You think of an average office job which is way more boring and not even close to as entertaining as the one we’ve seen at the Dunder Mifflin office, and you wonder… What would your dream job be like? Let me get this one for you. Sommelier? Travel photographer? Private investigator? Video game tester? Each has their own vision of what that job would be like, but most definitely, everyone has one.
So let me just tell you that this viral thread on AskReddit may ruin it all. Maybe even in a good way. You see, someone asked “What is an overly romanticized job?” and the people who dedicated their lives to such romantic careers spill all the tea.
The responses may strip them of their accolades, but they also show that the grass is always greener on the other side, and you may as well stick with your job because hey, no job was made perfect.
#1
Working at an animal shelter. Everyone thinks that you get to sit around and love on animals all day, but in reality you are exposed to alot of death and the worst of human nature. And the pay sucks because people just can’t quit it because they want to help.
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#2
Teaching. Yeah you get summers, nights, weekends, and holidays off but it’s the most frustrating, mentally and emotionally draining job I’ve ever had. You aren’t paid enough for what you have to endure.
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#3
Military. It’s 99% standing around waiting to hear orders from a bordering-on-inept superior. The paperwork is Neverending. You’ll long periods of time away from home and will probably get divorced. Also, your knees and back will go to sh*t.
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#4
Journalist. Long hours, weekends, holidays, middle of the night. Pay sucks (especially in non-profit journalism) and being so plugged into the news every day is depressing. I worked in journalism for 16 plus years, maybe I did it wrong but never once did I sleep with sources to get information nor did I ever blow some giant story wide open, and worst of all – I met zero super heroes. Tv and movies lied.
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#5
Librarian. It’s not quiet, we don’t read all day, we clean up our fair share of bodily fluids, plunge many toilets, and interact with homeless/mentally ill patrons fairly regularly depending on our location. Sure a bulk of our job is recommending books to readers and coming up with fun programs, but sometimes I feel like a community secretary who had to get a Masters to have any chance of a decent salary. Or a social worker, which I did not sign up for. One day I’m looking up phone numbers for psychics for a man who called around to police stations and threatened to kill cops in our town and making 60 copies for a rude lady who’s rushing to get ready to teach a yoga class and I’m thinking what have I done?! But then the next day I’m getting picture books for an adorable kid and their appreciative mom, or 3D printing a missing piece from one of the board games we lend out instead of having to charge the patron to replace it, or helping a lonely old woman with no children nearby with her phone and having her look at me like I’m a genius, or helping a lady with her sister’s visa so she can come to the US from a war zone (she made it here by the way and the lady told me she loves me for it). I love my job, but it is absolutely exhausting and gross and stressful and scary sometimes.
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#6
Chef. It involves getting screamed at, and it takes a really big person not to pass that down the line to younger chefs. It’s lots of work and lots of expertise with little pay and little appreciation.
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#7
How has this not been said already: Video Game Developer.
So many people want to go into video games thinking they will get to design a game. The reality is 99.9% of people that work on video games get no creative input at all. That just make/place/test assets exactly as they are told. All the while being forced to work 60-70 hours a week in a terrible work environment.
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#8
Fashion.
“Why dont you have your own brand?” “B***h, do I look like I can afford to ship a container of tshirts made in Pakistan for 3 cents to compete with some fashion conglomerate?”
Everything abt fashion sucks…anyone can do it with no degree, pay is sh*t, hours are sh*t, people are b***hy and souless, the industry is shameless and zero concious abt sustainability.
You will work and study very hard to lose a position to a model looking daughter of some rich guy.
Its basically become a profession for rich girls who dont know what to do and like consuming goods.
The very few people who make it, usually do it for reasons other than talent.
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#9
Airline pilot. People think you area like Leonardo Dicaprio in Catch Me if You Can; swaggering through the airport, wearing sunglasses, surrounded by hot flight attendants. In reality, we’re like glorified bus drivers whose job is 1% excitement and 99% absolute boredom just sitting in a cockpit waiting for life to pass by.
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#10
Film worker. Hours are gruelling, production doesn’t give a f*ck about you, good luck spending time with your kids, and most of us are addicts/drunks.
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#11
Private Investigator. I worked for a PI a little bit. It was nothing but sitting in a car watching people who were supposed to be on disability, doing stuff they claim they can’t.
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#12
Video game testing. I had a boyfriend who did it for several years, so I know all too well that it’s a horrible job. You play the same five minutes of game over and over again, hundreds of times (sometimes thousands). The job kinda killed his passion for gaming, and as far as I know, he still doesn’t play anything for fun.
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#13
Ultrasound tech
You don’t look at babies all day.
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#14
Architect. Seems like lots of good romcom boyfriends are architects. In reality, the hours are long, the stress is extremely high, and pay is really poor for a skilled profession.
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#15
EMS(I.E EMTs and Paramedics). We’re not some heros who save lives. Saving lives is about 10 percent of the job. The other 90 percent is dealing with a broken Healthcare system, getting paid minimum wage, dealing with patients who don’t need help and abuse the already broken Healthcare system, and if your lucky working for a company that doesn’t give a sh*t about you.
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#16
Trucking. In over 42+ years I saw the finest warehouses in 43 states and 2 Canadian provinces. There are ZERO shows/movies accurately showing trucking for what it is. It’s a soul sucking exercise in frustration. There are positive aspects in that you can generate a decent paycheck without extensive education or advanced training. All it will cost you is your soul, your friends, your family, and your health.
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#17
Academia. First of all, most people undergrads call “professors” aren’t at actual professors (by rank). And people who aren’t professors are likely not getting paid a whole lot above the poverty line, have few to no benefits, have little to no input on what they teach or how, not to mention having to put up with nonsense I’ve not seen or heard of in any other field. The amount of unpaid labour that goes into getting a single article published is unreal.
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#18
FBI Special Agent.
I dated a woman who was with FBI and she enjoyed what she did most of the time but wow was it dry.
Imagine sitting in a car watching a house for 6 hours then going back to the office and spending a few hours writing a report. Or looking through 10 years of purchase records and receipts that you pulled out of the trash to build a case. Or sitting in a room at midnight listening in on a dude having phone sex with his mistress.
The overwhelming majority of her job was writing reports, status updates, and reviewing financial documents in an office. The hours were terrible, the work seemed boring, and the bureaucracy was thick.
#19
Zookeeper. You spend most of your time cleaning poop and you’re paid like sh*t.
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#20
Writer. You picture yourself at a typewriter in a cabin by a lake, crackling fire in the fireplace, a golden retriever asleep at your feet and a glass of lagavulin in your hand dreaming up the next great American novel. Contrast that to reality where the writing jobs that actually pay the bills usually involve long nights and weekends sitting in a cube farm writing the instructions that come with a toaster that nobody will ever read while your spouse f*cks her coworkers.
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#21
Working in a popular nightclub. Everyone knows you is kind of the fun part.
But everyone parties, you don’t if you want to keep your job. It pays very well but man there are so many downsides.
On holidays, you are there to watch all your friends party but you have to keep it together enough to make it through the rush of customers and by the end of the night you better have the correct amount in the registers or end up flipping the entire bill and ripped a new one for f*cking up.
Fights happen several times a night. Some comical, some really violent. There is blood and even deaths happen.
Bodily fluids everywhere all the time, that comes out of every possible orifice and you come out every night smelling like piss, sh*t, sweat and cigarettes. I would imagine that’s what an orgy smells like.
You lose all sense of time. You get home at 4am and when you wake the world has passed by and you have to get into work again. Days start to blur together, holidays don’t matter because that’s the busiest nights so you celebrate nothing. Weeks turn to months then years. It all goes by in a hangover haze of sleep deprivation.
Drugs are everywhere, with drugs come crack heads that are totally out of their damn minds. I had to fight a guy trying to steal my car while he was having a drug/alcohol fueled episode.
Getting molested. I got groped too many times to care to remember. Both males and females. You never get used to it. I’m an easy going person but man its a horrible feeling when someone grabs your privates without your consent.
Last of all the depression of seeing regulars. Yeah sure regulars can be fun but more than not some are there everyday to drink their problems away. They are about the most depressing people you come by and they will latch on to you because you are conveniently working there every night. You also see a lot of creepers/predators who regularly get in but you can’t pin them with anything because they are good at hiding what they trying to do. I tried to kick out as many as possible and save as many customers as I can but some nights, you know in the back of your head, someone out there is going to have a bad night out on that big dark, fake fog filled dance floor.
That was my time 4 years of working in a popular night club in a huge city basically.
Image source: KanpaiMagpie
#22
Youtuber. I remember reading about how Pewdiepie and a handful of other Youtubers made millions of dollars a few years back and thinking “Oh, cr*p. Now kids are going to think they can easily make big money doing this.” And I was right.
Now I know kids have always wanted fantastical jobs for money and especially for fame. I myself wasted a ton of time imitating martial arts movies and TV shows in hopes of becoming a Power Ranger.
I am not a Youtuber, so please correct me if I’m wrong. But unless you have millions of subscribers who watch every single video you make and share them on their social medias so they get even more views, I doubt you’ll be making those big bucks anytime soon.
Plus, Youtube’s rules or whatever you call them seem to change constantly. You can spend a long time editing a vid to fit their standards only to find that you let one f-bomb slip through. Or maybe they change their policies and that video you made 2 years ago violates the new rules. Whoops! Now you can’t make money from this video. But Youtube can still put ads on it and make money through it.
I know there are many Youtubers who are successful and rich, but I know there are tons more who fail, even if their content isn’t bad. The amount of young people I know who genuinely think they can forsake education and career prospects for Youtube fame is staggering.
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#23
For some reason some of my old coworkers got in their heads that my traveling sales job was whisking me away to exotic places and gourmet meals on the company dime.
No. No no no.
Unless you think Syracuse is basically Paris and eating a poorly wrapped burrito while driving because you don’t have time to stop for lunch between appointments is fine dining, sales is not sexy.
It’s a lot of drinking alone and working late nights in hotels with sh*t internet. If you have a family it’s hard on your partner because they’re taking the kids several nights in a row.
You’ll miss a lot of you don’t have to freedom to schedule around your personal life.
I’m glad I got out.
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#24
Small Business Ownership.
I can’t in a million years recommend it. For most people, they ‘switch’ off at 5pm and go into a mental state that isn’t work. That’s not the case for small business owners. You’re always “On”. For many of us, that also included working 7 days a week in the first few years of opening up shop. Everything is our problem. The toilet is broken. The employees drama. The internet is down. Customer complaints. Inventory. Marketing. Most people have one role & responsibility; not the small business owner! No paid holidays or vacations. No PTO. No “mental health days”. No sick days. I probably work the most hours out of all my corporate friends & family.
Lots of disgruntled employees often get recommendations to “open up their own business”. I always chuckle at those comments. As if opening up your own business means you’ll work less or have less stress. Quite the opposite!
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#25
Touring professional musician.
I’m not talking about the guys on top who fly in private jets and stay in five star hotels although it’s not always easy for them, believe it or not.
I’m talking most of the bands you’ve seen anywhere.
It’s often grueling and lots of running around catching flights (if you’re lucky) or getting in the van or bus at 5:00 am after a sh*tty complimentary breakfast at the hotel where you shared a room with the bass player then driving all day with a break for cr*ppy fast food and getting to the venue just in time for load-in (which you often have to do yourself).
Then there’s sound check and a quick dinner at another fast food chain with no time for a shower before you rush back to play the show.
You put on your stage outfit, which smells like sweat, beer and grime from the last three cities.
After the set you man the merch table and talk to a few fans, sign some CD’s, count the take and try to find wi-fi to catch up on emails, pay bills, etc. Speaking of bills, you count the take from merch and have almost enough for that.
You hang around forever for the venue to pay you. If you’ve got a tour manager, he’ll do a lot of this stuff for you but it’s still a pain.
Good news though. The hotel has laundry machines so you can either get your clothes clean or catch up on sleep – you can only choose one
Get up and do it all again.
Yes, it can be fun but there is a lot of work that goes into it and it’s not always glamorous.
In fact it’s almost never glamorous.
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#26
Freelance Artist.
We often work over the healthy hour limit, constant need of looking for the next project, and you never finish with your studies.
On the other hand, love it and can’t imagine myself doing a different job
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#27
Playing movies at the cinema. Everybody thinks this is a dream job-relax, watch movies, and get paid. Its actually very boring and you do plenty of other stuff.
#28
Geologist.
In school you go camping, learn cool stuff about the earth and get to have all these ideals about saving the world. In a career you manage construction workers who dislike you at best and are often a field b***h to collect contaminated dirt or test soil compaction on construction sites. Good luck getting a job without a very rough field component.
I lucked out and work in mining, and at least get to do fairly interesting work often, but it still is a drag compared to what I thought I’d get to do and the people I went to school with are drowning in rough jobs or unemployed.
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#29
The trades. People on Reddit seem to pitch it as the only sensible career choice, but a lot of them will just destroy your body.
Image source: B***h_Tuna
#30
Working in music. Most of the industry runs on contingent and part time workers. Full time jobs are difficult to get so if you’re one of the others you’re constantly chasing your next gig. During busy parts of the year you’re too busy to have a life and the slower parts of the year you’re broke. I worked in it for 4-5 years, it was a lot of fun though.
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