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Films and television can distort our view of certain things. Professions are no exception. I watched my fair share of Grey's Anatomy and saw how they're constantly shocking flat-lining patients. Turns out, it's not actually true. Asystole (the technical term for 'flat-lining') is not a 'shockable rhythm,' according to the Cleveland Clinic. So, the whole thing is a hoax.
Well, every day is an opportunity to learn something new, so let's do that, shall we? Let's see what other people have to say about their professions and the misconceptions that people have about them. The Redditor MajesticWin8708 was curious and asked other netizens: "What's one myth about your profession you would like to debunk?" Check out people’s answers below!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
ive worked in psych/mental health for almost a decade. i can confidently say 99.9% of homeless people are not homeless because they want to. many of the alternatives, like shelters, are in abysmal/dangerous conditions, usually have extremely strict rules (ex: closing the doors at 6pm, but your job ends at 530pm and the bus was late), and are run by churches (problem for lgbt, atheists, etc). often these places are worse than living on the streets in terms of safety and stability.
not everyone on the street is a drug addict, and for those that are many are either self-medicating because they cant afford meds they need (or cant keep appts due to transportation, not having a phone, etc), or because being homeless is boring and brutal and unkind so what else do you do? forced rehab objectively doesnt work and is often more dangerous than letting them use drugs. most homeless folks have nowhere to store their belongings, nowhere to go to the bathroom, nowhere to shower or bathe or clean their clothes, nor do they have a physical mailing address required by virtually all jobs for tax reasons.
you want to stop the "homeless epidemic"? treat them like people, pay people more, control rent prices to keep them affordable, demand universal healthcare, and demand funding this s**t.
#2
Not everyone who works in fast food is:
- A teenager trying to make some fun money, or trying to save up for school or a car.
- "So stupid they couldn't get a real job"
- A felon who couldn't get hired anywhere else
- Lazy and entitled and "wants $15 an hour to play on their phone all day"
Most people who work in fast food are:
- Hard working, honest folks who want to be able to pay their bills and take care of their family.
- Fed up with you assuming they're too lazy or dumb to get a "real job"
Edit: Lmaooo this one really got some people riled up, huh?
#3
Janitor here. We aren't lazy people who just sit around and drink coffee.
All buildings require a hefty amount of maintenance and most commercial buildings would be unusable in less than a month without a team of janitors and sanitisers.
We are constantly on our feet and there's always something that needs fixing, so even on a quiet day, I walk around 30k steps.
Television and film portray some professions in a more positive light, and others are portrayed more negatively. Sales-related professions usually have it the worst. Think Wolf of Wall Street, where the characters are money-grabbing, coked-out, and ruthless anti-heroes. On the other side of the spectrum, there's The Office, where salespeople are often incompetent and spend their workday pranking each other.
Architects and engineers are the most positively portrayed professions in film and television. A member of the profession, Andrew Hawkins, writes that the media usually portrays them as "mentally unstable to comical to starving artists." He takes Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother as a good example of an architect in the starting stages of their career.
"I think that some of Ted's personality traits are similar to architects in the real [world]; sometimes pretentious, a stickler for semantics, full of random information, and small amounts of obsessiveness; all character traits I see all the time in myself and my colleagues."
#4
I’m a librarian, and no I don’t shelve books all day. Those are pages (actual name) and I am so grateful to them for all the work they do. No I do not read books all day. I actually don’t get to read very often at all. If you apply to work at a library, a phrase like “I love to read books” is a red flag because you’ve not given any thought to actual library operations. I also rarely check books in and out, those are circulation clerks and they are badasses. Librarians do handle book purchasing, programming, and outreach; and what they do in those areas varies a lot based on their local situation. I’m an academic librarian. I work in a university and publish research, teach classes, program software, among other things.
Sarinz 9 months ago
Academic librarian here (online university): I never see a single "physical" book. We buy digital books and collections, manage the budget, solve access problems, collect and analyze data and statistics, interchange MANY mails with colleagues, faculty, (very few) students, vendors... It's more like an office job, in a very specific area of expertise.
#5
That Geology is just sbout rocks. Its also about Paleontology, Paleoclimatology, Earth history, how life began, how our planet became what it is today, volcanoes, earthquakes, Geophysics, mining, engineering and more, its a great career sector and generally well paid.
o.0.moldy strawberries.0.o 9 months ago
i made a whole persuasive text about this in 5th grade lol
#6
Computer programmer (software engineer). Just because I write software doesn't mean I can necessarily troubleshoot your hardware when it doesn't work.
Tina Girard 9 months ago
Agreed - IT work encompasses a whoooollle bunch of things beyond just software and hardware.
Researchers at the Southern University of California analyzed data from 70 years of media subtitles and film in the UK and the US. They found that manual labor and military occupations were mentioned a lot less over the years.
The professions that get the most attention nowadays are STEM, arts, sports, and careers in entertainment. This correlates directly with what professions are popular at the moment.
They also found that there were more negative sentiments in the media towards lawyers, police, and doctors as the years went by. At the same time, TV shows and movies stopped lumping doctors and nurses into a monolith.
There are increasingly more mentions of specialized medical professions: cardiologists, gynecologists, and neurologists. On the other hand, attitudes towards astronauts, detectives, therapists, musicians, singers, and engineers became more positive.
#7
Bass players are failed guitarists.
Most of us can play guitar too. We just prefer bass.
#8
a few for airline pilots
We probably don’t have a “route” per se. We fly a type of plane and we bid for “trips” each month which depending on the plane you’re currently flying could vary enormously.
If you’re senior enough you could bid a “route” let’s say weekday Miami to New York and back 10 times a month and that’s all you choose to do.
The Plane flies itself. This one isn’t really true. The autopilot is a tool to reduce workload but we still have to “tell” the plane what to do and understand the rules around when, why, and how to do it.
#9
That all teachers are unhappy and underpaid. I am underpaid, but I am not unhappy. I love my job.
The Darkest Timeline 9 months ago
The amount of people that think teaching is easy or that teachers are just overpaid babysitters is astounding and enraging. Lots of people seem to have no problem criticizing teachers and schools but wouldn’t last a week doing what we do.
#10
I am a phlebotomist (I draw blood) surprisingly I do have feelings so when you get mad at me for doing my job and hit/kick/spit/scream at me I get upset. Now if you cry during a blood draw I'm not going to judge you needles are freaky. Just don't take your bad hospital breakfast out on me.
UndertaleLover (She/Her) 9 months ago
You've had ADULTS spit at you because you were drawing blood? Hmm.
#11
Firefighter/paramedic of 24 years. The vast, vast majority of calls aren't for emergencies. Far from it. It's almost all low acuity medical calls to nursing homes, people who don't want to wait to visit their primary physician, people who absolutely *refuse* to take care of themselves, people who want/demand for us to help them but won't lift a finger to help themselves.
Don't get me wrong, we respond to plenty of true emergencies and there are definitely people out there who are appreciative and doing the right thing when it comes to taking care of themselves.
However, for every one, actual, emergency there is *at least* one 400lb type 2 diabetic on the third floor apartment who hurt their knee two weeks ago and now suddenly during a snowstorm they want us to take them to the hospital because they ran out of hydrocodone and never followed up with Ortho like they were supposed to.
Little Wonder 9 months ago
I've a friend who is a firefighter and was *delighted* to be called to an emergency at 3:00am to discover it was someone who had a beeping smoke detector and wanted the battery changed.
#12
Work travel is not glamourous. It's oftentimes stressful with airport b******t, delays, etc. In most cases, work travel means doing your same job (or perhaps a more stressful part of your job) while jetlagged and exhausted in a new environment.
Can it be fun? Yes.
Is it a touristy, sightseeing trip? No.
#13
As a person that used to work in retail I can say we do not have that popular must have out of stock item squirrelled away in the back storage and hidden to sell to our friends or ourselves at a later time.
Inventory is all controlled and monitored via computer systems these days. Management would have a mental fit if our inventory system showed that we had stock of an item and can't account for it.
Edit
When you ask us to check in the back. I used to take a small break because I know how our inventory system works and there's no sense for me to make an effort to look for something that I know we don't have instock.
Little Wonder 9 months ago
When I worked in a supermarket, stock came in on the truck and then straight onto the shelves, there was nothing "in back" except one time we had 13 trollies of cauliflower sitting out there and no one could explain why.
#14
I don’t know why customers continue to think the manager is going to side with them. All they are going to do is say the same thing I’ve been saying for the past 10 minutes.
#15
If you send your food back to a kitchen, nobody spits on it. We may laugh because we made it exactly the way it appeared on the ticket, but we'll fix it because that's our job.
#16
Agriculture: we aren’t destroying the planet with pesticides, we are trying to make more food on the same amount of land to keep up with the global population ever increasing
Papa 9 months ago
OP is correct. The result of going to all small farms raising crops with no pesticides or herbicides would be mass starvation. If you don't believe it, do some research on how many people have been fed by each person working in agriculture in the last few hundred years. Unless a big part of the population stops what they're doing and started farming instead it wouldn't, and couldn't, work at current population levels. This will probably get down voted to oblivion because people don't want to hear it, but that doesn't change facts.
#17
Medical lab/research techs don’t hold erlenmeyer flasks filled with brightly colored liquids up above their heads to gaze at them with light filtering through. Even in the fields where your role requires you to inspect the opacity of a sample or reagent, that is an idiot move. But it’s like the standard for stock photos and tv/movie extras
#18
Fine artists are not troubled, antisocial, weird, angry, and can actually be pleasant to be around. Most of us just like to paint.
#19
Mail carrier. We don't decide whether or not we're going to deliver your check that day, we just deliver whatever the machines and clerks give to us.
lunitavet 9 months ago
THIS. I was post & small package deliverer, man some people do get mad at you for not delivering something it was supposed to be delivered that day. It is a very hard work, can take hours & hours to complete your assigned streets, under all types of weather. Most people don't care unless something goes wrong , then somehow its always your fault. Very undervalued job in many ways.
#20
Most lawyers spend a tiny fraction of their work time in court and many lawyers never go to court.
Stephanie A Mutti 9 months ago
If you want to be a lawyer and be in the courtroom all the time, go into criminal justice as either a public defender or a district attorney. You will BE in the courtroom and it is amazing! Draining and stressful but nothing beats the high of making arguments.
#21
Counselling. We can’t fix everyone. You can’t force someone into counselling. It doesn’t matter how much relatives want someone to do it (eg a wife forces a husband or mother forces a child to go) unless they want to, there is nothing we can do. They need to be willing to engage. Even then it’s not a fix all, for example with bereavement you won’t stop being sad, we just give you tools to learn to carry on with your new normal.
#22
I'm in mental healthcare...so...*gestures to everything*
Aballi 9 months ago
I get this! I work with previously incarcerated women, and I'd say about 99% have a substance use disorder and 95% have mental illness and past trauma. There is so much stigma on these populations, and yet most of the women I work with are smart, motivated, kind, curious, and compassionate. The majority of them have been dealt a sh**ty hand in life, and developed unhealthy coping skills along the way. It's an absolute honor to watch them when they work on themselves, no matter how hard it gets, and grow into productive members of society.
#23
Scientist who does animal testing. We can’t just do experiments that we want to. We have to get ethical approval for it first and then report back to the ethics committee every year. Violating animal ethics will get you placed in prison.
Journals that we publish in (because we MUST publish) will reject your paper if they suspect ethics violations.
People doing the experiments don’t enjoy hurting animals and there are no meta-studies assessing the impact of conducting animal studies on mental well-being.
Most of the studies I’ve seen in the lab I’m at and others I’ve worked in are very necessary research. Addiction studies, sleep studies, pain studies, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s studies. You’re not going to get better drugs and surgeries without it being successfully performed in animals first. And no, cell studies and computer models are nowhere good enough to replace all animal studies.
M O'Connell 9 months ago
Models are excellent places to start, but models are only useful because they are verified experimentally.
#24
That office people just chat and drink coffee all day, whereas for some office jobs it might be true its definitely not true for mine.
Monstarr the Divisive 9 months ago (edited)
Oh man, I get this. I work in an office for our communal administration in Switzerland and it's just astonishing how many people actually think we've got 2 hours of work per day and chill the rest. If they knew I was on this site for a few minutes a day, they'd execute me for being a parasitic lifeform.
#25
As an automotive mechanic I'd really like it if people didn't try to lowball me on literally everything and accuse me of being a swindler with zero proof. In my experience most actual scumbag mechanics are actually very charismatic and friendly and lull people into a false sense of trust. Mechanics get all sorts of accusations hurled their way and there is rarely any actual basis for it since the average customer can't tell good work from bad.
I worked at a dealership where the parts markup was less than 10% and we undercharged customers constantly. We were still accused of being scalpers, or at least too expensive for no reason, with the usual reasoning being that our officially licensed dealership was not as cheap as a private shop ran by a 27 year old guy who opened it after apprenticing for 3 years and dealt in stolen parts.
Jrog 9 months ago (edited)
This post has everything I loathe about most mechanics' comments on Reddit. Yes, there are a lot of cost and skills involved into being a mechanic. But every time someone rightfully says that $150/hr rate is way too much for this kind of job, and there are people doing that for $70/hr, they are up in arms, the cheaper option is tagged as a "27 year old guy who deals in stolen parts". Point is, mechanic rates varies wildly, and within reasonable limits the quality is not directly linked to price. You can have amazing service for $70 or awful for $150, and you may not be able to tell the difference yourself. Also, the difference is almost always only in the shop margin, since the average pay for a skilled mechanic has little variance across the market.
#26
Design engineers don't engineer things to fail. They engineer things to last a minimum lifespan for a minimum cost. Sometimes we do that job well enough to convince you that it failed on purpose, but the reality is that a failed product will *never* make us look successful at our job.
Also, yes. We could have given you a much better product. It just would have cost more than you would be willing to pay.
Verena 9 months ago
Yes, but: I bought a very expensive floodlight, with a loose solar panel and movement detection. It worked perfectly ... unless curious birds picked a tiny hole in the Fresnel lens. Result: The entire thing stopped working. No big deal, just exchange the 20 cent lens and everything will be okay. So I sent an email to the manufacturer, good quality name in Germany. Answer: Dump the entire thing, lamp and solar panel and buy a new one. This is ridiculous. 1. The lens was impossible to remove, which could have been made easy if a screwable tightening ring would habe been designed, instead of glueing the ring. 2. The lenses, the part weathering the worst, are not available as spare part. Not even on other websites. This is just dumb design and an incredible waste of resources.
#27
All water whether it be toilet water, dishwater, shower water etc. goes to the same place. Doesn’t matter what it’s used for, it all goes to the sewer.
#28
Most American opera singers aren’t really that fancy. Most grew up middle class. The biggest fakes in our industry are Joyce di Donato and Thomas Hampson. They grew up in the Midwest. They use fake accents and are horrible at trying to give masterclasses. It’s incredibly common in American voice from the collegiate level to the big leagues. You’ll be talking to a professor with a chic British accent, then discover they were born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey and have never gone to the UK. Tons of fakes and scammers.
Auntriarch 9 months ago (edited)
Not saying in this case, but sometimes your profession forces you to adopt a particular voice or persona. A long time ago I know, but Dame Alicia Markova was really Alice Marks. I have my telephone voice. Air traffic controllers used to have to lose their home accent.
#29
Already, I’ll bite. I’m former Air Force Intel, 14NX. Laser guided bombs and bombs of any type are not pinpoint accurate. There will always be some sort of deviation whether it be 200 feet or 1500. Even dumb bombs are not accurate with the on-board bomb calculator that most bombers have.
Pilots are f*****g tiny. I could have qualified to be a fighter pilot because I’m 5’ 9”. Pilots are also some of the biggest nerds out there since you need to be an officer to fly and all officers have some sort of college degree; even those going into OTC.
Military grade quality advertisements are not what you think. Military grade means made by the cheapest bidder and low quality. The quality is only good enough to be picked up by a 18 year old kid and not break.
Humvees suuuuuuuuuck. The AC barely works, it leaks more than a geriatric alcoholic with a badder infection, and the armor is non-existant.
Most of us don’t fly. My line of work was talking to English speaking locals and drawing up maps for soldiers in the field to use. (Lots of villages that have “disappeared.”)
The Middle East isn’t all deserts. There’s actually a lot of farms and a number of (somewhat) friendly people. One of our translators was actually a guy from north Lebanon who played a lot of video games. He was a big fan of Fallout.
T-55 is a better tank than the M60’s we still had in service. Not because of their features or gun or armor; M60 is superior there, but the T-55 was most likely to start up and work first try every try.
Jrog 9 months ago (edited)
And no, the M60 deployed in Iraq (I assume is 1990s Iraq, this was the last major deployment of the M60) were in the latest upgraded variant, dating back to the late 1970s. The marines got some older hardware, that was lagging behind but still better than the stock 1959-model T55s and unupgraded 1970s models used by the Iraqi. The Patton has a larger gun, thermal imaging, better fire control, more range at the price of slightly worse armor.
#30
I'm an electrician and it's not only a pliers and a screwdriver we use all day.
What do you think ?
L.V 9 months ago
Bank: no we're not all rolling in money, you'd have to be quite high in the hierarchy. Most of the workforce earns an average salary.
madbakes 9 months ago
Also, we're not trying to scam you. For the most part, we can offer solutions to problems you didn't know you could fix. There are some shady people, but most of us want to do right by you. We also hate overdraft fees.
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Anonymous Anomaly 9 months ago
Veterinary technician: we too are underpaid (so are the doctors), we don't play with puppies and kittens all day. In specialty medicine (emergency, internal medicine, oncology, or my department surgery, we work a lot of overtime, and emotionally depleted, lacking sleep, hungry, on our feet moving 13+hr days. We get every type of bodily fluid on us. Our patients are scared and often want to hurt us, the practices do t charge high prices because any of us are pocketing that money. We're yelled at by angry clients because they didn't purchase pet health insurance and want to pay less or none, therefore we must not care about animals(?) We talk to clients, pull blood or other samples, run the lab work, answer phones, clean the hospital, monitor and treat patients, carry out Dr orders, paperwork, billing, prep work, fill medications, do complex calculations etc. (In human medicine practically all of those tasks are delt to different, specific job titles).
Bored something 9 months ago
Thank you for caring for our beloved furred, feathered, scaly or other family.
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Silre 9 months ago
Welfare caseworker here! My clients are not lazy and just sitting around collecting a check and having babies. The majority work! Some of them work more than one job. These are human beings who need a little help! Oh, and people are not immigrating to the United States and immediately getting food stamps. You have to be in the country legally for 5 years to be eligible. Maybe have a little empathy, someday you may be on the other side of my desk.
L.V 9 months ago
Bank: no we're not all rolling in money, you'd have to be quite high in the hierarchy. Most of the workforce earns an average salary.
madbakes 9 months ago
Also, we're not trying to scam you. For the most part, we can offer solutions to problems you didn't know you could fix. There are some shady people, but most of us want to do right by you. We also hate overdraft fees.
Load More Replies... Anonymous Anomaly 9 months ago
Veterinary technician: we too are underpaid (so are the doctors), we don't play with puppies and kittens all day. In specialty medicine (emergency, internal medicine, oncology, or my department surgery, we work a lot of overtime, and emotionally depleted, lacking sleep, hungry, on our feet moving 13+hr days. We get every type of bodily fluid on us. Our patients are scared and often want to hurt us, the practices do t charge high prices because any of us are pocketing that money. We're yelled at by angry clients because they didn't purchase pet health insurance and want to pay less or none, therefore we must not care about animals(?) We talk to clients, pull blood or other samples, run the lab work, answer phones, clean the hospital, monitor and treat patients, carry out Dr orders, paperwork, billing, prep work, fill medications, do complex calculations etc. (In human medicine practically all of those tasks are delt to different, specific job titles).
Bored something 9 months ago
Thank you for caring for our beloved furred, feathered, scaly or other family.
Load More Replies... Silre 9 months ago
Welfare caseworker here! My clients are not lazy and just sitting around collecting a check and having babies. The majority work! Some of them work more than one job. These are human beings who need a little help! Oh, and people are not immigrating to the United States and immediately getting food stamps. You have to be in the country legally for 5 years to be eligible. Maybe have a little empathy, someday you may be on the other side of my desk.
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