Films and television can distort our view of certain things. Professions are no exception. I watched my fair share of Grey’s Anatomy and saw how they’re constantly shocking flat-lining patients. Turns out, it’s not actually true. Asystole (the technical term for ‘flat-lining’) is not a ‘shockable rhythm,’ according to the Cleveland Clinic. So, the whole thing is a hoax.
Well, every day is an opportunity to learn something new, so let’s do that, shall we? Let’s see what other people have to say about their professions and the misconceptions that people have about them. The Redditor MajesticWin8708 was curious and asked other netizens: “What’s one myth about your profession you would like to debunk?” Check out people’s answers below!
#1
ive worked in psych/mental health for almost a decade. i can confidently say 99.9% of homeless people are not homeless because they want to. many of the alternatives, like shelters, are in abysmal/dangerous conditions, usually have extremely strict rules (ex: closing the doors at 6pm, but your job ends at 530pm and the bus was late), and are run by churches (problem for lgbt, atheists, etc). often these places are worse than living on the streets in terms of safety and stability.
not everyone on the street is a drug addict, and for those that are many are either self-medicating because they cant afford meds they need (or cant keep appts due to transportation, not having a phone, etc), or because being homeless is boring and brutal and unkind so what else do you do? forced rehab objectively doesnt work and is often more dangerous than letting them use drugs. most homeless folks have nowhere to store their belongings, nowhere to go to the bathroom, nowhere to shower or bathe or clean their clothes, nor do they have a physical mailing address required by virtually all jobs for tax reasons.
you want to stop the “homeless epidemic”? treat them like people, pay people more, control rent prices to keep them affordable, demand universal healthcare, and demand funding this s**t.
Image source: speedlimits65, MART PRODUCTION
#2
Not everyone who works in fast food is:
– A teenager trying to make some fun money, or trying to save up for school or a car.
– “So stupid they couldn’t get a real job”
– A felon who couldn’t get hired anywhere else
– Lazy and entitled and “wants $15 an hour to play on their phone all day”
Most people who work in fast food are:
– Hard working, honest folks who want to be able to pay their bills and take care of their family.
– Fed up with you assuming they’re too lazy or dumb to get a “real job”
Edit: Lmaooo this one really got some people riled up, huh?
Image source: Narrow_Housing3190, Abhinav Bhardwaj
#3
Janitor here. We aren’t lazy people who just sit around and drink coffee.
All buildings require a hefty amount of maintenance and most commercial buildings would be unusable in less than a month without a team of janitors and sanitisers.
We are constantly on our feet and there’s always something that needs fixing, so even on a quiet day, I walk around 30k steps.
Image source: Cairo_Suite, Pixabay
#4
I’m a librarian, and no I don’t shelve books all day. Those are pages (actual name) and I am so grateful to them for all the work they do. No I do not read books all day. I actually don’t get to read very often at all. If you apply to work at a library, a phrase like “I love to read books” is a red flag because you’ve not given any thought to actual library operations. I also rarely check books in and out, those are circulation clerks and they are badasses. Librarians do handle book purchasing, programming, and outreach; and what they do in those areas varies a lot based on their local situation. I’m an academic librarian. I work in a university and publish research, teach classes, program software, among other things.
Image source: MooCowDivebomb, Tima Miroshnichenko
#5
That Geology is just sbout rocks. Its also about Paleontology, Paleoclimatology, Earth history, how life began, how our planet became what it is today, volcanoes, earthquakes, Geophysics, mining, engineering and more, its a great career sector and generally well paid.
Image source: Y-Crwydryn, NPS Natural Resources
#6
Computer programmer (software engineer). Just because I write software doesn’t mean I can necessarily troubleshoot your hardware when it doesn’t work.
Image source: RandomGrotnik, Christina Morillo
#7
Bass players are failed guitarists.
Most of us can play guitar too. We just prefer bass.
Image source: WastaSpace, Pixabay
#8
a few for airline pilots
We probably don’t have a “route” per se. We fly a type of plane and we bid for “trips” each month which depending on the plane you’re currently flying could vary enormously.
If you’re senior enough you could bid a “route” let’s say weekday Miami to New York and back 10 times a month and that’s all you choose to do.
The Plane flies itself. This one isn’t really true. The autopilot is a tool to reduce workload but we still have to “tell” the plane what to do and understand the rules around when, why, and how to do it.
Image source: dave256hali, TRAVEL BLOG
#9
That all teachers are unhappy and underpaid. I am underpaid, but I am not unhappy. I love my job.
Image source: Xmvsqz, Max Fischer
#10
I am a phlebotomist (I draw blood) surprisingly I do have feelings so when you get mad at me for doing my job and hit/kick/spit/scream at me I get upset. Now if you cry during a blood draw I’m not going to judge you needles are freaky. Just don’t take your bad hospital breakfast out on me.
Image source: Myles_away_from_you, Los Muertos Crew
#11
Firefighter/paramedic of 24 years. The vast, vast majority of calls aren’t for emergencies. Far from it. It’s almost all low acuity medical calls to nursing homes, people who don’t want to wait to visit their primary physician, people who absolutely *refuse* to take care of themselves, people who want/demand for us to help them but won’t lift a finger to help themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, we respond to plenty of true emergencies and there are definitely people out there who are appreciative and doing the right thing when it comes to taking care of themselves.
However, for every one, actual, emergency there is *at least* one 400lb type 2 diabetic on the third floor apartment who hurt their knee two weeks ago and now suddenly during a snowstorm they want us to take them to the hospital because they ran out of hydrocodone and never followed up with Ortho like they were supposed to.
Image source: xts2500, Pavel Danilyuk
#12
Work travel is not glamourous. It’s oftentimes stressful with airport b******t, delays, etc. In most cases, work travel means doing your same job (or perhaps a more stressful part of your job) while jetlagged and exhausted in a new environment.
Can it be fun? Yes.
Is it a touristy, sightseeing trip? No.
Image source: TheMiddleE, Ketut Subiyanto
#13
As a person that used to work in retail I can say we do not have that popular must have out of stock item squirrelled away in the back storage and hidden to sell to our friends or ourselves at a later time.
Inventory is all controlled and monitored via computer systems these days. Management would have a mental fit if our inventory system showed that we had stock of an item and can’t account for it.
Edit
When you ask us to check in the back. I used to take a small break because I know how our inventory system works and there’s no sense for me to make an effort to look for something that I know we don’t have instock.
Image source: Alpha_Ryvius, Ksenia Chernaya
#14
I don’t know why customers continue to think the manager is going to side with them. All they are going to do is say the same thing I’ve been saying for the past 10 minutes.
Image source: Leokina114, Edmond Dantès
#15
If you send your food back to a kitchen, nobody spits on it. We may laugh because we made it exactly the way it appeared on the ticket, but we’ll fix it because that’s our job.
Image source: CTnaturist, Rene Asmussen
#16
Agriculture: we aren’t destroying the planet with pesticides, we are trying to make more food on the same amount of land to keep up with the global population ever increasing
Image source: wjn2448, Jannis Knorr
#17
Medical lab/research techs don’t hold erlenmeyer flasks filled with brightly colored liquids up above their heads to gaze at them with light filtering through. Even in the fields where your role requires you to inspect the opacity of a sample or reagent, that is an idiot move. But it’s like the standard for stock photos and tv/movie extras
Image source: SuperIngaMMXXII, Karolina Grabowska
#18
Fine artists are not troubled, antisocial, weird, angry, and can actually be pleasant to be around. Most of us just like to paint.
Image source: prpslydistracted, Rene Asmussen
#19
Mail carrier. We don’t decide whether or not we’re going to deliver your check that day, we just deliver whatever the machines and clerks give to us.
Image source: Odd_Cat_5820, Gustavo Fring
#20
Most lawyers spend a tiny fraction of their work time in court and many lawyers never go to court.
Image source: missuseme, Sora Shimazak
#21
Counselling. We can’t fix everyone. You can’t force someone into counselling. It doesn’t matter how much relatives want someone to do it (eg a wife forces a husband or mother forces a child to go) unless they want to, there is nothing we can do. They need to be willing to engage. Even then it’s not a fix all, for example with bereavement you won’t stop being sad, we just give you tools to learn to carry on with your new normal.
Image source: Doggybook25
#22
I’m in mental healthcare…so…*gestures to everything*
Image source: Smellmyupperlip, cottonbro studio
#23
Scientist who does animal testing. We can’t just do experiments that we want to. We have to get ethical approval for it first and then report back to the ethics committee every year. Violating animal ethics will get you placed in prison.
Journals that we publish in (because we MUST publish) will reject your paper if they suspect ethics violations.
People doing the experiments don’t enjoy hurting animals and there are no meta-studies assessing the impact of conducting animal studies on mental well-being.
Most of the studies I’ve seen in the lab I’m at and others I’ve worked in are very necessary research. Addiction studies, sleep studies, pain studies, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s studies. You’re not going to get better drugs and surgeries without it being successfully performed in animals first. And no, cell studies and computer models are nowhere good enough to replace all animal studies.
Image source: Physical-Primary-256
#24
That office people just chat and drink coffee all day, whereas for some office jobs it might be true its definitely not true for mine.
Image source: Cosmopolitan93, Jopwell
#25
As an automotive mechanic I’d really like it if people didn’t try to lowball me on literally everything and accuse me of being a swindler with zero proof. In my experience most actual scumbag mechanics are actually very charismatic and friendly and lull people into a false sense of trust. Mechanics get all sorts of accusations hurled their way and there is rarely any actual basis for it since the average customer can’t tell good work from bad.
I worked at a dealership where the parts markup was less than 10% and we undercharged customers constantly. We were still accused of being scalpers, or at least too expensive for no reason, with the usual reasoning being that our officially licensed dealership was not as cheap as a private shop ran by a 27 year old guy who opened it after apprenticing for 3 years and dealt in stolen parts.
Image source: PckMan, Andrea Piacquadio
#26
Design engineers don’t engineer things to fail. They engineer things to last a minimum lifespan for a minimum cost. Sometimes we do that job well enough to convince you that it failed on purpose, but the reality is that a failed product will *never* make us look successful at our job.
Also, yes. We could have given you a much better product. It just would have cost more than you would be willing to pay.
Image source: Revenge_of_the_Khaki, ThisIsEngineering
#27
All water whether it be toilet water, dishwater, shower water etc. goes to the same place. Doesn’t matter what it’s used for, it all goes to the sewer.
Image source: kpeterson159, Anna Shvets
#28
Most American opera singers aren’t really that fancy. Most grew up middle class. The biggest fakes in our industry are Joyce di Donato and Thomas Hampson. They grew up in the Midwest. They use fake accents and are horrible at trying to give masterclasses. It’s incredibly common in American voice from the collegiate level to the big leagues. You’ll be talking to a professor with a chic British accent, then discover they were born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey and have never gone to the UK. Tons of fakes and scammers.
Image source: Gladysfartz, Victor Freitas
#29
Already, I’ll bite. I’m former Air Force Intel, 14NX. Laser guided bombs and bombs of any type are not pinpoint accurate. There will always be some sort of deviation whether it be 200 feet or 1500. Even dumb bombs are not accurate with the on-board bomb calculator that most bombers have.
Pilots are f*****g tiny. I could have qualified to be a fighter pilot because I’m 5’ 9”. Pilots are also some of the biggest nerds out there since you need to be an officer to fly and all officers have some sort of college degree; even those going into OTC.
Military grade quality advertisements are not what you think. Military grade means made by the cheapest bidder and low quality. The quality is only good enough to be picked up by a 18 year old kid and not break.
Humvees suuuuuuuuuck. The AC barely works, it leaks more than a geriatric alcoholic with a badder infection, and the armor is non-existant.
Most of us don’t fly. My line of work was talking to English speaking locals and drawing up maps for soldiers in the field to use. (Lots of villages that have “disappeared.”)
The Middle East isn’t all deserts. There’s actually a lot of farms and a number of (somewhat) friendly people. One of our translators was actually a guy from north Lebanon who played a lot of video games. He was a big fan of Fallout.
T-55 is a better tank than the M60’s we still had in service. Not because of their features or gun or armor; M60 is superior there, but the T-55 was most likely to start up and work first try every try.
Image source: JMoc1
#30
I’m an electrician and it’s not only a pliers and a screwdriver we use all day.
Image source: Civil-Shame-2399, Ksenia Chernaya
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