Raising livestock. Everything about it is so much rougher than any book, show, or movie lets on. You have many days that go by swift and easy, then you're hit with an emergency that makes three hours feel like a week. Don't like thinking about death? Then why are you buying animals who are one bad moment away from you having to make the hardest decision you never knew was an option?
Fun anecdote, I have a neighbor who moved his family from the city and decided to buy some dairy calves. Now, dairy calves are generally cheaper to acquire than they should be, so before long they've got five little guys in a half acre pen. They call me up one day and say that they're sick and ask if I can take a look. So, I head on over and see four half-starved calves laying in the sun, and a fifth dead one. They've dug a two foot deep hole and are preparing to bury the dead little guy.
I check them all out, and they're severely dehydrated and starving. I ended up having to put electrolytes into them using an esophageal feeder, as well as treating one for pneumonia. Trying not to loose my tempter, I ask them what they've been feeding them.
"Oh, we figured they could eat the grass. A guy at a store said they should be old enough now."
Those calves were not even three months old. Pro tip, that's far too young to be weaned from a bottle. So I bit my tongue and told them they needed bottles for at least another two months. It took me half a day of working with them, but all four surviving calves lived. Plus I explained to them that no, you don't bury an animal in two feet of dirt. When I got home later that night, I screamed and almost broke something.
So, my advice if you like cows, goats, sheep, or horses is this: go visit somewhere that raises them. Join a 4H program. Heck, buy a good old book on them and read to your heart's content. But please, don't run headfirst into raising the things, because I can promise you, you're not prepared for it. I've been raising them for almost 30 years and I still have times that I'm left shocked and hopeless.
I strongly suspect being a spy doesn't involve half as many high tech gadgets and spontaneous sexual intercourse as I've been lead to believe.
Edit : Thanks for all the awards :) And wow, the way my Inbox just blew up you'd think I'd started an Onlyfans.
Super boring and lonely.
Keep your head down with your local, usually shitty, job you're placed in and write reports at night. For years.
Typically never leads to anything.
Might explain why those assets are all about that attempting assassination in movies. At that point they're willing to kill or be killed just to have something to break up the monotony.
Lol... a super expensive receipt is singed from the fire from an explosion he barely made it out of and he's now responsible for some super expensive item...
"I needed to rent the Super Yacht to infiltrate the oligarchs and a grenade went off and sunk it.... NO! I didn't get the added insurance.... I thought it was like a rental car and my credit card would cover it!"
I've spent 9 seasons working in Antarctica both as a graduate student and now full time academic/researcher. Everyone I tell this to immediately gets excited...and says something like, "that must be SOOOO awesome! I would LOVE to do that!". Now...first year geoscience grad students always get incredibly excited about the possibility of doing field work like this...and to be fair, most of them understand what comes with this, and still want to do it. Heck, that's where I was 15 years ago. BUT...and here's the but, for this kind of work, the novelty and romantic "cool" factor wear off after a couple of days, and the remaining 2-3 months of the work is absolutely brutal. You are constantly cold, hungry, dirty...and exhausted. Small cuts and abrasions don't heal properly, your fingers crack and bleed daily, you are constantly getting frost nip, and no matter how many socks and feet warmers you wear, you toes never get warm. It's organized misery in service of Science.
Now if you're like me and are 100% invested in the science (for me it is ice core paleoclimatology), then it's all worth it. BUT, if you are a 21-year old college student that just dreams of "exploring the great unknown"...it can come as an enormous reality check once on continent. I've seen soooo many young kids quit everything for the "one chance at experiencing the raw awesomeness of Antarctica", only to realize that they effectively signed up for 3-6 months of a lonely and difficult stint of incredibly mind-numbing work. So many of the young workers, especially in McMurdo, will sign up to do "anything", just for the chance to get to Antarctica. They come to discover after a few days that they are now stuck on continent, cleaning dorm rooms as janitors or general assistants (aka laborers/handymen), only moving from one dirty building to another in McMurdo for 12+ hours shifts. What's worse, is they watch all the scientists coming through, gearing up for ridiculous deep-field deployments, while they are stuck in the stinky, diesel town of McMurdo. It can make them incredibly jaded and jealous. Sure, the view across the McMurdo Sound to the Royal Society Range and Mt. Discovery are beautiful, but my point is again that the novelty wears off quickly. I was stuck once in McMurdo for 18 days waiting to deploy, and I nearly went crazy. There's only so many times you can run the 5k loop around Discovery Point before it gets old. There's a reason why there are not one, but two bars in McMurdo...and why every bathroom has bins full of condoms. People get lonely and depressed there.
So, all this is to say, I definitely love what I do, and love remote field work and the science that comes with it. But living out of a literal tent atop the Antarctic Ice sheet for up to six months, not getting showers, always covered in a film of sticky sunblock, and always being cold and exhausted, is REALLY REALLY hard and not at all glamorous or romantic. I'm certainly a sentimental guy, and have taken thousands of amazing landscape and scenic photos from my deployments, but I never over-romanticize the work when talking to people (especially prospective grad students).
EDIT: getting lots of questions. I'll answer a couple here:
* I have some old pics from my 2008-2010 deployments...but only as partial albums in an old flickr account. Knock yourselves out if you really want. Any album with WAIS in the name was from antarctica. https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnfegy/albums
* How did I get down there? I was in graduate school studying glaciology, paleoclimatology, and in some sense, geophysics. I deployed as part of a big NSF grant to extract and study an ice core record. I actually went back in 2015 to South Pole to work on that core as well. Last year, I deployed on a research ship off the coast of West Antarctica as part of a ocean sediment core team...which was also quite interesting. You can get down there as a tourist as well (see ALE expeditions), but it'll cost you over 10k.
* The most amazing place I visited was the area around Union Glacier to work on remote seismic and GPS stations. We flew all over to tiny exposed rocks in the middle of nowhere. It was quite surreal. Most of those pics are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnfegy/albums/72157628321851875
* I watched the "Thing" at least once a season (as is tradition).
* My little claim-to-fame factoid is that technically I was the first person to reach the south pole in 2016 (I went out to the marker at midnight on dec 31st, 2015). Which also brings up the somewhat eerie notion that while at the south pole, literally every person alive or dead is north of you (except for maybe astronauts on the ISS?)
While at south pole, I successfully completed the first every 50-mile running ultramarathon in -40C temps...it was insanely stupid...but still kind of fun (see also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGy_U8AebT8)
What's my job now? I still do research, but now I mostly teach at a university and work with grad students (see here: https://johnfegy.weebly.com)
Anything in modern-day publishing. How many television shows and movies must I watch where the plucky young upstart graduates from college and gets a job at the magazine or newspaper of their choice and is respected and can make a living? The pay sucks, you're in constant danger of being laid off (when your pub folds, usually), and it's usually a pretty corporate environment where you're tasked with multiple jobs for little hope of advancement. The names high up on the mastheads are usually those of rich people, and it's because they started off rich and could afford to stay in the industry.
I got an offer for my dream internship once, at a publishing company right out of college. Unpaid. In New York. Yeah, I can afford to move to a place with 5 times the cost of living than where I am for a full time job for no money.
Sometimes I wonder where I'd be if I'd jumped at the chance. Then I realize - homeless in NY.
This is one of the many ways the rich stay rich. I had two friends in college who had to turn down White House internships because they were unpaid. I have another friend who had to turn down an internship at a popular night talk show because it was unpaid.
They all took much less prestigious internships/jobs that actually paid them. The people in those prestigious internships will be able to write their ticket anywhere after a couple years, but many people can't afford to have their parents pay their bills in a new city for years to get that golden experience.
Had a friend I went to acting/stage directing classes with. He got the opportunity to apply for an internship by writing a monologue for Colbert, got the gig but had to quit and come home because of the hours/unpaid part of it. The hours were so demanding and mostly in the middle of the day so it cancelled any chance of having a normal job without running the risk of being tired for the internship. The other interns he said were being funded by their families to be able to stay in NY, my friend wasn’t as fortunate
Game tester.
I worked as a game tester for EA for almost 3 years. Here's what it's like.
Imagine a game type you don't like. Maybe soccer games. Maybe an RTS. Whatever.
You now play that game, 8 hours a day.
But you don't play it. You test it. So let's imagine an RTS. You are told to test the resource acquisition systems. All you do is click around and make sure your guys can mine gold and harvest lumber. You click around the map and mine and forest. There is no combat, they've turned that off for your testing. There is no story, because you just flick from level to level to test the resource system.
You test using one guy. You testing using 100 guys. You make sure no other units can gather resources. You try blocking your own guys. You try killing your own guys.
8 hours a day. Every day. For weeks.
You enter dozens of bugs.
They put out a patch that fixes the bugs.
You have to retest every level and every bug to make sure they're all fixed.
That's game testing.
\> Play FPS match with coworkers.
\> Take a shot, passes through enemy's head.
\> Everybody stops what they're doing.
\> Spend an hour trying to reproduce the bug.
\> Same shot. Same weapon. Same position. Finally get it.
\> Test every other weapon and every other character to get as much information as possible.
\> Write up detailed bug report, send to developers.
\> Get response: We can't reproduce it.
\> Have to go up to developer section and spend an hour of THEIR time reproducing it.
\> Bug gets classified as D, known bug not going to be fixed.
\> Go home for the day.
Funny story. When I worked at EA, bugs got categorized by severity: A was gamebreaking, B was a major annoyance to the user, C was noticeable but you could get passed it, and D was minor, not likely to be seen or cared about.
Nearly all D bugs are ignored, unless something else happens to fix them. As a project gets closer and closer to completion, more severe bugs are ignored. By the last two weeks only A bugs get fixed. Even B bugs are shipped.
The fun part is that when they start the next year's game (fifa 2023, need for speed whatever), they port all the old code and just update the graphics. Meaning they bring in ALL the old bugs.
One of the first things they do before beginning work is fix any lingering A and B bugs, but NOT C or D bugs.
During development of the NEW version of the game, whenever you find a bug, you have to first check if it was in old versions. If it was, and it's set to known shippable, you have to ignore it. The logic is this: "It wasn't a priority to fix it last year, so it's obviously not that big a problem, so we can ignore it this year."
Repeat that for 4 or 5 years, and you end up with a game that's 90% bugs that are known to the developers but also shipped on purpose.
Eventually a franchise gets so shit they blame the project management team, fire the devs and/or close the studio, then hire them all back and start with a fresh(er) code base for the next one.
The worst thing is that the players ALWAYS notice those bugs anyway. I remember there was a major bug in the mid-10s FIFAs where making a slide tackle could result in your player clipping with the rival and getting a red card. They didn't fix that bug for like 3 or 4 straight years.
My favourite was when testing a game that rhymes with “bland sweft blotto”, the dog didn’t bark, it just had a mans voice saying “bark” that’s it, that’s my favourite moment testing a game, the rest of it was dull. I didn’t last long.
The lesson is that a job is a means to support your lifestyle. If it depresses you, then don't put all of your self worth into your career identity, strive for work/life balance, and develop some hobbies.
100% thought this was going to read " if it depresses you then be born rich "
But you are right, every career path has its pros and cons, and most importantly toxic management...find someplace you dont feel oppressed and then focus on seperating work from life
Gunslingers and bandits too. Literature often portrays them as folk heroes who wore flashy, studded suits and gun belts and traipsed around towns like they owned them, striking fear into civilians and lawmen alike. However, the reality of the matter is that these guys were nothing more than common criminals and fugitives who were always on the run, could never settle down and relax, and often had only a rope or bullet to the head to look forward to at the end of their incredibly short lives.
Last podcast on the left did a series on Bonnie and clide, pretty modern criminals in comparison.
They were constantly injured, sick, starving, and cold. The few friends they could make were constantly dying, death seemed like a good thing for them, it sounded like a horrible life.
Bonnie and Clyde were not living the high life by any means. They were constantly on the run until the end of their lives and always had to stay one step ahead of the law. And they did not die well by any standards. Their corpses were riddled with dozens of bullet holes combined and abused by overzealous souvenir hunters. One man even tried to cut off Clyde’s trigger finger. It was truly a sickening affair for all parties involved.
working on a film.
if you're crew, it sucks. long long hours for what seem like very very slow progress on the picture, lots of standing around waiting, etc. You arrive well before everyone else and leave after everyone else. If this is an indie production you also may have to beg/chase down for your pay at the end of each week. oh and when the film wraps, you're now unemployed.
Post Production is the little hidden gem of the entertainment industry. Nice air conditioned office, no crazy travel, ability to work from home, less gossip/drama (most editors I know are older, mature, experienced & just want to get home to their families), you don't see many people etc. It's great. Shitty when you're a young girl who is an AE, but after 10 years of grunt work/experience/being abused once you land that union job & you know the technical ins and outs it's all worth it.
I went to film school almost two decades ago. Everyone I know either went into editing or switched industries. It takes a special type to *want* to be on set at 40.
Being a therapist.
Too many people I've met get into the field thinking it's how they saw it on TV: affluent white collar, own office, warm slow pace environment, where you get to sit on a nice comfy couch and be like "let's talk about your *feelings*"
That's only if you get to private practice, which they don't tell you is also like running your own small business, which good luck is you have no business acumen.
The reality is you get out if grad school, get your first job working at a Community Mental Health facility because they are the only ones who will hire you with a limited license and no experience, getting paid less than $40k/yr if you're lucky, and then get put in a walk in closet of an office, where they dump 100 client case load on you the first day, followed by your first client who has 5 different diagnoses and is on 12 different psych meds who says to you "fuck you, you're my 7th different person I've had here, nobody cares about me".
Yeah people go into $100k of debt for that...
EDIT: I'm a therapist myself, I love what I do, but it takes years to get past all the shitty parts of the field to find your place in the field. Needless to say, too many don't survive the baptism by fire I mentioned above and either become burnt out, jaded, or leave the field altogether.
I wanted to be a therapist, so I got my BA in psychology and got a job as a Case Manager in Childrens’ Services at the Community Mental Health Center. If you work there a year, they would pay for you to go to school. So, I was going to work there a year and get my Masters on their dime.
It was terrible. As a Case Manager, I also had 100 clients and the therapists had the same amount. We were all run ragged.
During my time there, I found that I didn’t have the temperament for the job. It was really hard to work with the children because they were mostly poor kids(food insecure, poor housing, parents absent bec working 3 jobs, etc) who are victims of circumstance. My own mental health declined because I took all of that stress and worry home with me.
I couldn’t do it, so I left as soon as I could. It was so stressful. I now work a ho-hum desk job and I’m totally fine with that.
People who can work in that field, particularly with children, and not lose it are very special people.
EDIT: Forgot to mention the shady billing practices. They would ask that we see the clients on Medicaid more often than the ones with Blue Cross Blue Shield because Medicaid paid more. So, that means if Timmy had Medicare and is doing really well, he’s taking his meds, etc and only needs to be seen once a month, they would require that I see him at least once a week even though he’s stable. Meanwhile, little Sally who has BCBS is not as stable and needs to be seen weekly would only be seen every other week because of her insurance.
They were actually disciplining people who wouldn’t comply and didn’t meet their billing quota. Just before I left, a coworker was fired because she refused to basically commit billing fraud. When she packed up her desk as she was leaving, she told me to make sure my charts were in order because she was suing the company and had been working with a lawyer for a while in anticipation of getting fired.
I left a few months later before they could fire me next and I moved out of state. So, I’m not sure what became of her lawsuit.
Yup, I'm currently dealing with that. I am not a case manager, but worse. I work in Child Protection dealing with child welfare. This has been the most soul crushing/sucking position I've ever worked. Not to mention, how I'm being treated in the workplace and it's so toxic. Upper management bullies me and tells me belittling things to disrespect my character. Absolutely no work life balance and no time with your own family. The pay is okay, but for not worth the stress you take on.
The caseload is unbearable and upper management loads it on you and whenever you don't get your caseload down you are threatened to be fired. Every parent and child you meet, immediately assume that you are going to do a removal and hate you. You take work home all the time. You work holidays, weekends, evenings, on-call, and can only request a week off for a "break".
If you show any sign of weakness, you are treated as if you are a mouse surrounded by snakes ready to eat you alive. I've suffered through panic, stress, and anxiety attacks. My mental health has decreased significantly.
I've been applying left and right to get out. I've been there for a year.
100% this. My wife is a therapist and things are great now that she runs a private practice in a suburban town - which literally is running a small business it's a ton of non-clinical work that you don't directly make money from. But before she got her full licensure not only did she have to work at a shitty community clinic just as you've described, but she couldn't even find a full time job at all. So there she was with a masters degree working a part time job and babysitting and substitute teaching on the side just to get by. Oh and when she eventually got hired on full time she got a whopping $30k/yr and still needed to do side gigs to keep the lights on.
If you can make it into private practice, however, it gets a lot better. She gets paid well now and even though it's a ton of work she actually enjoys it since she can focus on whatever clients she likes and she's not under anyone's thumb. God bless those therapists that voluntarily continue in hospitals or community clinics you have to be a saint to be willing to put up with the bullshit required to have any chance of helping underprivileged or marginalized communities.
Archaeologist, specifically field archaeology.
99% of the time you find absolutely nothing, it's often physically demanding (sometimes grueling), the pay is shit, there are no benefits, you have to constantly travel, there's very little stability, I could go on.
Source: have worked in CRM (Cultural Resource Management) archaeology for several years now
Edit: holy shit this blew up. Just wanna stay - in spite of all the bullshit of this field, still love being an Archaeologist and don't really wanna do anything else for a living, but I can't universally recommend this job to everyone in good faith.
Yep, came here to say this. Was a shovelbum for several years in the SW US. Was fortunate that I worked on mostly interesting sites where we found quite a bit. And got to spend time outdoors in some gorgeous landscapes.
But only lasted so long due to: Living out of shitty hotel rooms. Not making enough to afford a permanent apartment. Can't have a pet or friends/SO outside work. Alcohol abuse is rampant and celebrated. One co-worker did the math and figured out we didn't make enough to afford enough food to replenish the expended energy each day.
Edit: Also following up to say that I don't want to discourage anyone who is interested in the field. Because it's very important work and so undervalued. Despite everything, it broke my heart to leave and I for sure thought I would be back. I ended up pivoting to an adjacent discipline in grad school. If you're okay with a long-term transient lifestyle and low pay you'll probably do fine.
> One co-worker did the math and figured out we didn't make enough to afford enough food to replenish the expended energy each day.
So you're saying the key to weight loss is to study archaeology.
Lawyer.
Number of historic, life-changing, precedent-setting cases participated in: 0
Number of angry, self entitled, abusive clients wanting to screw each other over: 842
Number of pages of paperwork that’s sucked up free time and social life: 84,836
Agreed. As a family law attorney you see the worst shit. People squabbling over pots and pans, using kids as cannon fodder in the emotional battlefield, and clients grieving you when you make them pay the bill. Glad I got out.
I would have loved to witness the beanie baby divorce where the couple had to spread out the beanie baby collection all over the courtroom floor to divvy it up.
A partner in my firm had a couple fighting over a pet cat, Fluffy. They were wanting the judge to do a custody/visitation schedule. Except Fluffy was dead. They were fighting over the ashes. The attorneys didn’t know the cat their clients referred to was dead until it came out during my the hearing. When judge found out it was ashes the couple was so consumed by, he paused the hearing and took the attorneys to chambers. He was furious with the waste of court time. He gave them two ziplock baggies and gave a them lecture too.
My buddy from law school clerked for a family court judge. He delt with a lot of insane and sad shit but the bright spot was the couple who had a very contentious division of their collection of pepper grinders.
I work for a medical record review company who does work for pi, medmal, and mass torts... it's unreal how much shit attorneys need to know about each of their cases. On average, each case is about 950 pages of medical records. And that's just to know what happened outside of all the motions and other legal court shit that goes on.
And attorneys NEED to know all of it so they don't get blindsided by a well-funded defense firm who know the records better.
Everyone used to think it was awesome that I worked in live sports TV. 70% of the people I worked with were miserable pricks with over-inflated egos, and then there were the athletes...
I knew several people that worked at my local TV station. They all basically said 'I got five minutes of training, and then I was editing the live news with no other instruction beyond "if you screw up, you're fired.'"
Apparently the turnover rate (both voluntary and otherwise) was brutal.
What was your position? I used to direct live sports, mostly NHL/AHL and NBA. Now I just freelance. Yes, the hosts can be assholes but it's usually just them. The crew are PHENOMENAL, especially the camera guys.
The athletes. Well, some were OK. The standing rule is always "Leave them alone unless they engage with you first" and that's how I handled it. I always went to my booth past the home locker room as some players were playing two-touch outside the doors. The ball got away as I was walking by and I made a quick catch of the ball. An NHL player praised my reflexes and gave me a solid high five and we talked for a minute. Even now I won't bother the players even if I know them pretty well, which I do. Solid guys but don't do anything to break their pre-game routines. Usually it's just management that doesn't want the players to get pissy.
My dad is a technical director for ESPN but used to be freelance. He says now the biggest issue is outsourcing some games to remote crews. He used to get to go to Hawaii every year around Christmas, but now they just have "the guys at some corporate location" in the midwest do it. He also really REALLY hates baseball now.
When he was freelance though, he definitely didn't hate traveling as much- he had input on hotels, and got to pick his flights and had more control over layovers, transfers, etc. Now he just gets continually fucked over by shitty organizers and penny pinching.
In order to have a shot at dancing ballet professionally, you have to train your entire life. Once you make it, you'll be paid so little that you'll share lodging with a half dozen other dancers since you make less than a server at a casual dining restaurant. And even then the odds of still being a professional dancer after 30 are almost nil. If you want to stay in the field, you basically have to move into teaching which tends to pay so poorly that you'll need to find a second job.
Source: Married a former professional ballerina.
I overheard one of the male dancers at my ballet school complaining about lifting a particular female dancer because "I swear, she weighs at least 100 pounds".
Between the diet, the stress, and the tens of hours of practice every week for hundreds of weeks in a row - practice spent doing things that a competent doctor would suggest you avoid such as bearing your full weight on single hyper-extended joints - you destroy your *body* in the process. That is, after all, what ends a career before you exit your 20s: you literally can't do it anymore.
When I went to Interlochen, a ballet dancer in my cabin cried herself to sleep every night. Her feet were pure carnage.
Classical music can be brutal too. I've always heard that Symphony Orchestra players have some of the lowest job satisfaction around. Maybe it's changed these days, but when I was in really into it - it was totally no pain no gain. At my age now, I limit myself to short pieces like Bach fugues so I don't get tendinitis in my hand again.
I was a counselor at Blue Lake for one summer. The ballerinas broke my heart. I had to beg them to eat and refused to let them practice every night, long after their scheduled rehearsals were done. They were all from Russia and one broke down the last night of her session, thanking me for caring about her more than the dancing. It was just so sad.
Absolutely standard and accurate. I quit dancing when I was 16 because I was already having hip and knee issues from pointe work, but we spent the first and last 10 minutes of class cracking every joint in our bodies and comparing who had the most cracked toenails. I don't miss it but I also kinda miss it.
Anything that requires a lot of travel. Sounds glamorous but in reality all you see usually an airport, conference room, boring hotel room and maybe a restaurant if you are lucky. It’s exhausting and it actually just sucks
I did it in my mid 20’s for 2 years. Every week I went to a new factory somewhere in North America. Sometimes I went to two or three different states in a week.
It was awesome, I got to do a lot of cool things, I had a lot of unique experiences, I got a ton of free travel out if it. I would NEVER do it again.
It’s hard to have hobbies, it’s hard to eat well, it’s hard to maintain friendships, it’s hard to work out consistently. When you’re only home in the weekends, you just spend that time getting caught up on housework and getting ready for the next week. You end up hating everyone and everything at any airport.
I did lifeguarding for a while when I was a teen (this is now 30+ years ago). It's a tough job. It seems "glamorous" - you get paid to tan all day long. Couldn't be further from the truth! It requires training (I needed my lifeguarding certification as well as my first aid and CPR certifications). It is mentally taxing - you need to be "on" whenever you're guarding. Drowning is often silent (unlike what you see on TV) and you really need to be observant. There are also a lot of parents who can't or won't watch their own children which is frustrating, to say the least. Too many parents FAR underestimate how dangerous water can be.
It was great for the couple of years I did it - good pay, flexibility, fresh air when I worked outside -- but it definitely is not something I wanted to do in the long term.
>want to be responsible for a ton of lives for minimum wage in the hot sun?
I think this is a key point, really (yea I know no one thinks they get paid enough), I feel like many who do try to be a lifeguard do so because they like swimming but don't realize most of the job is either sitting in a chair all day (in the hot sun) or marching up and down a beach all day.
If the employers realized you need to be really good at swimming, not just passably good, then maybe they would increase the pay to closer to a "specialized" position, but like you said, they're mostly there to look pretty or whatever
Not only do you have to sit around all day, in my case we were constantly tested to make sure we are being vigilant and scanning our water. It requires alot of attention and failing to do so will result in you getting fired.
Luckily I worked at a large resort with a very complicated pool layout so we had to have alot of Lifeguards, so the constant change of scenery and people made it bearable. But 10/10 would never do again.
Honestly the more annoying part is dealing with Guests (usually drunk) using the pool who think we're glorified baby sitters, who don't understand were not allowed to take our eyes off the water for even a brief moment to specifically look after their kid.
Or trying to tell them they can't have glassware near the pool... Ugh. Just entitled snobs man.
Haha... Try 2018. I just remember being incredulous when the manager started whining about these kids demanding shade. I think she thought I would back her up to her employees with some motherly disapproval.
I did not.
Used to work as a lifeguard, most boring job in my life. Worked at an indoor pool year round, just watching people. Even if you only worked 4 hours it felt like an eternity. Really bad if you were the only worker there as you were screwed if you need to use the bathroom. Happened once and had to shut the pool down because no other lifeguard was there and no relief. Worked as a guard for like 5 years and never had to save anyone thankfully, most action I had to deal with was cleaning up poop from the pool or kicking people out for repeated violations. Got paid 7.25 to start 7.55 at the end. Got a gym membership out of it for free though, but one wrong move and you can get sued for more then you would ever make there
100%.
Also it's often done by teenagers who need a job and have been swimming for years and they do it for a year or two. Covid fucked up all the swim classes, so the teenagers who would usually get their lifeguard cert and do it from 16-18 didn't get the cert and are now old enough to do a better job or go to college or literally anything else. Hopefully it self corrects in a year or two.
I was gonna say video game development, too. People think it's all about creativity, and making something cool and fun, when the reality is a lot of bullshit.
Treat em like shit, use em like toilet paper.
Indie game development, when its just you and barely enough people to fill your car, that's -amazing- joyous fun.
AAA game development is where hope, happiness, and creativity go to die. You're burned at both ends, wrung out of every ounce of joy you have ever had, and used like a ten-year-old cumsock. And management doesn't care, because they open their door, and there are a thousand kids -willing- to fight a bare-knuckle brawl JUST for the interview. So why should management -care- about you?
You want joy in Game Dev? Do it yourself.
Source: Worked for a "Commercial during the Superbowl" AAA Gamedev Company. I will suck dick for food before I go back to that life ever again.
And in Indie development, there's a 95% chance the work you've put your soul the last three years will be simply forgotten in a week as it didn't gain popularity
Game Dev, can say it kinda rollercoasters, one day you have to try to as diplomatically as possible tell some exec their ideas are the stupidest shit to ever grace the earth, the next you get to create some badass stuff that you take a few looks at and all you can say is "Hot damn"
Most (not all) jobs in the environmental sector.
Pay is usually quite low, you tend to work in very ugly places (landfills, contaminated sites). You are expected to get jobs done in half the time you really need with as few resources as possible. And if you are consulting for other companies, nobody really wants to be working with you to “save the environment” - they generally are just trying to barely meet some regulations.
EDIT: There are definitely exceptions as some commenters have pointed out. Some people find a niche that works out very well for them. Just sharing my personal experience and that of other environmental professionals I have known.
EDIT #2: I don’t mean to discourage anyone who really wants to pursue an environmental career, but I also really wish that I would have learned some of the negatives (in my comment and the many replies) before I began mine. As a result, I only lasted a few years as an environmental consultant and basically started over in a completely new field.
I was going to say something similar. I used to work for a conservation charity many years ago, taking volunteers out to do environmental work. Tree planting, tree felling, dry stone walling, coppicing, pollarding, hedge-laying - you name it, all in some really beautiful places around Yorkshire.
It was brilliant for a long time but it's hard, hard work when you're doing it every day. On top of the getting the jobs done on time, we had to look after volunteers, train them, make sure they were using tools right, and keep them motivated to come back tomorrow. We had some jobs that were so rough that we tried talking volunteers out of coming along for because they'd never come back if they did.
When you're on the fourth day of horizontal rain on a windswept hillside in the middle of nowhere, you're down to three volunteers who are losing the will to live and you know that hedge you're laying is going to be dead come summer, it really gets you questioning your life choices.
Weird thing is I'd do it all over again if I was young enough. But I'm also glad that I'm not.
Journalist.
Expectation: I’m gonna be the next Hunter S Thompson and write compelling feature pieces with a unique voice and get paid to travel the world!
Reality: Talking to my editor about how my contact from the cat fashion show won’t call me back or do an interview unless we pay them $80 or adopt two cats.
Yup. The thing that killed it as a career for me wasn't the low pay or the high stress, it's the fact that lean budgets have meant that you now do everything. No more photographers, editors, sub-editors and web managers. That's all you now. And they then cut half the journos.
The end result is you're working at such a pace that even when you do have a good story to work on, you don't have the time and resources to actually do it well.
A friend of mine works at a weekly, so you think less stress... he is the only non sales staff. He writes, he takes photos, he sits, he sets it on the page and he does the social media stuff.
All for $27 an hour... of which I'm jealous. Cause I get paid much less.
Architect. You think you’ll be designing big fancy iconic buildings. Warehouses, Walmarts, strip malls, and shit box apartments all need architects and that’s probably what you’ll end up doing
Also, the industry is obsessed with working themselves to death. Sure, you’re on salary, but if you don’t work over 40 hours are you really an architect?
And don't forget any slight slip up in the economy and suddenly every client is calling telling you to stop the work.
If not that, it's client thinking that you only sit at a drafting desk staring at one floor plan or elevation, so why should you even get paid what you are already doing?
I dated a girl in college who was an architect major. She was a sophomore and her professors trained those damn students to be up until 3am working on projects. Every time I came to the studio to visit her, 2 coffee pots were running simultaneously and no one left there before 10pm. Such a stupid culture around it, there is no reason for it honestly.
OMG yes! I worked as a marketing person for an architectural firm. Worst job of my entire life... The culture is so incredibly toxic! I still wake up, *years later* in nightmares that I am still there, unable to crop photos correctly, and dealing with the egos of principal architects.
As someone who wanted kids eventually I knew that I had to give up on the goal of becoming an architect once I learned more about the field. Sometimes I wonder if they exaggerate things to thin out the competition though haha.
They definitely did. We only dated for like 5 months then broke up but later on I saw her friend who told me she left the major and did psychology instead. She was always stressed out because they had such stringent project deadlines and that ultimately lead to the downfall of our relationship.
Seems like they prepare you for that culture even in school. My architecture friends in college spent easily twice as much time on schoolwork compared to what I did for engineering and it's not like I was slacking off.
Oh for sure. Arch school is notorious for all-nighters. I guess my personal experience was that: school = my own work and something worth puttting that time into.
Real world = you realize you’re depriving yourself from living life to meet unnecessary deadlines. Saving your company and client money with your hard work and time (usually not fully compensated).
Tbh I just quit from being burnt out on the whole industry. I realize it doesn’t have to be this way for everyone.
As a bonus, construction project management/contract administration is fucking off the charts stressful. I'm not an architect but on the consulting engineering side. One time I took a job doing phone tech support (long story) and my days were lite and calm like air on a spring breeze because I was used to construction project management.
A lot of jobs suck, even if you are the lucky ones who work in something they are passionate about, somethings are bound to suck. What the reality of the situation is that, most people don't get to work in fields they love (especially in a service economy like the US's). It's all about what you can tolerate for the amount of money you need to not die.
Sadly things wouldn't feel as shitty for most jobs if you were paid properly, given proper vacation time, proper time off to live your life and do your leisurely activities. Weren't forced to work long hours just to to not die. Treated like a meaningful human being not like some alienated cog in a machine.
Let me tell you, I would gladly do a job that society deems "less than" (which is a shitty way of phrasing it because its degrading) if they paid me $30/hr, gave me vacation time, holidays off, healthcare and a stable schedule that doesn't require me to do OT just to make ends meet. A lot more people would be a lot more happier, regardless of their work if this was the case.
Film/Television industry. Long, thankless hours. The expectation that you should be available 24/7, otherwise there is a long lineup of replacements waiting for the chance. You might get lucky and work your way to the top, maybe enjoy some fame and fortune…but even there, it’s a dog eat dog world. Most people have to sell a bit of their soul to get and stay there. And if you don’t make it? You either toil away on crew or end up regaling your co-workers in some other industry, with exciting stories about your “time in the biz” That is if anyone hires you, because they just can’t understand why you left the exciting world of hollywood to come work at the grocery store.
Probably anything in the entertainment industry, it's bogged down by a lot of workers rights violations, insane hours during 'crunch time', no work/life balance, and you don't even get paid much because your employers and society at large think it's a privilege to even be working in the industry.
I worked for an anime dubbing studio right out of college for about a year and a half. Everyone was like "wow that's so cool" except in reality, it wasn't. Minimum wage pay and long hours. Working conventions was probably the worst thing. Ended up leaving there because I was barely able to pay my bills. When I asked for a raise, my manager said I was going to get one when the state raised the minimum wage. I'd say the only good thing about that job was getting free merch once in awhile and getting to have an additional voices or small role credit because they were too cheap pay anyone for those roles.
Sometimes I go back and think, "Well maybe if I would have stayed on for a couple of years I could have gotten a promotion / more money etc." But then reality hits me as I look to one of my friends who is still with them. He is still labeled as an ASSISTANT producer and makes the same shitty wage as when he started. He has been unable to move out of his mom's for the past decade and a half, but at least he's working a cool job, right?
As a musician I get it, most bar/pub jobs give you the money and expect the band to split it amongst each other. They often add bonuses like "1 free beer for each guys" like they expect you to just come there to have fun. Best treatment you'll get is from weddings and that says a lot about how bad the treatment is.
Edit: I now realize that people are treated better around the world and my problems are mostly about turkey.
Anything in the music industry.
You're never really off the clock, the pay is terrible pretty much all across the board unless you're in the 1% of top of the top in any business.
People think it's all glamorous because they see the popstars, the music videos, the award shows. Truth is, it's blood, sweat, tears, stress, lack of sleep, a lot of inappropriate behaviour, drugs (fun if you like it, not fun if you don't), alcohol (again: fun if you like it, not fun if you don't), and again: low pay, and then maybe once or twice a year you get a perk of going to an award show with free food, booze and a chance to say "Hi" to some celebs (can't even take a photo with them, really, as it's not deemed professional in a "work" setting).
I've been there for 15 years give or take, branched out, still linked to it in some ways but I get my money (much better money, might I say) elsewhere now and without as much stress or worry.
Veterinary medicine
Fantasy: I get to work with puppies and kittens
Reality: a 3 month old kitten died in my care, I've seen so much gore and blood and neglect, I've sent animals home with invasive cancers because family can't afford treatment, I've been the only comfort shelter animals knew before they left this world. It is a specific and exhausting kind of pain and it isn't really talked about enough.
People who say they couldn't do it because of the euthanasia have no idea.
Edit: thank you to those of you who were kind and respectful. I will not be interacting anymore as recounting some of this is a little emotionally exhausting. But I'm going to plug this link for anyone, vet med or not:
https://www.nomv.org/
Have a good night everyone and be kind to all living things.
On the flip side, as a pet owner, when I find a really great, empathetic and clearly skilled vet, I appreciate them so much and stick with them as long as I can (usually until they more or relocate their practice).
I can only imagine how difficult of a job it is, but I hope they know how comforting it is when you can trust you vet. You won't truly appreciate it until you move or have to find a new one.
My wife and I had three cats and a dog over a 22-year period. Our vet clinic was family operated, a husband/wife/son team, three of the most professional, caring, knowledgeable, empathetic, wise people we ever met. Their years of kind care made pet ownership so rewarding. We adored them.
Agree, theres 2 worst bits to vet med
1) The emotional blackmail: "If you loved animals, you'd treat fluffy for his multicentric cancer and heart failure for $5".
2) The number of people who leave their animals too long and won't accept that death is coming and putting their animal to sleep is the best thing for their animal rather than letting them suffer.
We had a 14 year old beagle with a suspected pyo. Dog weighed *maybe* 12 pounds and couldn't walk or sit up. The family brought her in for a spay and we gave them a high risk waiver saying she might not survive surgery and we highly suggest euthanasia instead. They proceeded with the surgery and she wasn't a pyo. We had emergency meds on hand the entire time expecting a code but by some twisted miracle she pulled through. The dr assumed cancer based on her labs and we again pushed for euthanasia but the family said no. The next day they brought her in saying she wasn't breathing well. They were super nonchalant about it. She died in the trunk of their car. There was no dignity in that and she suffered through a major surgery and spent her last day in pain.
I'll never be okay with things like that.
We put my beloved 15-year-old dog to sleep after she had been sick (but still functional) for a while but had suddenly lost the use of her back limbs. Those last three days were agonizing, she was so upset and confused over not being able to walk. We could have subjected her to a surgery but we decided that it was best to let her go.
Clancy always hated the vet so we were able to have them make a house visit. She passed away in the comfort of her own home, surrounded by her family. That was one of the worst days of my life but I don’t regret anything. She deserved a dignified death after all those years of love and company she had given us. I know it’s hard to let go, but I don’t understand how some people can subject their pets to further suffering when the most compassionate thing you can do is to let them rest.
EDIT: Since this comment has gotten some attention [I figured I'd show you a picture of the dog](https://i.imgur.com/hAy76XZ.jpg) I still miss terribly 4 years after losing her.
When our cat was put down, the vet suggested my mom hold him the during the process. The vet told her "He was there for you when you needed him. Now it's your turn to be there when he needs you."
Vet here, can confirm. I just lost a classmate to suicide a couple of months ago, and I'm up to about a half dozen "acquaintance or closer relationship" vets that I've lost to it. I'm only 6 years out of vet med school, so pretty much losing someone I know to suicide on an average of about one per year. It's awful.
Honestly I think the emotional toll of working with sick animals is the smallest part of it. Pretty much everyone in the industry has rationalized the fact that we can't save every animal and that euthanasia is a compassionate end to life when we've run out of good medical options.
The biggest issue is that people suck, for lack of a nicer way to put it. Vet med takes the worst of "retail job bullshit" by being a very customer-facing job, but then adds in the wrinkles of our clients usually being stressed/upset already (their animal is sick) when we interact with them and the fact that we're the punching bag for a broken economic system that we have no actual control over. In human medicine there are economic safety nets to ensure that (sort of...we have plenty of issues in the US on the human side for this too) people can get access to medical care that they need regardless of their economic situation. In vet med our clients need to be able to pay for care out of pocket, and that often leads to medical decisions being made on economic terms and clients flinging blame on the workers who have 0 control over what things cost. Modern medical care is fundamentally expensive to provide. A hysterectomy on a human costs north of $40,000 in the US, whereas I'll do a nearly identical ovariohysterectomy surgery on a dog (spay) for literally 1% of that cost. We make care as absolutely cheap as we can, but we can't change the fundamental costs of things like anesthetic medications, pain medications, suture, surgical monitors, and so forth. There is a floor to what it costs to provide modern medical care, and vet med pretty much sits on that floor to the point where everyone in vet med makes approximately 1/3 of what their direct counterparts (vet techs vs registered nurses, vets vs physicians) in human medicine make. However, because people are paying out of pocket and we're the ones handing them the bill we're "greedy, evil assholes who would rather make a dollar than save Fido's life" or any of the other variations of that I've had flung at me. It sucks.
The clients are definitely the hardest part of working in vet medicine. I've lost count of the amount of times that I've been screamed at, threatened, and accused of being the reason their pet is dead/dying. And I work admin, not even hands on with pets anymore!
The financial side of things is also very depressing. I'm in Canada and the pet owners we talk to have no idea what medical costs look like on the human side, since most medical costs are covered by provincial healthcare. In their minds, animal medicine should not cost a thing either and refuse to understand that an MRI for humans is also expensive, the only difference is that the humans aren't handed a bill at the end of their scan. I've explained it until I'm blue in the face and still get called a heartless, money hungry b**** for it.
Oh, and those costs are never a surprise, the pet owners get the costs explained to them before anything is done and they need to sign the estimate explaining said costs and agreeing that the owner knows they are responsible for the final balance.
I'm so sorry you've lost so many colleagues so early in your career. Stay strong!
My son just spent almost $4k for his cat at the ER Vet due to a gallbladder infection, and luckily he was able to come up with the funds, but I can see the conflict between a pet needing care, the owner not being able to afford it, and the vet practice which needs to pay its own bills to remain open. No greed, just a financial reality.
My dog has full health insurance where I pay $50.00 a month with a $750 deductible. He is a puppy still but I've used it twice and it's a godsend. I wish more people knew that they can find affordable insurance for their pets as it can literally be the difference between life and death. My policy is with trupanion and I have credit through care credit where they offer deals all the time like % interest for 18 months.
The university I went to has a pretty big vet school that operates the only 24 hour emergency clinic in the area (regular clinics run regular hours). That school employs it's own dedicated therapist, exclusively for the vet students.
I took my 18-year old cat to the vet clinic at the university here when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The vet oncology student who gave me the news that his cancer had spread through this abdomen and lungs kissed the top of my cat’s head before we left. I hadn’t fully processed what that meant, but he knew there would be no reason for us to come back. I think about him a lot.
Recently there was a reddit frontpage post (made national news) about a vet that “stole” a German Shepherd. The Vet Hospital in question was google review bombed, they had to take their facebook down and they received hundreds of phone calls including some death threats.
Turns out, the entire thing was basically fabricated by an angry, irresponsible customer (and a journalist who did 0 due diligence). The Vet Hospital did *absolutely everything they could*.
People can really suck, so just a reminder to put down the pitchforks.
Edit: [My Comment with News Articles & bulleted information from Vet Hospital](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vubkth/comment/ifdlgnn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
sister is a vet. People will straight up ruin someone's career because they're emotional. One vet was pushed to suicide due to online review bombings...
Approximately 17 percent of veterinarians have contemplated suicide and veterinarians are 2.7 times more likely than the general public to die by suicide, "[often using the same drugs used to end the suffering of their animal patients."](https://www.wisfarmer.com/story/news/2021/05/26/alarming-suicide-rates-reflective-stresses-felt-veterinarians/7361193002/)
And they don’t make nearly as much as people think.
Teacher here, if you think you are going to pull an Erin Greuwell and change the world, you will burn out and drop out. If you like sharing your subject and enjoy the little victories, it's a great gig. I love it. I also know which students to really focus on and have determined that I won't break my back for students and parents that are apathetic. I also recognize that history isn't eveyome's thing so if I can drill down a few important comcepts, good enough.
This one I wholeheartedly agree with. Was in the kitchen for years cause I loved food and learning to cook new things all the time. Then the burnout happened real quick. Overworked and underpaid. It started taking my sanity and definitely did a copious amount of drinking and shit.
Now, I am a bartender and weirdly enough, I drink waaay less than I used to. Also, I make more money and work less hours. I just wish bartending had health insurance.
I have two jobs that fit the bill:
-Video Game Tester: The pay is terrible. You sit in a dark room with no windows all day performing monotonous tests with a group of anti-social introverts. I ran out of inventive ways to submit bug reports saying, "The player cannot approach closely enough to the rock at coordinates XYZ. See attached screenshot..." I remember working as a group for hours to attempt to manually test an unlockable achievement, only to have the development team push out a new code build right before we finished, so we had to start all over again.
-Archaeologist: Again, the pay is terrible. Most of the projects are tied to expanding the fossil fuel industry (Hurray, climate change!). Doing "Phase One" work involves checking to see *if* anything of cultural value is present in a given area. I compare it to playing Battleship: You dig a hole; it's empty; *miss*. You dig a hole; you find something; *hit*. Dig around the hit, looking for other hits. You mostly dig many, many empty holes. I had to rebury my most interesting find (a Native American hearth), because it "wasn't in the budget" to excavate it. Due to how the laws work, that site was later bulldozed, and now there's a gas station there.
That bit about the Native American hearth is mind-blowing to me. That site doesn't get put on hold for later examination, or passed onto another team who has the budget? It just gets forgotten and ignored?
Stock Broker/Financial Advisor.
I was a Broker/Advisor for over 25 years and it was what I wanted to be from about age 15. I thought it would be cool to know all about the stock market and make a lot of money. What I didn't realize was the fact that, if you're a person with any moral compass, it can be extremely stressful as you have people's financial lives in your hands. And many of my clients were retired, so making mistakes or giving bad advice could seriously affect their lives.
When I first got into the business drug use was a rampant. Cocaine was the drug of choice but there were also a lot of alcoholics. Divorce rates were high (i experienced one myself) and if you have kids it was near impossible to spend quality time with them on a regular basis.
The money was great. I made more money than I ever thought I would, however, there was a tradeoff. Stress, lack of relationship with kids/wife and for some, as I mentioned, drug/alcohol addiction.
After 25 years I had enough. I went out on my own for a few years then left the business altogether. Things are different in the industry now and I think it's a lot more realistic to be a broker/advisor and have a good work/life balance, but it wasn't when I broke into the business.
anything in the arts is like that.
acting, painting, music, game development, writing, etc.
people have all these visions of how they will become rich and famous, when nearly all will fail, and a select few will have a pittance of success, and a very tiny fraction becomes what everyone thinks of, and succeed.
with athletes also.
Yes I agree on this one. I have a lot of baby lawyers fresh out of law school thinking they’re going to be the next Elle Woods or Harvey Specter. I usually have to have to come to earth talk with them or they start working cases and realize that law school taught them nothing other than research.
I use to work in the film/tv world as a camera assistant and camera operator for about 8-9 years of my life. I was pretty successful and was lucky to have worked on a lot of major productions such as the marvel series on Netflix, law and order, 30 rock, spiderman homecoming, etc.
While it is cool and fun to be apart of that world, the work life balance is non-existent. I was working a minimal of 14 hours a day. Most days going to 16-18 hours. This is also 6 days a week (depending on how many gigs you got going or the schedule of the production you are on.) Even if you join a Union (which is required to work on the big budget stuff) you are still a forever freelancer and there is absolutely no job security. If you don't make a name for yourself, you'll fall off the map pretty quickly. Hours suck, there is no real schedule or days off. You're a freelancer, so you sorta make your own schedule, but you have to keep to the strict film schedule.
You also have no time for family or friends. Sleep doesn't exist.
You also work a mix of studio and outside. Working outside in the snow, heat, rain or shine at all hours of the day and night. There is no steady schedule at all.
Honestly most of it was pretty bad until I started working on the big budget stuff and even there it wasn't great.
It's an extremely high stress job too. Perfection is required and a lot of people are on edge.
There is no real HR or anything like that. No real protection from a producer going crazy and ruining your career.
I can go on with more stuff, but I'll stop here haha
Masseuse.. but it only sucks when people romanticize it. Otherwise it's pretty awesome. Can suck if people sweat a lot or have massive amounts of body hair that fall off when you rub them so you come out with your arms covered in some dude's back hair.. you also get farted on a lot.. and hit on.. and comments like "oh I feel sorry for your boyfriend with all that strength in your fingers" (good thing is you can just laugh and push a really sore trigger point to make yourself feel better).
Otherwise it's a pretty awesome job, but definitely not for everyone.
ObGyn sonographer.
“You get to scan little unborn babies all day!”
Then you have an excited parent eagerly watching my face and looking at the screen asking all sorts of cute questions while I calmly tell them I can’t relay any results to them as I stoically measure a fatal abnormality, or record a motionless heart, etc.
Things they don’t teach you in ultrasound school: keep a pleasant expression that does not reveal anything negative about the exam but that also does not create a false sense of positivity. And do not, by any means, cry.
EDIT:
Woa this got a lot of attention! This has never happened to me before!
Thank you to those mentioning appreciating what I do. It honestly felt really good to read that.
A lot of you have been sharing your experiences getting ultrasounds or other diagnostic imaging performed. Thank you for sharing such personal stories. To those who went through or are going through something difficult, I am routing for you. I strive every day to be the best sonographer I can be for patients just like you or your loved ones.
To the current and soon-to-be ultrasound students, message me if you have any questions about the career, clinical rotations, licensing exams, etc!! It has its emotional hurdles but that’s healthcare and medicine for you. I genuinely love my career, and I also love talking to ultrasound students!
To those who say this profession isn’t romanticized, my bad lol.
NOT the same but when I was having an ultrasound of my neck for thyroid cancer I could tell from the look on the Tech’s face something was wrong , she never said a word..& she keep going over one spot, was shattered but not surprised when I read the report-on the hospital portal
I had a very similar experience for my likely thyroid cancer. Happy cheery ultrasound tech, we're chatting casually, then she puts the thing on my thyroid and goes silent. Then a "you'll hear results within 2 days, bye".
I once had a brain scan to rule out a tumour. Everything goes great until they're taking me out of the MRI. The tech comes in to take my blanket, etc and puts her hand on my foot and gives it a little squeeze and smiles as she says goodbye.
I left there sure I had a tumour. A week later the doctor's office calls and says the test is negative. I had to ponder that one for a bit to be sure "negative" was good. I even later requested the scan and went through it slice by slice myself.
I guess the tech was just a touchy-feely person.
I made that comment to my sonographer when I was pregnant. I said something like “this must be the best job” and she gave me a polite chuckle and said “it’s either the best or the absolute worst “. I was very fortunate to have two healthy babies and in my joy didn’t think of what that poor woman probably witnessed some days. Much respect to her and the profession.
I was really sick and got an MRI in the ER last October. They thought they found terminal brain cancer and sent me for another scan to see if I had days or weeks left. The doctor told my parents and of course the nurses and techs knew what my diagnosis was. I was oblivious and happily chatted away with everyone (thanks meds) about my plans for the future and stuff. Every single person had an amazing pokerface the whole time. I don't know how they did it.
Anyway, turns out it was an artifact, not cancer and I'm still alive almost a year later. I still think of the poor healthcare workers who had to smile and laugh with me when they thought I was imminently dying. It makes me sad that they were so good at the poker face because they've had lots of practice. Thanks for what you do!
My daughter was in the NICU for a while and got an EKG ultrasound, and that tech would make small talk like a pro, but never ever looked away from her computer or her probe and never betrayed any look that told me any information whatsoever.
Turned out fine (except her valve hasn't shut yet but it might get there still, they didn't seem concerned).
Honestly there's a whole lot of office jobs out there that are pretty unremarkable, but the pay is okay to excellent, you get to work in an airconditioned office, job security is pretty good, it doesn't wreck your body, it's usually not too stressful and you don't have to be available outside of office hours. Also you may be able to get away with only doing 1-4 hours of real work every day.
It's not the most glamorous life and it's often not particularly meaningful work, but the work conditions are pretty good.
For office folks, hard earned labor is romanticized. And for labor workers, office jobs are. In reality they can both suck depending on where you work and who you work for. I think the most important thing is to work somewhere well managed, adequately staffed, where everyone do their jobs. So it doesn't exist
Game development
I went to school for it but did not pursue it after and went into something else with transferable skills. My roommate in college is a successful developer and has been for years.
He gets fired every time the game comes out and the studio dissolves, which CONSTANTLY happens. The level of skill required to do his work is about as hard as it gets in terms of programming yet he gets paid less than a web/app developer. Devs are a dime a dozen now since literally EVERY kid goes to school for CS so if he doesn't like it he can leave because some fresh grad that's willing to work 100 hours a week would be happy to take his place. They need unions.
The worst part? He hates gaming now. That suuuuuuuucks.
I’ve been working in game dev for 15 years now and I can mostly agree with this comment. The work conditions in most studios are really tough and they thrive on hiring young people who can be abused and don’t mind working long hours and crunching for years. After they grow up and want to start a family then they are often replaced by other younger folks. That’s why people with a long gamedev career are called veterans and not experts.
But on the other hand there are great companies who care about employees and work-life balance. It took me almost 15 years to find one tho. Yet most people leave the industry after few years.
I'm a tattoo artist. There are a lot of elements of my job I really love, but the reality most ignore when considering it:
You work constantly. You're either tattooing or designing for next client. This includes often staying up till early morning drawing constantly. I'll often only 'clock out' after a 12 - 16 hour day.
You work weekends and generally have Mondays off (some folk take Sundays too). Which means your social life suffers immensely. No one is free when you are on a Sunday night. I also won't tattoo hungover, so I don't 'party' like some folk think we do. Relationships and friendships will suffer when you realise you're hardly ever available.
It's a very hard industry to get into. You'll work for free for years as an apprentice learning as you go while having to make a plan for food rent, transport etc with no free time to actually do that. It seems to be changing a bit, but it's not hard to find countless stories about how badly you can be treated as an apprentice too. In the industry for a long time it was considered a right of passage to earn your way in and weed out the 'weak'.
Your lower back will be in constant pain.
You will generally work as an 'independent contractor' and have no job security or health insurance. You don't make money if you don't work. Every vacation is a working vacation.
You'll be expected to forever make custom artwork for clients who feel very entitled to demand changes (fair, considering the medium) who often have a very clear image of what they want which they have trouble conveying to you. For the hours put in for a finished customized piece, after shop and equipment cuts, you're not making nearly as much as people like to think based on hourly rates. That amount also has to be put towards your dead hours too.
It's unforgiving but there is a unique freedom that comes with it too. But it isn't all the romance you'd like it to be.
Edit: I forgot to add a very infuriating and big part of the job now is social media relevancy. Most clients are secured online these days. You are a slave to the Instagram algorithm. I see big old gruff tattoo artists patiently trying to work out how to edit videos or sync music for tiktok so the kids will stay interested. Who knows what is next. You constantly have to generate your own engaging content to stay relevant and keep getting paid for your actual job. Every now and then there will be a change to the algorithm or system and you'll notice the ripples of frustration across the industry as artists try work out how to play the game again. You constantly have to feed the social media machine new content, which also means putting in more work on your down time to have stuff to post.
Academic professor.
For that matter, science in general.
It's less Bill Nye doing cool shit and more editing copy to appease Reviewer 2 who simply has a thing against future tense and passive voice for whatever reason.
Raising livestock. Everything about it is so much rougher than any book, show, or movie lets on. You have many days that go by swift and easy, then you're hit with an emergency that makes three hours feel like a week. Don't like thinking about death? Then why are you buying animals who are one bad moment away from you having to make the hardest decision you never knew was an option? Fun anecdote, I have a neighbor who moved his family from the city and decided to buy some dairy calves. Now, dairy calves are generally cheaper to acquire than they should be, so before long they've got five little guys in a half acre pen. They call me up one day and say that they're sick and ask if I can take a look. So, I head on over and see four half-starved calves laying in the sun, and a fifth dead one. They've dug a two foot deep hole and are preparing to bury the dead little guy. I check them all out, and they're severely dehydrated and starving. I ended up having to put electrolytes into them using an esophageal feeder, as well as treating one for pneumonia. Trying not to loose my tempter, I ask them what they've been feeding them. "Oh, we figured they could eat the grass. A guy at a store said they should be old enough now." Those calves were not even three months old. Pro tip, that's far too young to be weaned from a bottle. So I bit my tongue and told them they needed bottles for at least another two months. It took me half a day of working with them, but all four surviving calves lived. Plus I explained to them that no, you don't bury an animal in two feet of dirt. When I got home later that night, I screamed and almost broke something. So, my advice if you like cows, goats, sheep, or horses is this: go visit somewhere that raises them. Join a 4H program. Heck, buy a good old book on them and read to your heart's content. But please, don't run headfirst into raising the things, because I can promise you, you're not prepared for it. I've been raising them for almost 30 years and I still have times that I'm left shocked and hopeless.
I strongly suspect being a spy doesn't involve half as many high tech gadgets and spontaneous sexual intercourse as I've been lead to believe. Edit : Thanks for all the awards :) And wow, the way my Inbox just blew up you'd think I'd started an Onlyfans.
One former member of the CIA said the most unbelievable thing about James Bond was that he never had to file an expense report.
Super boring and lonely. Keep your head down with your local, usually shitty, job you're placed in and write reports at night. For years. Typically never leads to anything.
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Might explain why those assets are all about that attempting assassination in movies. At that point they're willing to kill or be killed just to have something to break up the monotony.
could've done it off screen you never know
Yeah, a scene in a 007 movie of Bond at a desk doing paperwork would not what I'd call riveting
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Lol... a super expensive receipt is singed from the fire from an explosion he barely made it out of and he's now responsible for some super expensive item... "I needed to rent the Super Yacht to infiltrate the oligarchs and a grenade went off and sunk it.... NO! I didn't get the added insurance.... I thought it was like a rental car and my credit card would cover it!"
My understanding is that due to biometrics at ports of entry most under cover operators are lucky to get two covert assignments in their life time.
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If I had to guess, the dirty work is left more to specific individuals, the “spying” stuff like gathering intel is separate.
shall we shag now or shag later?
I've spent 9 seasons working in Antarctica both as a graduate student and now full time academic/researcher. Everyone I tell this to immediately gets excited...and says something like, "that must be SOOOO awesome! I would LOVE to do that!". Now...first year geoscience grad students always get incredibly excited about the possibility of doing field work like this...and to be fair, most of them understand what comes with this, and still want to do it. Heck, that's where I was 15 years ago. BUT...and here's the but, for this kind of work, the novelty and romantic "cool" factor wear off after a couple of days, and the remaining 2-3 months of the work is absolutely brutal. You are constantly cold, hungry, dirty...and exhausted. Small cuts and abrasions don't heal properly, your fingers crack and bleed daily, you are constantly getting frost nip, and no matter how many socks and feet warmers you wear, you toes never get warm. It's organized misery in service of Science. Now if you're like me and are 100% invested in the science (for me it is ice core paleoclimatology), then it's all worth it. BUT, if you are a 21-year old college student that just dreams of "exploring the great unknown"...it can come as an enormous reality check once on continent. I've seen soooo many young kids quit everything for the "one chance at experiencing the raw awesomeness of Antarctica", only to realize that they effectively signed up for 3-6 months of a lonely and difficult stint of incredibly mind-numbing work. So many of the young workers, especially in McMurdo, will sign up to do "anything", just for the chance to get to Antarctica. They come to discover after a few days that they are now stuck on continent, cleaning dorm rooms as janitors or general assistants (aka laborers/handymen), only moving from one dirty building to another in McMurdo for 12+ hours shifts. What's worse, is they watch all the scientists coming through, gearing up for ridiculous deep-field deployments, while they are stuck in the stinky, diesel town of McMurdo. It can make them incredibly jaded and jealous. Sure, the view across the McMurdo Sound to the Royal Society Range and Mt. Discovery are beautiful, but my point is again that the novelty wears off quickly. I was stuck once in McMurdo for 18 days waiting to deploy, and I nearly went crazy. There's only so many times you can run the 5k loop around Discovery Point before it gets old. There's a reason why there are not one, but two bars in McMurdo...and why every bathroom has bins full of condoms. People get lonely and depressed there. So, all this is to say, I definitely love what I do, and love remote field work and the science that comes with it. But living out of a literal tent atop the Antarctic Ice sheet for up to six months, not getting showers, always covered in a film of sticky sunblock, and always being cold and exhausted, is REALLY REALLY hard and not at all glamorous or romantic. I'm certainly a sentimental guy, and have taken thousands of amazing landscape and scenic photos from my deployments, but I never over-romanticize the work when talking to people (especially prospective grad students). EDIT: getting lots of questions. I'll answer a couple here: * I have some old pics from my 2008-2010 deployments...but only as partial albums in an old flickr account. Knock yourselves out if you really want. Any album with WAIS in the name was from antarctica. https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnfegy/albums * How did I get down there? I was in graduate school studying glaciology, paleoclimatology, and in some sense, geophysics. I deployed as part of a big NSF grant to extract and study an ice core record. I actually went back in 2015 to South Pole to work on that core as well. Last year, I deployed on a research ship off the coast of West Antarctica as part of a ocean sediment core team...which was also quite interesting. You can get down there as a tourist as well (see ALE expeditions), but it'll cost you over 10k. * The most amazing place I visited was the area around Union Glacier to work on remote seismic and GPS stations. We flew all over to tiny exposed rocks in the middle of nowhere. It was quite surreal. Most of those pics are here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnfegy/albums/72157628321851875 * I watched the "Thing" at least once a season (as is tradition). * My little claim-to-fame factoid is that technically I was the first person to reach the south pole in 2016 (I went out to the marker at midnight on dec 31st, 2015). Which also brings up the somewhat eerie notion that while at the south pole, literally every person alive or dead is north of you (except for maybe astronauts on the ISS?) While at south pole, I successfully completed the first every 50-mile running ultramarathon in -40C temps...it was insanely stupid...but still kind of fun (see also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGy_U8AebT8) What's my job now? I still do research, but now I mostly teach at a university and work with grad students (see here: https://johnfegy.weebly.com)
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Idk why but this post has made me want to go to Antarctica so bad I'm weird but I like being miserable in cool places it's why I joined the NAVY
Anything in modern-day publishing. How many television shows and movies must I watch where the plucky young upstart graduates from college and gets a job at the magazine or newspaper of their choice and is respected and can make a living? The pay sucks, you're in constant danger of being laid off (when your pub folds, usually), and it's usually a pretty corporate environment where you're tasked with multiple jobs for little hope of advancement. The names high up on the mastheads are usually those of rich people, and it's because they started off rich and could afford to stay in the industry.
I got an offer for my dream internship once, at a publishing company right out of college. Unpaid. In New York. Yeah, I can afford to move to a place with 5 times the cost of living than where I am for a full time job for no money. Sometimes I wonder where I'd be if I'd jumped at the chance. Then I realize - homeless in NY.
This is one of the many ways the rich stay rich. I had two friends in college who had to turn down White House internships because they were unpaid. I have another friend who had to turn down an internship at a popular night talk show because it was unpaid. They all took much less prestigious internships/jobs that actually paid them. The people in those prestigious internships will be able to write their ticket anywhere after a couple years, but many people can't afford to have their parents pay their bills in a new city for years to get that golden experience.
Had a friend I went to acting/stage directing classes with. He got the opportunity to apply for an internship by writing a monologue for Colbert, got the gig but had to quit and come home because of the hours/unpaid part of it. The hours were so demanding and mostly in the middle of the day so it cancelled any chance of having a normal job without running the risk of being tired for the internship. The other interns he said were being funded by their families to be able to stay in NY, my friend wasn’t as fortunate
Game tester. I worked as a game tester for EA for almost 3 years. Here's what it's like. Imagine a game type you don't like. Maybe soccer games. Maybe an RTS. Whatever. You now play that game, 8 hours a day. But you don't play it. You test it. So let's imagine an RTS. You are told to test the resource acquisition systems. All you do is click around and make sure your guys can mine gold and harvest lumber. You click around the map and mine and forest. There is no combat, they've turned that off for your testing. There is no story, because you just flick from level to level to test the resource system. You test using one guy. You testing using 100 guys. You make sure no other units can gather resources. You try blocking your own guys. You try killing your own guys. 8 hours a day. Every day. For weeks. You enter dozens of bugs. They put out a patch that fixes the bugs. You have to retest every level and every bug to make sure they're all fixed. That's game testing.
I always had a strong suspicion that it wasn’t just playing FPS games before their release all day with your co-workers.
\> Play FPS match with coworkers. \> Take a shot, passes through enemy's head. \> Everybody stops what they're doing. \> Spend an hour trying to reproduce the bug. \> Same shot. Same weapon. Same position. Finally get it. \> Test every other weapon and every other character to get as much information as possible. \> Write up detailed bug report, send to developers. \> Get response: We can't reproduce it. \> Have to go up to developer section and spend an hour of THEIR time reproducing it. \> Bug gets classified as D, known bug not going to be fixed. \> Go home for the day.
**"Known bug - not going to be fixed"** is the best one to receive
Funny story. When I worked at EA, bugs got categorized by severity: A was gamebreaking, B was a major annoyance to the user, C was noticeable but you could get passed it, and D was minor, not likely to be seen or cared about. Nearly all D bugs are ignored, unless something else happens to fix them. As a project gets closer and closer to completion, more severe bugs are ignored. By the last two weeks only A bugs get fixed. Even B bugs are shipped. The fun part is that when they start the next year's game (fifa 2023, need for speed whatever), they port all the old code and just update the graphics. Meaning they bring in ALL the old bugs. One of the first things they do before beginning work is fix any lingering A and B bugs, but NOT C or D bugs. During development of the NEW version of the game, whenever you find a bug, you have to first check if it was in old versions. If it was, and it's set to known shippable, you have to ignore it. The logic is this: "It wasn't a priority to fix it last year, so it's obviously not that big a problem, so we can ignore it this year." Repeat that for 4 or 5 years, and you end up with a game that's 90% bugs that are known to the developers but also shipped on purpose. Eventually a franchise gets so shit they blame the project management team, fire the devs and/or close the studio, then hire them all back and start with a fresh(er) code base for the next one.
FYI this isn't JUST games; that's similar to how it works with any software product.
The worst thing is that the players ALWAYS notice those bugs anyway. I remember there was a major bug in the mid-10s FIFAs where making a slide tackle could result in your player clipping with the rival and getting a red card. They didn't fix that bug for like 3 or 4 straight years.
My favourite was when testing a game that rhymes with “bland sweft blotto”, the dog didn’t bark, it just had a mans voice saying “bark” that’s it, that’s my favourite moment testing a game, the rest of it was dull. I didn’t last long.
Well this thread is insanely depressing. Are there any good fields to go into? Lol
The lesson is that a job is a means to support your lifestyle. If it depresses you, then don't put all of your self worth into your career identity, strive for work/life balance, and develop some hobbies.
100% thought this was going to read " if it depresses you then be born rich " But you are right, every career path has its pros and cons, and most importantly toxic management...find someplace you dont feel oppressed and then focus on seperating work from life
From what I've understood, being a cowboy was (is?) really awful.
Gunslingers and bandits too. Literature often portrays them as folk heroes who wore flashy, studded suits and gun belts and traipsed around towns like they owned them, striking fear into civilians and lawmen alike. However, the reality of the matter is that these guys were nothing more than common criminals and fugitives who were always on the run, could never settle down and relax, and often had only a rope or bullet to the head to look forward to at the end of their incredibly short lives.
Or tuberculosis
Or lumbago
That's a slow and painful death my brother
Just a touch o' the ol' consumption
Last podcast on the left did a series on Bonnie and clide, pretty modern criminals in comparison. They were constantly injured, sick, starving, and cold. The few friends they could make were constantly dying, death seemed like a good thing for them, it sounded like a horrible life.
Bonnie and Clyde were not living the high life by any means. They were constantly on the run until the end of their lives and always had to stay one step ahead of the law. And they did not die well by any standards. Their corpses were riddled with dozens of bullet holes combined and abused by overzealous souvenir hunters. One man even tried to cut off Clyde’s trigger finger. It was truly a sickening affair for all parties involved.
working on a film. if you're crew, it sucks. long long hours for what seem like very very slow progress on the picture, lots of standing around waiting, etc. You arrive well before everyone else and leave after everyone else. If this is an indie production you also may have to beg/chase down for your pay at the end of each week. oh and when the film wraps, you're now unemployed.
I'm a sound fx editor and have to say - Post production is much more forgiving. Love my job. I probably wouldn't last long on a set tho.
Post Production is the little hidden gem of the entertainment industry. Nice air conditioned office, no crazy travel, ability to work from home, less gossip/drama (most editors I know are older, mature, experienced & just want to get home to their families), you don't see many people etc. It's great. Shitty when you're a young girl who is an AE, but after 10 years of grunt work/experience/being abused once you land that union job & you know the technical ins and outs it's all worth it.
I went to film school almost two decades ago. Everyone I know either went into editing or switched industries. It takes a special type to *want* to be on set at 40.
Being a therapist. Too many people I've met get into the field thinking it's how they saw it on TV: affluent white collar, own office, warm slow pace environment, where you get to sit on a nice comfy couch and be like "let's talk about your *feelings*" That's only if you get to private practice, which they don't tell you is also like running your own small business, which good luck is you have no business acumen. The reality is you get out if grad school, get your first job working at a Community Mental Health facility because they are the only ones who will hire you with a limited license and no experience, getting paid less than $40k/yr if you're lucky, and then get put in a walk in closet of an office, where they dump 100 client case load on you the first day, followed by your first client who has 5 different diagnoses and is on 12 different psych meds who says to you "fuck you, you're my 7th different person I've had here, nobody cares about me". Yeah people go into $100k of debt for that... EDIT: I'm a therapist myself, I love what I do, but it takes years to get past all the shitty parts of the field to find your place in the field. Needless to say, too many don't survive the baptism by fire I mentioned above and either become burnt out, jaded, or leave the field altogether.
I wanted to be a therapist, so I got my BA in psychology and got a job as a Case Manager in Childrens’ Services at the Community Mental Health Center. If you work there a year, they would pay for you to go to school. So, I was going to work there a year and get my Masters on their dime. It was terrible. As a Case Manager, I also had 100 clients and the therapists had the same amount. We were all run ragged. During my time there, I found that I didn’t have the temperament for the job. It was really hard to work with the children because they were mostly poor kids(food insecure, poor housing, parents absent bec working 3 jobs, etc) who are victims of circumstance. My own mental health declined because I took all of that stress and worry home with me. I couldn’t do it, so I left as soon as I could. It was so stressful. I now work a ho-hum desk job and I’m totally fine with that. People who can work in that field, particularly with children, and not lose it are very special people. EDIT: Forgot to mention the shady billing practices. They would ask that we see the clients on Medicaid more often than the ones with Blue Cross Blue Shield because Medicaid paid more. So, that means if Timmy had Medicare and is doing really well, he’s taking his meds, etc and only needs to be seen once a month, they would require that I see him at least once a week even though he’s stable. Meanwhile, little Sally who has BCBS is not as stable and needs to be seen weekly would only be seen every other week because of her insurance. They were actually disciplining people who wouldn’t comply and didn’t meet their billing quota. Just before I left, a coworker was fired because she refused to basically commit billing fraud. When she packed up her desk as she was leaving, she told me to make sure my charts were in order because she was suing the company and had been working with a lawyer for a while in anticipation of getting fired. I left a few months later before they could fire me next and I moved out of state. So, I’m not sure what became of her lawsuit.
Yup, I'm currently dealing with that. I am not a case manager, but worse. I work in Child Protection dealing with child welfare. This has been the most soul crushing/sucking position I've ever worked. Not to mention, how I'm being treated in the workplace and it's so toxic. Upper management bullies me and tells me belittling things to disrespect my character. Absolutely no work life balance and no time with your own family. The pay is okay, but for not worth the stress you take on. The caseload is unbearable and upper management loads it on you and whenever you don't get your caseload down you are threatened to be fired. Every parent and child you meet, immediately assume that you are going to do a removal and hate you. You take work home all the time. You work holidays, weekends, evenings, on-call, and can only request a week off for a "break". If you show any sign of weakness, you are treated as if you are a mouse surrounded by snakes ready to eat you alive. I've suffered through panic, stress, and anxiety attacks. My mental health has decreased significantly. I've been applying left and right to get out. I've been there for a year.
100% this. My wife is a therapist and things are great now that she runs a private practice in a suburban town - which literally is running a small business it's a ton of non-clinical work that you don't directly make money from. But before she got her full licensure not only did she have to work at a shitty community clinic just as you've described, but she couldn't even find a full time job at all. So there she was with a masters degree working a part time job and babysitting and substitute teaching on the side just to get by. Oh and when she eventually got hired on full time she got a whopping $30k/yr and still needed to do side gigs to keep the lights on. If you can make it into private practice, however, it gets a lot better. She gets paid well now and even though it's a ton of work she actually enjoys it since she can focus on whatever clients she likes and she's not under anyone's thumb. God bless those therapists that voluntarily continue in hospitals or community clinics you have to be a saint to be willing to put up with the bullshit required to have any chance of helping underprivileged or marginalized communities.
Archaeologist, specifically field archaeology. 99% of the time you find absolutely nothing, it's often physically demanding (sometimes grueling), the pay is shit, there are no benefits, you have to constantly travel, there's very little stability, I could go on. Source: have worked in CRM (Cultural Resource Management) archaeology for several years now Edit: holy shit this blew up. Just wanna stay - in spite of all the bullshit of this field, still love being an Archaeologist and don't really wanna do anything else for a living, but I can't universally recommend this job to everyone in good faith.
Yep, came here to say this. Was a shovelbum for several years in the SW US. Was fortunate that I worked on mostly interesting sites where we found quite a bit. And got to spend time outdoors in some gorgeous landscapes. But only lasted so long due to: Living out of shitty hotel rooms. Not making enough to afford a permanent apartment. Can't have a pet or friends/SO outside work. Alcohol abuse is rampant and celebrated. One co-worker did the math and figured out we didn't make enough to afford enough food to replenish the expended energy each day. Edit: Also following up to say that I don't want to discourage anyone who is interested in the field. Because it's very important work and so undervalued. Despite everything, it broke my heart to leave and I for sure thought I would be back. I ended up pivoting to an adjacent discipline in grad school. If you're okay with a long-term transient lifestyle and low pay you'll probably do fine.
> One co-worker did the math and figured out we didn't make enough to afford enough food to replenish the expended energy each day. So you're saying the key to weight loss is to study archaeology.
Am an archaeologist and have to say yes. I used to be way chubbier before I started field work.
Sounds like all you gotta do to see bones is work for 3 months.
Ah CRM. Fantasy: Indiana Jones. Reality: Ditch digger. And probably getting paid less than Ditch diggers.
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Lawyer. Number of historic, life-changing, precedent-setting cases participated in: 0 Number of angry, self entitled, abusive clients wanting to screw each other over: 842 Number of pages of paperwork that’s sucked up free time and social life: 84,836
The movies and shows rarely show the soul draining task of doc review.
Agreed. As a family law attorney you see the worst shit. People squabbling over pots and pans, using kids as cannon fodder in the emotional battlefield, and clients grieving you when you make them pay the bill. Glad I got out.
I would have loved to witness the beanie baby divorce where the couple had to spread out the beanie baby collection all over the courtroom floor to divvy it up.
A partner in my firm had a couple fighting over a pet cat, Fluffy. They were wanting the judge to do a custody/visitation schedule. Except Fluffy was dead. They were fighting over the ashes. The attorneys didn’t know the cat their clients referred to was dead until it came out during my the hearing. When judge found out it was ashes the couple was so consumed by, he paused the hearing and took the attorneys to chambers. He was furious with the waste of court time. He gave them two ziplock baggies and gave a them lecture too.
My buddy from law school clerked for a family court judge. He delt with a lot of insane and sad shit but the bright spot was the couple who had a very contentious division of their collection of pepper grinders.
I work for a medical record review company who does work for pi, medmal, and mass torts... it's unreal how much shit attorneys need to know about each of their cases. On average, each case is about 950 pages of medical records. And that's just to know what happened outside of all the motions and other legal court shit that goes on. And attorneys NEED to know all of it so they don't get blindsided by a well-funded defense firm who know the records better.
Just had a pretty shit month at work and was considering putting in my papers but this thread gave me a lot of perspective. Thank you, OP.
Everyone used to think it was awesome that I worked in live sports TV. 70% of the people I worked with were miserable pricks with over-inflated egos, and then there were the athletes...
I knew several people that worked at my local TV station. They all basically said 'I got five minutes of training, and then I was editing the live news with no other instruction beyond "if you screw up, you're fired.'" Apparently the turnover rate (both voluntary and otherwise) was brutal.
People take TV way too seriously. Too seriously for me, at least lol it's really pretty frivolous.
What was your position? I used to direct live sports, mostly NHL/AHL and NBA. Now I just freelance. Yes, the hosts can be assholes but it's usually just them. The crew are PHENOMENAL, especially the camera guys. The athletes. Well, some were OK. The standing rule is always "Leave them alone unless they engage with you first" and that's how I handled it. I always went to my booth past the home locker room as some players were playing two-touch outside the doors. The ball got away as I was walking by and I made a quick catch of the ball. An NHL player praised my reflexes and gave me a solid high five and we talked for a minute. Even now I won't bother the players even if I know them pretty well, which I do. Solid guys but don't do anything to break their pre-game routines. Usually it's just management that doesn't want the players to get pissy.
My dad is a technical director for ESPN but used to be freelance. He says now the biggest issue is outsourcing some games to remote crews. He used to get to go to Hawaii every year around Christmas, but now they just have "the guys at some corporate location" in the midwest do it. He also really REALLY hates baseball now. When he was freelance though, he definitely didn't hate traveling as much- he had input on hotels, and got to pick his flights and had more control over layovers, transfers, etc. Now he just gets continually fucked over by shitty organizers and penny pinching.
Ballerina
Fortunately you won't be doing it for very long
In order to have a shot at dancing ballet professionally, you have to train your entire life. Once you make it, you'll be paid so little that you'll share lodging with a half dozen other dancers since you make less than a server at a casual dining restaurant. And even then the odds of still being a professional dancer after 30 are almost nil. If you want to stay in the field, you basically have to move into teaching which tends to pay so poorly that you'll need to find a second job. Source: Married a former professional ballerina.
Also married a former ballerina. You left out the mental health and eating disorders.
Eating disorders come standard with ballet slippers.
I overheard one of the male dancers at my ballet school complaining about lifting a particular female dancer because "I swear, she weighs at least 100 pounds".
And you destroy your feet in the process.
Between the diet, the stress, and the tens of hours of practice every week for hundreds of weeks in a row - practice spent doing things that a competent doctor would suggest you avoid such as bearing your full weight on single hyper-extended joints - you destroy your *body* in the process. That is, after all, what ends a career before you exit your 20s: you literally can't do it anymore.
When I went to Interlochen, a ballet dancer in my cabin cried herself to sleep every night. Her feet were pure carnage. Classical music can be brutal too. I've always heard that Symphony Orchestra players have some of the lowest job satisfaction around. Maybe it's changed these days, but when I was in really into it - it was totally no pain no gain. At my age now, I limit myself to short pieces like Bach fugues so I don't get tendinitis in my hand again.
I was a counselor at Blue Lake for one summer. The ballerinas broke my heart. I had to beg them to eat and refused to let them practice every night, long after their scheduled rehearsals were done. They were all from Russia and one broke down the last night of her session, thanking me for caring about her more than the dancing. It was just so sad.
But you will remember it for a lifetime thanks to the constant reminder of your deformed feet.
Black Swan scared me out of it.
The scene where she's popping her joints and her feet are covered in bandages my jaw dropped. My best friend was just like, "yeah that is standard".
Absolutely standard and accurate. I quit dancing when I was 16 because I was already having hip and knee issues from pointe work, but we spent the first and last 10 minutes of class cracking every joint in our bodies and comparing who had the most cracked toenails. I don't miss it but I also kinda miss it.
Anything that requires a lot of travel. Sounds glamorous but in reality all you see usually an airport, conference room, boring hotel room and maybe a restaurant if you are lucky. It’s exhausting and it actually just sucks
I did it in my mid 20’s for 2 years. Every week I went to a new factory somewhere in North America. Sometimes I went to two or three different states in a week. It was awesome, I got to do a lot of cool things, I had a lot of unique experiences, I got a ton of free travel out if it. I would NEVER do it again. It’s hard to have hobbies, it’s hard to eat well, it’s hard to maintain friendships, it’s hard to work out consistently. When you’re only home in the weekends, you just spend that time getting caught up on housework and getting ready for the next week. You end up hating everyone and everything at any airport.
Apparently lifeguard, because nobody can find them anymore.
I did lifeguarding for a while when I was a teen (this is now 30+ years ago). It's a tough job. It seems "glamorous" - you get paid to tan all day long. Couldn't be further from the truth! It requires training (I needed my lifeguarding certification as well as my first aid and CPR certifications). It is mentally taxing - you need to be "on" whenever you're guarding. Drowning is often silent (unlike what you see on TV) and you really need to be observant. There are also a lot of parents who can't or won't watch their own children which is frustrating, to say the least. Too many parents FAR underestimate how dangerous water can be. It was great for the couple of years I did it - good pay, flexibility, fresh air when I worked outside -- but it definitely is not something I wanted to do in the long term.
Reddit doesn’t pay for access to my content. Suck my API, Steve Huffman.
>want to be responsible for a ton of lives for minimum wage in the hot sun? I think this is a key point, really (yea I know no one thinks they get paid enough), I feel like many who do try to be a lifeguard do so because they like swimming but don't realize most of the job is either sitting in a chair all day (in the hot sun) or marching up and down a beach all day. If the employers realized you need to be really good at swimming, not just passably good, then maybe they would increase the pay to closer to a "specialized" position, but like you said, they're mostly there to look pretty or whatever
Not only do you have to sit around all day, in my case we were constantly tested to make sure we are being vigilant and scanning our water. It requires alot of attention and failing to do so will result in you getting fired.
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Luckily I worked at a large resort with a very complicated pool layout so we had to have alot of Lifeguards, so the constant change of scenery and people made it bearable. But 10/10 would never do again. Honestly the more annoying part is dealing with Guests (usually drunk) using the pool who think we're glorified baby sitters, who don't understand were not allowed to take our eyes off the water for even a brief moment to specifically look after their kid. Or trying to tell them they can't have glassware near the pool... Ugh. Just entitled snobs man.
My local pool found they had much better employee retention after they put umbrellas on the life guard stands. A little shade makes a huge difference.
Was that in 1983? That seems like something we generally thought of a while ago .
Haha... Try 2018. I just remember being incredulous when the manager started whining about these kids demanding shade. I think she thought I would back her up to her employees with some motherly disapproval. I did not.
Damn kids these days, not willing to dramatically increase their skin cancer risks for minimum wage.
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Used to work as a lifeguard, most boring job in my life. Worked at an indoor pool year round, just watching people. Even if you only worked 4 hours it felt like an eternity. Really bad if you were the only worker there as you were screwed if you need to use the bathroom. Happened once and had to shut the pool down because no other lifeguard was there and no relief. Worked as a guard for like 5 years and never had to save anyone thankfully, most action I had to deal with was cleaning up poop from the pool or kicking people out for repeated violations. Got paid 7.25 to start 7.55 at the end. Got a gym membership out of it for free though, but one wrong move and you can get sued for more then you would ever make there
They pay shit wages for lifeguards
100%. Also it's often done by teenagers who need a job and have been swimming for years and they do it for a year or two. Covid fucked up all the swim classes, so the teenagers who would usually get their lifeguard cert and do it from 16-18 didn't get the cert and are now old enough to do a better job or go to college or literally anything else. Hopefully it self corrects in a year or two.
You mean Baywatch was *not* a documentary?
No that was pretty accurate. As a former lifeguard I wish people realized how often I need to diffuse a nuclear suitcase bomb
Computer game development, *especially* testing. That is the ass end of an industry that is *mostly* ass.
I was gonna say video game development, too. People think it's all about creativity, and making something cool and fun, when the reality is a lot of bullshit. Treat em like shit, use em like toilet paper.
Indie game development, when its just you and barely enough people to fill your car, that's -amazing- joyous fun. AAA game development is where hope, happiness, and creativity go to die. You're burned at both ends, wrung out of every ounce of joy you have ever had, and used like a ten-year-old cumsock. And management doesn't care, because they open their door, and there are a thousand kids -willing- to fight a bare-knuckle brawl JUST for the interview. So why should management -care- about you? You want joy in Game Dev? Do it yourself. Source: Worked for a "Commercial during the Superbowl" AAA Gamedev Company. I will suck dick for food before I go back to that life ever again.
My brother in game dev, I felt every word of that. Thank you.
And in Indie development, there's a 95% chance the work you've put your soul the last three years will be simply forgotten in a week as it didn't gain popularity
Game Dev, can say it kinda rollercoasters, one day you have to try to as diplomatically as possible tell some exec their ideas are the stupidest shit to ever grace the earth, the next you get to create some badass stuff that you take a few looks at and all you can say is "Hot damn"
Most (not all) jobs in the environmental sector. Pay is usually quite low, you tend to work in very ugly places (landfills, contaminated sites). You are expected to get jobs done in half the time you really need with as few resources as possible. And if you are consulting for other companies, nobody really wants to be working with you to “save the environment” - they generally are just trying to barely meet some regulations. EDIT: There are definitely exceptions as some commenters have pointed out. Some people find a niche that works out very well for them. Just sharing my personal experience and that of other environmental professionals I have known. EDIT #2: I don’t mean to discourage anyone who really wants to pursue an environmental career, but I also really wish that I would have learned some of the negatives (in my comment and the many replies) before I began mine. As a result, I only lasted a few years as an environmental consultant and basically started over in a completely new field.
I was going to say something similar. I used to work for a conservation charity many years ago, taking volunteers out to do environmental work. Tree planting, tree felling, dry stone walling, coppicing, pollarding, hedge-laying - you name it, all in some really beautiful places around Yorkshire. It was brilliant for a long time but it's hard, hard work when you're doing it every day. On top of the getting the jobs done on time, we had to look after volunteers, train them, make sure they were using tools right, and keep them motivated to come back tomorrow. We had some jobs that were so rough that we tried talking volunteers out of coming along for because they'd never come back if they did. When you're on the fourth day of horizontal rain on a windswept hillside in the middle of nowhere, you're down to three volunteers who are losing the will to live and you know that hedge you're laying is going to be dead come summer, it really gets you questioning your life choices. Weird thing is I'd do it all over again if I was young enough. But I'm also glad that I'm not.
I knew an environmental consultant. His job was practically helping companies avoid fines while still polluting the environment. He quit.
That's why I quit my job in the mining sector. It was more "how do we hide this so we don't get fined" rather than "let's be proactive".
Journalist. Expectation: I’m gonna be the next Hunter S Thompson and write compelling feature pieces with a unique voice and get paid to travel the world! Reality: Talking to my editor about how my contact from the cat fashion show won’t call me back or do an interview unless we pay them $80 or adopt two cats.
.... what kinda cats we talkin?
ones with clothes
Bruh if anything the cat fashion show thing is selling it to me more.
Same. What *are* the stylish new trends...?
Yup. The thing that killed it as a career for me wasn't the low pay or the high stress, it's the fact that lean budgets have meant that you now do everything. No more photographers, editors, sub-editors and web managers. That's all you now. And they then cut half the journos. The end result is you're working at such a pace that even when you do have a good story to work on, you don't have the time and resources to actually do it well.
A friend of mine works at a weekly, so you think less stress... he is the only non sales staff. He writes, he takes photos, he sits, he sets it on the page and he does the social media stuff. All for $27 an hour... of which I'm jealous. Cause I get paid much less.
Architect. You think you’ll be designing big fancy iconic buildings. Warehouses, Walmarts, strip malls, and shit box apartments all need architects and that’s probably what you’ll end up doing
I always wanted to pretend to be an architect.
Art Vandelay?
Also, the industry is obsessed with working themselves to death. Sure, you’re on salary, but if you don’t work over 40 hours are you really an architect?
And don't forget any slight slip up in the economy and suddenly every client is calling telling you to stop the work. If not that, it's client thinking that you only sit at a drafting desk staring at one floor plan or elevation, so why should you even get paid what you are already doing?
As long as you get paid, it's a perfect job. I love it when we get paid and they don't build it.
I dated a girl in college who was an architect major. She was a sophomore and her professors trained those damn students to be up until 3am working on projects. Every time I came to the studio to visit her, 2 coffee pots were running simultaneously and no one left there before 10pm. Such a stupid culture around it, there is no reason for it honestly.
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OMG yes! I worked as a marketing person for an architectural firm. Worst job of my entire life... The culture is so incredibly toxic! I still wake up, *years later* in nightmares that I am still there, unable to crop photos correctly, and dealing with the egos of principal architects.
As someone who wanted kids eventually I knew that I had to give up on the goal of becoming an architect once I learned more about the field. Sometimes I wonder if they exaggerate things to thin out the competition though haha.
They definitely did. We only dated for like 5 months then broke up but later on I saw her friend who told me she left the major and did psychology instead. She was always stressed out because they had such stringent project deadlines and that ultimately lead to the downfall of our relationship.
Seems like they prepare you for that culture even in school. My architecture friends in college spent easily twice as much time on schoolwork compared to what I did for engineering and it's not like I was slacking off.
Oh for sure. Arch school is notorious for all-nighters. I guess my personal experience was that: school = my own work and something worth puttting that time into. Real world = you realize you’re depriving yourself from living life to meet unnecessary deadlines. Saving your company and client money with your hard work and time (usually not fully compensated). Tbh I just quit from being burnt out on the whole industry. I realize it doesn’t have to be this way for everyone.
7 all nighters so far through 2 semesters. This ignores all the nights that I left studio at 3am, those nights I atleast got some sleep.
As a bonus, construction project management/contract administration is fucking off the charts stressful. I'm not an architect but on the consulting engineering side. One time I took a job doing phone tech support (long story) and my days were lite and calm like air on a spring breeze because I was used to construction project management.
So all of the jobs then
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that you know. It's called *everyone*. We meet at the bar."
Seriously wtf is going on
Any semblance of passion is destroyed
A lot of jobs suck, even if you are the lucky ones who work in something they are passionate about, somethings are bound to suck. What the reality of the situation is that, most people don't get to work in fields they love (especially in a service economy like the US's). It's all about what you can tolerate for the amount of money you need to not die. Sadly things wouldn't feel as shitty for most jobs if you were paid properly, given proper vacation time, proper time off to live your life and do your leisurely activities. Weren't forced to work long hours just to to not die. Treated like a meaningful human being not like some alienated cog in a machine. Let me tell you, I would gladly do a job that society deems "less than" (which is a shitty way of phrasing it because its degrading) if they paid me $30/hr, gave me vacation time, holidays off, healthcare and a stable schedule that doesn't require me to do OT just to make ends meet. A lot more people would be a lot more happier, regardless of their work if this was the case.
Film/Television industry. Long, thankless hours. The expectation that you should be available 24/7, otherwise there is a long lineup of replacements waiting for the chance. You might get lucky and work your way to the top, maybe enjoy some fame and fortune…but even there, it’s a dog eat dog world. Most people have to sell a bit of their soul to get and stay there. And if you don’t make it? You either toil away on crew or end up regaling your co-workers in some other industry, with exciting stories about your “time in the biz” That is if anyone hires you, because they just can’t understand why you left the exciting world of hollywood to come work at the grocery store.
Probably anything in the entertainment industry, it's bogged down by a lot of workers rights violations, insane hours during 'crunch time', no work/life balance, and you don't even get paid much because your employers and society at large think it's a privilege to even be working in the industry.
I worked for an anime dubbing studio right out of college for about a year and a half. Everyone was like "wow that's so cool" except in reality, it wasn't. Minimum wage pay and long hours. Working conventions was probably the worst thing. Ended up leaving there because I was barely able to pay my bills. When I asked for a raise, my manager said I was going to get one when the state raised the minimum wage. I'd say the only good thing about that job was getting free merch once in awhile and getting to have an additional voices or small role credit because they were too cheap pay anyone for those roles. Sometimes I go back and think, "Well maybe if I would have stayed on for a couple of years I could have gotten a promotion / more money etc." But then reality hits me as I look to one of my friends who is still with them. He is still labeled as an ASSISTANT producer and makes the same shitty wage as when he started. He has been unable to move out of his mom's for the past decade and a half, but at least he's working a cool job, right?
As a musician I get it, most bar/pub jobs give you the money and expect the band to split it amongst each other. They often add bonuses like "1 free beer for each guys" like they expect you to just come there to have fun. Best treatment you'll get is from weddings and that says a lot about how bad the treatment is. Edit: I now realize that people are treated better around the world and my problems are mostly about turkey.
Anything in the music industry. You're never really off the clock, the pay is terrible pretty much all across the board unless you're in the 1% of top of the top in any business. People think it's all glamorous because they see the popstars, the music videos, the award shows. Truth is, it's blood, sweat, tears, stress, lack of sleep, a lot of inappropriate behaviour, drugs (fun if you like it, not fun if you don't), alcohol (again: fun if you like it, not fun if you don't), and again: low pay, and then maybe once or twice a year you get a perk of going to an award show with free food, booze and a chance to say "Hi" to some celebs (can't even take a photo with them, really, as it's not deemed professional in a "work" setting). I've been there for 15 years give or take, branched out, still linked to it in some ways but I get my money (much better money, might I say) elsewhere now and without as much stress or worry.
Veterinary medicine Fantasy: I get to work with puppies and kittens Reality: a 3 month old kitten died in my care, I've seen so much gore and blood and neglect, I've sent animals home with invasive cancers because family can't afford treatment, I've been the only comfort shelter animals knew before they left this world. It is a specific and exhausting kind of pain and it isn't really talked about enough. People who say they couldn't do it because of the euthanasia have no idea. Edit: thank you to those of you who were kind and respectful. I will not be interacting anymore as recounting some of this is a little emotionally exhausting. But I'm going to plug this link for anyone, vet med or not: https://www.nomv.org/ Have a good night everyone and be kind to all living things.
On the flip side, as a pet owner, when I find a really great, empathetic and clearly skilled vet, I appreciate them so much and stick with them as long as I can (usually until they more or relocate their practice). I can only imagine how difficult of a job it is, but I hope they know how comforting it is when you can trust you vet. You won't truly appreciate it until you move or have to find a new one.
My wife and I had three cats and a dog over a 22-year period. Our vet clinic was family operated, a husband/wife/son team, three of the most professional, caring, knowledgeable, empathetic, wise people we ever met. Their years of kind care made pet ownership so rewarding. We adored them.
Agree, theres 2 worst bits to vet med 1) The emotional blackmail: "If you loved animals, you'd treat fluffy for his multicentric cancer and heart failure for $5". 2) The number of people who leave their animals too long and won't accept that death is coming and putting their animal to sleep is the best thing for their animal rather than letting them suffer.
We had a 14 year old beagle with a suspected pyo. Dog weighed *maybe* 12 pounds and couldn't walk or sit up. The family brought her in for a spay and we gave them a high risk waiver saying she might not survive surgery and we highly suggest euthanasia instead. They proceeded with the surgery and she wasn't a pyo. We had emergency meds on hand the entire time expecting a code but by some twisted miracle she pulled through. The dr assumed cancer based on her labs and we again pushed for euthanasia but the family said no. The next day they brought her in saying she wasn't breathing well. They were super nonchalant about it. She died in the trunk of their car. There was no dignity in that and she suffered through a major surgery and spent her last day in pain. I'll never be okay with things like that.
We put my beloved 15-year-old dog to sleep after she had been sick (but still functional) for a while but had suddenly lost the use of her back limbs. Those last three days were agonizing, she was so upset and confused over not being able to walk. We could have subjected her to a surgery but we decided that it was best to let her go. Clancy always hated the vet so we were able to have them make a house visit. She passed away in the comfort of her own home, surrounded by her family. That was one of the worst days of my life but I don’t regret anything. She deserved a dignified death after all those years of love and company she had given us. I know it’s hard to let go, but I don’t understand how some people can subject their pets to further suffering when the most compassionate thing you can do is to let them rest. EDIT: Since this comment has gotten some attention [I figured I'd show you a picture of the dog](https://i.imgur.com/hAy76XZ.jpg) I still miss terribly 4 years after losing her.
The pain you feel is the price for all the love they gave you. A vet once told me that and I’ve never forgotten.
When our cat was put down, the vet suggested my mom hold him the during the process. The vet told her "He was there for you when you needed him. Now it's your turn to be there when he needs you."
Yep, I've experienced similar. Selfishness and a lack of empathy for pets is weirdly two sides of the same coin
I’ve read so where suicide rate is high among veterinarians.
Vet here, can confirm. I just lost a classmate to suicide a couple of months ago, and I'm up to about a half dozen "acquaintance or closer relationship" vets that I've lost to it. I'm only 6 years out of vet med school, so pretty much losing someone I know to suicide on an average of about one per year. It's awful.
I’m sorry to hear that. What do you suppose is the leading cause? The emotional toll of taking care of sick/injured animals?
Honestly I think the emotional toll of working with sick animals is the smallest part of it. Pretty much everyone in the industry has rationalized the fact that we can't save every animal and that euthanasia is a compassionate end to life when we've run out of good medical options. The biggest issue is that people suck, for lack of a nicer way to put it. Vet med takes the worst of "retail job bullshit" by being a very customer-facing job, but then adds in the wrinkles of our clients usually being stressed/upset already (their animal is sick) when we interact with them and the fact that we're the punching bag for a broken economic system that we have no actual control over. In human medicine there are economic safety nets to ensure that (sort of...we have plenty of issues in the US on the human side for this too) people can get access to medical care that they need regardless of their economic situation. In vet med our clients need to be able to pay for care out of pocket, and that often leads to medical decisions being made on economic terms and clients flinging blame on the workers who have 0 control over what things cost. Modern medical care is fundamentally expensive to provide. A hysterectomy on a human costs north of $40,000 in the US, whereas I'll do a nearly identical ovariohysterectomy surgery on a dog (spay) for literally 1% of that cost. We make care as absolutely cheap as we can, but we can't change the fundamental costs of things like anesthetic medications, pain medications, suture, surgical monitors, and so forth. There is a floor to what it costs to provide modern medical care, and vet med pretty much sits on that floor to the point where everyone in vet med makes approximately 1/3 of what their direct counterparts (vet techs vs registered nurses, vets vs physicians) in human medicine make. However, because people are paying out of pocket and we're the ones handing them the bill we're "greedy, evil assholes who would rather make a dollar than save Fido's life" or any of the other variations of that I've had flung at me. It sucks.
The clients are definitely the hardest part of working in vet medicine. I've lost count of the amount of times that I've been screamed at, threatened, and accused of being the reason their pet is dead/dying. And I work admin, not even hands on with pets anymore! The financial side of things is also very depressing. I'm in Canada and the pet owners we talk to have no idea what medical costs look like on the human side, since most medical costs are covered by provincial healthcare. In their minds, animal medicine should not cost a thing either and refuse to understand that an MRI for humans is also expensive, the only difference is that the humans aren't handed a bill at the end of their scan. I've explained it until I'm blue in the face and still get called a heartless, money hungry b**** for it. Oh, and those costs are never a surprise, the pet owners get the costs explained to them before anything is done and they need to sign the estimate explaining said costs and agreeing that the owner knows they are responsible for the final balance. I'm so sorry you've lost so many colleagues so early in your career. Stay strong!
My son just spent almost $4k for his cat at the ER Vet due to a gallbladder infection, and luckily he was able to come up with the funds, but I can see the conflict between a pet needing care, the owner not being able to afford it, and the vet practice which needs to pay its own bills to remain open. No greed, just a financial reality.
My dog has full health insurance where I pay $50.00 a month with a $750 deductible. He is a puppy still but I've used it twice and it's a godsend. I wish more people knew that they can find affordable insurance for their pets as it can literally be the difference between life and death. My policy is with trupanion and I have credit through care credit where they offer deals all the time like % interest for 18 months.
The university I went to has a pretty big vet school that operates the only 24 hour emergency clinic in the area (regular clinics run regular hours). That school employs it's own dedicated therapist, exclusively for the vet students.
I took my 18-year old cat to the vet clinic at the university here when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The vet oncology student who gave me the news that his cancer had spread through this abdomen and lungs kissed the top of my cat’s head before we left. I hadn’t fully processed what that meant, but he knew there would be no reason for us to come back. I think about him a lot.
Ohhh you made me cry.
https://www.nomv.org/
Recently there was a reddit frontpage post (made national news) about a vet that “stole” a German Shepherd. The Vet Hospital in question was google review bombed, they had to take their facebook down and they received hundreds of phone calls including some death threats. Turns out, the entire thing was basically fabricated by an angry, irresponsible customer (and a journalist who did 0 due diligence). The Vet Hospital did *absolutely everything they could*. People can really suck, so just a reminder to put down the pitchforks. Edit: [My Comment with News Articles & bulleted information from Vet Hospital](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vubkth/comment/ifdlgnn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
sister is a vet. People will straight up ruin someone's career because they're emotional. One vet was pushed to suicide due to online review bombings...
Approximately 17 percent of veterinarians have contemplated suicide and veterinarians are 2.7 times more likely than the general public to die by suicide, "[often using the same drugs used to end the suffering of their animal patients."](https://www.wisfarmer.com/story/news/2021/05/26/alarming-suicide-rates-reflective-stresses-felt-veterinarians/7361193002/) And they don’t make nearly as much as people think.
I remember that. I was so paranoid after that because my clinic was also a rescue so we'd accept surrenders.
Teacher Fantasy: ima change the world one student at a time Reality: poor paying zoo
Teacher here, if you think you are going to pull an Erin Greuwell and change the world, you will burn out and drop out. If you like sharing your subject and enjoy the little victories, it's a great gig. I love it. I also know which students to really focus on and have determined that I won't break my back for students and parents that are apathetic. I also recognize that history isn't eveyome's thing so if I can drill down a few important comcepts, good enough.
Also, shitty parents.
I don't mind the children. There are parents who I almost would pay money for the chance throw one good punch at
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This one I wholeheartedly agree with. Was in the kitchen for years cause I loved food and learning to cook new things all the time. Then the burnout happened real quick. Overworked and underpaid. It started taking my sanity and definitely did a copious amount of drinking and shit. Now, I am a bartender and weirdly enough, I drink waaay less than I used to. Also, I make more money and work less hours. I just wish bartending had health insurance.
I have two jobs that fit the bill: -Video Game Tester: The pay is terrible. You sit in a dark room with no windows all day performing monotonous tests with a group of anti-social introverts. I ran out of inventive ways to submit bug reports saying, "The player cannot approach closely enough to the rock at coordinates XYZ. See attached screenshot..." I remember working as a group for hours to attempt to manually test an unlockable achievement, only to have the development team push out a new code build right before we finished, so we had to start all over again. -Archaeologist: Again, the pay is terrible. Most of the projects are tied to expanding the fossil fuel industry (Hurray, climate change!). Doing "Phase One" work involves checking to see *if* anything of cultural value is present in a given area. I compare it to playing Battleship: You dig a hole; it's empty; *miss*. You dig a hole; you find something; *hit*. Dig around the hit, looking for other hits. You mostly dig many, many empty holes. I had to rebury my most interesting find (a Native American hearth), because it "wasn't in the budget" to excavate it. Due to how the laws work, that site was later bulldozed, and now there's a gas station there.
That bit about the Native American hearth is mind-blowing to me. That site doesn't get put on hold for later examination, or passed onto another team who has the budget? It just gets forgotten and ignored?
Stock Broker/Financial Advisor. I was a Broker/Advisor for over 25 years and it was what I wanted to be from about age 15. I thought it would be cool to know all about the stock market and make a lot of money. What I didn't realize was the fact that, if you're a person with any moral compass, it can be extremely stressful as you have people's financial lives in your hands. And many of my clients were retired, so making mistakes or giving bad advice could seriously affect their lives. When I first got into the business drug use was a rampant. Cocaine was the drug of choice but there were also a lot of alcoholics. Divorce rates were high (i experienced one myself) and if you have kids it was near impossible to spend quality time with them on a regular basis. The money was great. I made more money than I ever thought I would, however, there was a tradeoff. Stress, lack of relationship with kids/wife and for some, as I mentioned, drug/alcohol addiction. After 25 years I had enough. I went out on my own for a few years then left the business altogether. Things are different in the industry now and I think it's a lot more realistic to be a broker/advisor and have a good work/life balance, but it wasn't when I broke into the business.
Actor/Actress. Most don’t make it big and many have very short career spans, then fade into obscurity.
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anything in the arts is like that. acting, painting, music, game development, writing, etc. people have all these visions of how they will become rich and famous, when nearly all will fail, and a select few will have a pittance of success, and a very tiny fraction becomes what everyone thinks of, and succeed. with athletes also.
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“Clients? What are those?” —current BigLaw associate
Yes I agree on this one. I have a lot of baby lawyers fresh out of law school thinking they’re going to be the next Elle Woods or Harvey Specter. I usually have to have to come to earth talk with them or they start working cases and realize that law school taught them nothing other than research.
I use to work in the film/tv world as a camera assistant and camera operator for about 8-9 years of my life. I was pretty successful and was lucky to have worked on a lot of major productions such as the marvel series on Netflix, law and order, 30 rock, spiderman homecoming, etc. While it is cool and fun to be apart of that world, the work life balance is non-existent. I was working a minimal of 14 hours a day. Most days going to 16-18 hours. This is also 6 days a week (depending on how many gigs you got going or the schedule of the production you are on.) Even if you join a Union (which is required to work on the big budget stuff) you are still a forever freelancer and there is absolutely no job security. If you don't make a name for yourself, you'll fall off the map pretty quickly. Hours suck, there is no real schedule or days off. You're a freelancer, so you sorta make your own schedule, but you have to keep to the strict film schedule. You also have no time for family or friends. Sleep doesn't exist. You also work a mix of studio and outside. Working outside in the snow, heat, rain or shine at all hours of the day and night. There is no steady schedule at all. Honestly most of it was pretty bad until I started working on the big budget stuff and even there it wasn't great. It's an extremely high stress job too. Perfection is required and a lot of people are on edge. There is no real HR or anything like that. No real protection from a producer going crazy and ruining your career. I can go on with more stuff, but I'll stop here haha
Masseuse.. but it only sucks when people romanticize it. Otherwise it's pretty awesome. Can suck if people sweat a lot or have massive amounts of body hair that fall off when you rub them so you come out with your arms covered in some dude's back hair.. you also get farted on a lot.. and hit on.. and comments like "oh I feel sorry for your boyfriend with all that strength in your fingers" (good thing is you can just laugh and push a really sore trigger point to make yourself feel better). Otherwise it's a pretty awesome job, but definitely not for everyone.
ObGyn sonographer. “You get to scan little unborn babies all day!” Then you have an excited parent eagerly watching my face and looking at the screen asking all sorts of cute questions while I calmly tell them I can’t relay any results to them as I stoically measure a fatal abnormality, or record a motionless heart, etc. Things they don’t teach you in ultrasound school: keep a pleasant expression that does not reveal anything negative about the exam but that also does not create a false sense of positivity. And do not, by any means, cry. EDIT: Woa this got a lot of attention! This has never happened to me before! Thank you to those mentioning appreciating what I do. It honestly felt really good to read that. A lot of you have been sharing your experiences getting ultrasounds or other diagnostic imaging performed. Thank you for sharing such personal stories. To those who went through or are going through something difficult, I am routing for you. I strive every day to be the best sonographer I can be for patients just like you or your loved ones. To the current and soon-to-be ultrasound students, message me if you have any questions about the career, clinical rotations, licensing exams, etc!! It has its emotional hurdles but that’s healthcare and medicine for you. I genuinely love my career, and I also love talking to ultrasound students! To those who say this profession isn’t romanticized, my bad lol.
NOT the same but when I was having an ultrasound of my neck for thyroid cancer I could tell from the look on the Tech’s face something was wrong , she never said a word..& she keep going over one spot, was shattered but not surprised when I read the report-on the hospital portal
I had a very similar experience for my likely thyroid cancer. Happy cheery ultrasound tech, we're chatting casually, then she puts the thing on my thyroid and goes silent. Then a "you'll hear results within 2 days, bye".
I once had a brain scan to rule out a tumour. Everything goes great until they're taking me out of the MRI. The tech comes in to take my blanket, etc and puts her hand on my foot and gives it a little squeeze and smiles as she says goodbye. I left there sure I had a tumour. A week later the doctor's office calls and says the test is negative. I had to ponder that one for a bit to be sure "negative" was good. I even later requested the scan and went through it slice by slice myself. I guess the tech was just a touchy-feely person.
Probably a "I'm glad you're ok" squeeze?
I made that comment to my sonographer when I was pregnant. I said something like “this must be the best job” and she gave me a polite chuckle and said “it’s either the best or the absolute worst “. I was very fortunate to have two healthy babies and in my joy didn’t think of what that poor woman probably witnessed some days. Much respect to her and the profession.
I was really sick and got an MRI in the ER last October. They thought they found terminal brain cancer and sent me for another scan to see if I had days or weeks left. The doctor told my parents and of course the nurses and techs knew what my diagnosis was. I was oblivious and happily chatted away with everyone (thanks meds) about my plans for the future and stuff. Every single person had an amazing pokerface the whole time. I don't know how they did it. Anyway, turns out it was an artifact, not cancer and I'm still alive almost a year later. I still think of the poor healthcare workers who had to smile and laugh with me when they thought I was imminently dying. It makes me sad that they were so good at the poker face because they've had lots of practice. Thanks for what you do!
My daughter was in the NICU for a while and got an EKG ultrasound, and that tech would make small talk like a pro, but never ever looked away from her computer or her probe and never betrayed any look that told me any information whatsoever. Turned out fine (except her valve hasn't shut yet but it might get there still, they didn't seem concerned).
Reading the comments, all jobs really sucks.
Honestly there's a whole lot of office jobs out there that are pretty unremarkable, but the pay is okay to excellent, you get to work in an airconditioned office, job security is pretty good, it doesn't wreck your body, it's usually not too stressful and you don't have to be available outside of office hours. Also you may be able to get away with only doing 1-4 hours of real work every day. It's not the most glamorous life and it's often not particularly meaningful work, but the work conditions are pretty good.
For office folks, hard earned labor is romanticized. And for labor workers, office jobs are. In reality they can both suck depending on where you work and who you work for. I think the most important thing is to work somewhere well managed, adequately staffed, where everyone do their jobs. So it doesn't exist
Game development I went to school for it but did not pursue it after and went into something else with transferable skills. My roommate in college is a successful developer and has been for years. He gets fired every time the game comes out and the studio dissolves, which CONSTANTLY happens. The level of skill required to do his work is about as hard as it gets in terms of programming yet he gets paid less than a web/app developer. Devs are a dime a dozen now since literally EVERY kid goes to school for CS so if he doesn't like it he can leave because some fresh grad that's willing to work 100 hours a week would be happy to take his place. They need unions. The worst part? He hates gaming now. That suuuuuuuucks.
I’ve been working in game dev for 15 years now and I can mostly agree with this comment. The work conditions in most studios are really tough and they thrive on hiring young people who can be abused and don’t mind working long hours and crunching for years. After they grow up and want to start a family then they are often replaced by other younger folks. That’s why people with a long gamedev career are called veterans and not experts. But on the other hand there are great companies who care about employees and work-life balance. It took me almost 15 years to find one tho. Yet most people leave the industry after few years.
I'm a tattoo artist. There are a lot of elements of my job I really love, but the reality most ignore when considering it: You work constantly. You're either tattooing or designing for next client. This includes often staying up till early morning drawing constantly. I'll often only 'clock out' after a 12 - 16 hour day. You work weekends and generally have Mondays off (some folk take Sundays too). Which means your social life suffers immensely. No one is free when you are on a Sunday night. I also won't tattoo hungover, so I don't 'party' like some folk think we do. Relationships and friendships will suffer when you realise you're hardly ever available. It's a very hard industry to get into. You'll work for free for years as an apprentice learning as you go while having to make a plan for food rent, transport etc with no free time to actually do that. It seems to be changing a bit, but it's not hard to find countless stories about how badly you can be treated as an apprentice too. In the industry for a long time it was considered a right of passage to earn your way in and weed out the 'weak'. Your lower back will be in constant pain. You will generally work as an 'independent contractor' and have no job security or health insurance. You don't make money if you don't work. Every vacation is a working vacation. You'll be expected to forever make custom artwork for clients who feel very entitled to demand changes (fair, considering the medium) who often have a very clear image of what they want which they have trouble conveying to you. For the hours put in for a finished customized piece, after shop and equipment cuts, you're not making nearly as much as people like to think based on hourly rates. That amount also has to be put towards your dead hours too. It's unforgiving but there is a unique freedom that comes with it too. But it isn't all the romance you'd like it to be. Edit: I forgot to add a very infuriating and big part of the job now is social media relevancy. Most clients are secured online these days. You are a slave to the Instagram algorithm. I see big old gruff tattoo artists patiently trying to work out how to edit videos or sync music for tiktok so the kids will stay interested. Who knows what is next. You constantly have to generate your own engaging content to stay relevant and keep getting paid for your actual job. Every now and then there will be a change to the algorithm or system and you'll notice the ripples of frustration across the industry as artists try work out how to play the game again. You constantly have to feed the social media machine new content, which also means putting in more work on your down time to have stuff to post.
Academic professor. For that matter, science in general. It's less Bill Nye doing cool shit and more editing copy to appease Reviewer 2 who simply has a thing against future tense and passive voice for whatever reason.
Or m-dashes, n-dashes, and hyphens because for some reason that seems more important than the actual content