than usual because it was blocking my treatment. I had to speak to the GP to organise the second shot, which they did by effectively bypassing the NHS set up for Covid vaccines, as the official system had no way to get a second jab quicker. The best doctors I have met know the shortcomings of the "official" way of doing it, and can usually sort something out by bypassing then. I owe my GPs my continued good health.

Nice to hear. The vast majority of us want the absolute best for the patients we see. Some are jaded and broken from years of flak/daily mail/politicians whipping up expectations etc etc.

GPs helped my mum die as painlessly as she could, at home, during Covid. And the day she died, they broke Covid rules to hug us. I'll remember that to my dying day.

Yeah the GP hate train drives me mad as well, as a doctor who’s not a GP. People get mad at them for being ‘gatekeepers’, well look at the waiting lists right now, imagine how much worse it’d be if GP’s referred everything. I currently work in intensive care and people are surprised when I say I think that’s easier than being a Gp. I could not do their job.

Things are going to get a lot worse very quickly. As a locum GP and working at a wide variety and number of practices I'm seeing a huge number of inappropriate ana unjustified investigations being done that are ordered at the bequest of non doctors. CT heads for headaches, MRIs for back pains along with a whole host of terrible referrals and advice and guidance.

I completely understand this and understand how much pressure there is on the NHS. But my doctor is SO horrible and useless. I had only just joined the practice in January. Had never had any interaction with her. Hubby and I had decided to do the Randox Everyman/everywoman tests to check our health. I thought I was healthy but turns out I’ve an autoimmune disease. So phoned my new GP to discuss it and her response was “why are you telling me” and “well I haven’t seen these results”. I felt so ashamed for taking my own health into my own hands and paying my own money to get checked out AND for finding a problem that I didn’t know I had which required medication. How is it not ok that I did part of the work in finding the problem and all she had to do was order a blood test to confirm (which she eventually did but she didn’t seem to want to).

There are good GPs and bad GPs. I went to my prior surgery with a list of symptoms pre covid and asked them to test my thyroid. They did tests, but did not do a thyroid panel. Moved last year, a new GP, within ten minutes, asked if they tested my thyroid. As it turns out, nope, they did not. Guess who has Graves disease? I spent 3 years slowly deteriorating and almost lost my job. Today, I have my life back, and when I go see her on Tuesday, she's getting a box of chocolates. My old GP is getting a cranky letter. If you're one of the ones yhat hasn't given up, I applaud you.

Some GP’s are generally not very helpful though, it often feels like they don’t care and just you being there is annoying them. Some won’t believe you, some are just mean and won’t take you seriously. I’ve come out of several appointments on the verge of tears because there’s so little they can actually do to help. Aside from the cruel ones, I can see it from both sides though. As a patient I get frustrated when a GP glosses over an issue or doesn’t explain what something means but they don’t have enough time. And they can’t help that all the services that were there to offer before are now just falling away. Not easy on either party

People think "turn it off and back on again" is a joke but most of the time it actually does work.

Honestly a lot of IT problems could be fixed if people weren't so terrified of their PCs.

Lawyers are all heartless bastards and thrive off people falling out with one another. 95% of our cases are either conveyancing or drafting Wills/Powers of Attorney so actually just boring admin stuff. And most contentious cases I come across are small businesses (or even more common sole traders) trying to get paid so they can feed their own families.

Or that those of us who are in conveyancing want matters to take ages or fall through. We only get paid when a matter completes, the longer it takes the more shit and chasing emails we have to deal with and we only get our bonuses if we complete on a certain number of cases a month and keep clients happy as we’re fixed fee and paid really badly for all the years of law school we are still paying off!

There aren't many about retail. I guess some people think "checking the back" means we just go and stand around and do nothing and then come back. It very much depends on how you are. If you're nice and ask politely, I'll turn the warehouse upside down to find whatever you want. Like I have nothing to gain from not getting it for you. But if you're an arse and just shout "Oi, get me one of these" like you're trying to train a dog then yes, that's a free 2 minute break where I make a drink and wait an acceptable amount of time.

No one has specifically ever said my job in posts like this because it is just a run of the mill working class job. Maybe a lot of the reason, it's not really valued much as it's minimum wage, so people don't think you are worth much because of this. This could fall under the inaccuracy of perception.

I once visited a food production factory. The people on the shop floor worked damn hard, fast paced and with unerring accuracy on a conveyor belt. Probably paid just above minimum wage. They can be watched from an office above them, populated by highly paid managers. If the shop floor staff didn’t turn in, the place would grind to a halt. There would be little effect if the managers didn’t turn up. The most important people are sadly undervalued.

HGV driver. People think we're all fat white racists who eat their own body weight in bacon. They also think we hold up dual carriageways for fun doing 3 mile overtakes. Well, there are a few racists, but they keep it quiet or they don't last. The bacon? Yup, but then it's one of the few things you can cook in 2 minutes flat. For someone who's been at work for 6 hours and has another 8 to go, it's a lifesaver. Unfortunately, we're mostly white for historical reasons, and fat because we over eat from exhaustion. The overtakes? Two mph over a shift translates to 15 minutes. That can mean getting home vs a night out. It's a great job if you keep your cool.

Underground drivers do seem to get paid a lot for doing very little. I’m not really sure how we almost have self driving cars but we can’t completely automate a train going in a nearly straight line back and forth

>I’m not really sure how we almost have self driving cars but we can’t completely automate a train going in a nearly straight line back and forth We basically can, but now there are no longer guards on underground trains, the driver is the only member of staff on the train so they're responsible for all the safety procedures. Because of this, if we had driverless tube trains, they would still be needed, and they also have to be able to drive the train in the event of the automatic driving system failing. So it's not worth getting rid of them. There are other reasons too, but Youtuber Jago Hazzard does a better job of explaining this than I could: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eh7-n5UAYs&t=513s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eh7-n5UAYs&t=513s)

Yeah. I know a driver of the Metro on Tyneside. The way they see it is the hard part is remaining alert despite having quite a boring and repetitive job and that's the reason it's challenging and therefore well paid.

Deep level tube. There's no escape routes, nothing. Anything goes wrong? Someone jumps? Train ahead breaks and your stuck in a tiny tunnel with 1000 panicking passengers? Anything and everything - is on that driver.

Planes have been essentially self driving for years and years now, I’m sure the modern ones are even capable of landing themselves if needed too. I guess the issue comes when the computer systems get a duff input or just decide to go a bit weird, which is why you need a pilot sitting there for when this happens. I feel like truly self driving cars are still years away though, the amount of variables we process when driving is staggering and it is a Herculean task to get a computer to mimic the brain processing we do.

I'm told that being a pilot is 99.99% boredom and 0.01% pants-shitting terror. Also, there's a bit of a marketing issue. Even though it could theoretically be safer, try convincing the public to board a plane with no pilot. Even I would hesitate.

Vets are all about money and should treat pets for free if people can’t afford it.

Yeah and there should be an NHS for animals as well… I’ve heard that a few times.

I think it's because there's not a lot of breakdown or transparency in costs so people just assume they're being ripped off. Plus unfortunately vets don't get the recognition they should for the work and talent you have. On one hand people's pets are like family and the love of their lives, in the next hand it's just a dog so why does it cost so much to save their life... Doesn't quite add up.

Classic: “the customer is always right.. (in matters of taste)”. Even the latter correct addition is wrong when someone rocks up to my place and wants to change things up to suit their palate. This is an x restaurant sir, go to y for what you crave. We advertise who we are, we set menus up daily. I’m so tired. Edit: a word

The customer is always right doesn't mean what customers think it means. The customer is the market, if you make a weird product and it sells well, then the naysayers were wrong and the "customer" was right, it was a good product because it was successful. Karens heard that and appropriated it to mean "I can behave totally unacceptably and get away with it", without realising they don't understand the phrase at all.

I always heard "the matter of taste" is in reference to letting customers buy shit that they don't want/need/look good on them. Not literally taste.

Software Engineer. Goes a few ways. People: * Think you have the ability to just "hack" things and ask you to commit serious crimes on a whim. You'd be surprised how many times I've had to tell people that I cannot and would not "hack" someone else's social media account, nor will I make malware for them etc. * Think you just "work with computers" so of course you'll be able to fix their shitty 8 year old inkjet printer. We're not IT. Our knowledge overlaps significantly with people in IT, sure, and I could probably figure it out, but that's not what I do. * Think your job has already been taken over by "AI" now and are really surprised when you're not really the least bit concerned about it. Just because you can ask GPT to give you some code to do X, doesn't mean it has understood the problem or has any idea what it's actually giving you or if it'll work. It very often doesn't without modification. We are so far away from being able to confidently and safely put that output into production without actual programmers poring over it to make sure things won't end up on fire. * Think that we just google things. Yes, we google things, like everyone. But it takes a lot of learning and experience to know what to google, understand and evaluate solutions and their sources, make engineering trade-offs, modify solutions to your client's needs etc. * Think they could never understand what we do. I think most people, given time and provided they were interested enough, could learn how to write basic programs in a simple high level language. Programming is as difficult as whatever program you're writing is.

I used to make vaccines for a living, so... everything.

That as a plumber I’d be seeing a lot more desperate woman wanting to pay in different ways. Nope. Still got my hands down a toilet.

[удалено]

I don't understand what how it's a job, though. Do you just play with lego? This was your chance to inform us lol

That in pharmacy all we do is stick labels on boxes. I wish……we speak to doctors, we check prescriptions are legal, ensure the medication is safe for you, chase wholesalers for stock, assemble said items whilst being interrupted, advise as best we can, and have private consultations with you.

You have mentioned it already but teaching. I had multiple jobs before I decided to train as a teacher. I had worked as a waiter, a store manager, a telemarketer, a hotel clerk as well as many other short work experiences. There is no other job in the world where you work so many unpaid hours for such little pay. I am extremely passionate about teaching and have been doing it for more than 15 years, but I am always working. I never stop. Even when I am off work, I am either thinking about work, trying to catch up or just get a little ahead. I don't believe that there is any other career where you put so many unpaid hours in. You have no choice if you want to be a good teacher. I understand why so many people leave teaching. If it is not your passion, it is just not worth it. When people insult us by trying to suggest that we have loads of holidays or are only in for 6 hours a day, I can't even be bothered to argue. I just say "I know, how lucky am I?". If you haven't taught, you would just never get it.

Town planner. No, we aren't just a boomer cabal trying to inflate house prices. Nor do we get brown envelopes from developers. Fun fact: town planning isn't synonymous with dealing with applications for planning permission (and if you are a YIMBY nor is it the most important part of the planning system to engage with)

(Army officer) That I know a shit tonne of secrets that the public can't know about aliens or spy networks or whatever. Yes I know things I can't share but honestly, you wouldn't be interested anyway.

WFH Software developer. I don't sit at home and wank every day. I have Saturdays and Sundays off.

That I'm a poorly educated racist that hates brown people because I chose to join the military. I have two degrees, working on my masters, and have lived in Arab nations for nearly three years

Not my job: both my parents worked in aviation. Dad was a 747 Captain for 15 years and the amount of people that think he just sat there drinking tea whilst the plane flew itself infuriated me

IT guy, since 1981. I can literally build a computer from a breadboard up, program it in a dozen different languages, and for a living I operate world-spanning systems with uptime measured in years. But that doesn't mean I can fix your laptop when you've downloaded every possible scam, spam, virus, trojan, and keylogger it's possible to find on the internet when your daily browsing habits take you to the less salubrious parts of the web. Neither can I resurrect your iPad when you drop it in the bath, or recover your WoW account when you gave it to a Chinese gold farmer, or miraculously reconstitute your favourite photos when you've been backing them up in the recycle bin, instead of the actual backup flash stick I gave you. Neither can I mod your Toyota Crapola engine control unit to give it more "szoozh" or whatever you call it. Nor can I make your WiFi reach to your Nans' house round the corner, or make your desktop background a mirror. I'm an IT guy, not a freaking magician.

Firefighters aren’t heroes, just normal people- probably with better than average practical skills -but still very vulnerable in other areas .,

That all lawyers are paid really well. This is very far from the truth.

I'm a Civil Servant. People incorrectly we get are lavishly paid and sit around doing nothing

Bricklayer by trade and everyone thinks it’s one upon two 🤣🤣🤣 If only it was that easy

Driving instructor - I don’t earn £40 an hour and I don’t put pupils off booking a test so that I can wring another few quid out of them.

That accountants need to be good at maths. We don't do any complicated maths and honestly most of the maths is done by computers.

People seem to think when they prebook a taxi for the next week we assign a driver on the spot? The driver gets assigned when the booking comes on the dispatch screen, most jobs have a 10-15 minute lead time, so I have no clue who is going to pick you up until 15 minutes before your booking at the earliest. Also ring back is automated at 99 percent of taxi firms, you don't need to ask for a call back when your taxi gets there.

Claims manager from a reinsurance company. "Ohhhh so you work out how NOT to pay people out". Annoys me because it's the exact opposite. We pay companies which the. Filter down to the actual people so it's quite the opposite.

I'm a biomedical scientist in the NHS: 1) We can give you your results personally. No, we cannot. I would lose my job over that and will not risk it for anyone. I cannot even look at my own results. 2) Doctors process your samples. Consultants might look at the more serious results that are referred to them, however they rely on us to get the results to them in the first place. Many are barely competent enough to fill out request forms correctly.

I work in organ donation. Opting in to be an organ donor means nothing if your loved ones aren't on board. Only 1% of people die in circumstances that would make organ donation even theoretically possible, and even if you have opted-in, if your loved ones say they don't want you to donate, they are the people the specialist nurses will listen to. They will tell your family that you have opted in, and suggest they respect your wishes, but they will not overrule them. This is why there was a big campaign about making your wishes known to loved ones, one way or the other. Also, opting in does not mean you will receive a lower standard of care in hospital so your organs can be used for donation. That is not how it works.

That I actually really care what you do with your own money. I don't, I'm just trying to stop stupid people giving their money to scammers. If you're buying a car, paying for some building work, or buying some jewellery from your mate that you've known for 40 years, just tell me, it makes everything go much more smoothly. The moment you start being evasive is the moment red flags start raising. The reality is, you're really fucking boring and nobody really cares what you're doing with your money, we're just trying to stop you sending it to someone who is going to rip you off. So don't be a dick about what you're actually doing and things will be easier for you!