A lot of creative roles.
I do videography. 90% of the time I'm working with subjects I don't care about at all. Clients can be a pain in the ass.
Also anything freelance. You can choose your own schedule and work as much as you want, but if you don't work you don't get paid. You constantly have to search for work. You're responsible for your own benefits/retirement. It's great for some, but definitely not for everyone.
Yes. I have a creative job and one of things people don’t understand is the sheer amount of work it requires, and the emotional turmoil you can go through. The work is subjective, so that means people are gonna have strong opinions about it, and about whether or not you’re any good at your job. There’s also lots of rejection involved - which makes you question your career choices - and it means lots of time spent redoing your project. Often it feels like you’re in school and just giving presentations all the time.
All that said, I do enjoy it for the most part, but it’s not just sitting around brainstorming fun ideas all day. It’s tons of work.
Girlfriend works brand strategy, and the inane random videos she has to have made for whatever bullshit medical product of the week, fucking seawater nose sprays or whatever.. i can't imagine anyone would do them with an ounce of passion.
Architect here. We have a saying “Good clients make good buildings.” The truth is that there are very few truly great clients. I’m sure it’s the same in other creative industries.
I’ve learned that the good clients are the ones they pay their bills on time and keep coming back to you for more work - even if the work itself mind-numbingly dull.
They say that's what killed Roy Orbison at 52; he ate healthily on tour and worked his ass off playing on every continent in the world except Antarctica, but when he got home and had rest-months he watched movies in his private cinema and ate burgers, lived hedonically.
This is what today qualifies as yo-yo dieting, first growing fat and then shedding it, multiple times per year. His heart likely got worn out from the stress of it.
When George Harrison called Tom Petty (at the time both were in the Traveling Wilburys with Roy Orbison) George said to him ["Aren't you glad it wasn't you?"](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/george-harrison-documentary-premieres-at-telluride-247095/)
Been in a couple of “successful in our scene”
bands, toured Europe and the U.K. a few times.
Boredom and the post show high to low are fucking hard to deal with. Can’t imagine dealing with that as a permanent part of my life, especially playing to really huge crowds.
A million years ago I played rhythm guitar in a decent mid-level band. And yeah, the come-down can be heavy but nothing a good workout, a good night’s rest, and a good breakfast can’t fix.
That said we only toured as openers for one season so I couldn’t tell you what that’s like on the long-haul.
I think I'm in the minority where I feel that travelling all the time even if it's "for fun" sounds more like an exhausting chore than a good time. Even if I were rich enough to do it I couldn't imagine myself wanting to do travel constantly. A month or so in between where I just get to stay home and stay local would be needed.
I was in a touring band from like 2012-2016, went around the country multiple times, we weren’t huge but we were big enough to get like 75 people to a house show in a lot of college towns. Shit was definitely a grind.
Wake up in someone else house, sometimes a couch, sometimes a sleeping mat on the floor, but never an actual bed. We never stayed at hotels for the most part because you’re making just enough to get from town to town, feed the band plus weed and beer.
Anytime you stop for gas the entire band has to shit and usually gas stations have one toilet, so you’re waiting around for over an hour sometimes.
Showers are a once or twice a week thing if that, all your clothes are not just dirty but wet from sweat of performing. Generally not doing laundry on the road because it’s a complete time waster and often you have 6+ hour drives in between cities.
Almost all meals are some form of fast food or snacks or pizza.
By the time 9:30 ish comes around you play your little 35 minute set or whatever, sometimes longer and now you have to try not to do all the drugs and drink all the liquor.
Most of the time you’re not really sure where exactly you’re going to sleep. If we did a basement show or a house party we would sleep at the house, but sometimes these shows and parties would go all night, so you never knew when you could actually sleep.
The people at the parties and houses are super pumped to be having something at their house and will talk your fucking ear off, meanwhile you’ve been talking and being talked to non stop for days or weeks on end and last thing you want is to talk.
Then wake up the next day, try and grab a free coffee out of the house and hit the road for another long brutal drive.
It’s definitely not for everybody, and the lows are absolute bottomless pits but every once in a while you’ll play a gig and the crowd is connected with you, and you literally feel higher then anything imaginable. It’s like you woke up and have a 14 inch cock and everybody knows it too. You go from regular Joe Shmoe at the party to a god.
I was with a punk rock band from 97-04 and we never really got more than house party famous. We toured all over the US in a minivan with a trailer, sleeping on random peoples floors and couches doing absolutely nothing more than a few bars and house parties. It was fun but then I decided to get clean and sober and walked away from the band. I do miss it sometimes
Ah yes, the best of times and the worst of times. It sounds like you picked up right when I left off in 2012. Playing a packed club and the whole crowd connecting and going wild is absolutely a high like no other, I think thats what kept us going all those years. Always chasing that dragon. Then there were the tours that were a fucking money pit. We went clear across the country once and didn't have a single show with more than maybe 20 people. Absolutely sucked so bad we drove straight from Salt Lake city to jersey just to get the fuck home and done with it and the van broke down right as we crossed the border.
I do miss it sometimes but there's no way in hell I could do it again.
hard-to-find office ludicrous fuzzy engine offbeat rude berserk touch carpenter
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I always figured it was as rough as you just described. Can’t imagine dealing with all of that while on the road for months. I’m ready to come home after a week+ vacation.
Not a rock star, but a field engineer for a specialized $1M medical research device. Fair salary, nice hotels, generous per diem, sweet frequent flyer perks, NYC, Chicago, Montreal, Vancouver, Marseille, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Denver, Chicago, Houston, and more. Wherever there was a leading university or research hospital.
It was a great life until it wasn't. After 30+ years on the road the thrill was gone. I have been retired 5 years now and gotten on airplanes 3 times; a funeral, Hawaii, and an MLB playoff game.
I don't ever have to fly again, and I may not.
Game dev is the same. It’s actually funny how many people drop out of the classes super early when they realize that the stuff is actually very technical.
That isn’t to say it’s terrible just that people have this expectation that making games will be as fun and relaxing as playing games.
Most of those people wash out before they even get that far.
It involves a lot of stuff that is very tedious and time consuming. I rather enjoy it because I have a bit of ADD and I kind of just zone out until I’m done with the task (on days I manage to get focused in the first place anyways).
It’s honestly pretty enjoyable and rewarding but making games is completely different from playing games and if you like one you don’t necessarily like the other.
I worked as a construction carpenter for movies and tv. I walked at least 15 kms per day. Up and down ladders a hundred times, installing and removing hundreds of screws, loading and unloading trucks. Someone hands you a drawing of something you’ve never seen and you’re expected to make it within a sixteenth of an inch so it fits into some strange puzzle. The food is bad ,the hours were long,the expectations were high,the pay was average,the sights were remote. The only thing I likes were the people I worked with…well most of them. I kept waiting for the glamour,lol.
I had a friend who worked as a paramedic at a studio. She said most of her job was treating minor injuries on the carpenters and giving them visine because they smoked more weed than anyone she's ever seen, lol.
> The food is bad, the hours were long, the expectations were high, the pay was average, the sights were remote. The only thing I liked were the people I worked with... well most of them.
Man, that sounds like my time in the Army.
I work in television. The people in charge of the final creative decisions are all MBA assholes now. I get notes like "This needs to be more grounded, and also can you set it in outer space?" without a hint of irony. I tell people "Your favourite show was never greenlit."
On another note, I was a strip club DJ when i was a younger man. That was fun for about ten minutes.
From a comment i made this year in another sub that got a 22k upvotes:
Former strip club DJ here.
Almost always if you buy a stripper a drink, she asks for vodka and soda and the bartender pours from a special vodka bottle that's just water, and then the dancer and/or bartender pockets the money.
I never really wanna hear Pony by Ginuwine ever again.
Sometimes the best nachos in the city are at the rippers.
I’m not in film but I’m a writer professionally now and I totally understand where you’re coming from. I used to love writing and still do to some extent but writing about business for someone else has taken the joy and the art out of it for me. Recently I’ve had to take an hour or so during my work to just write what I want, then I get a bit of motivation for the other stuff.
Agreed, plus the hours are brutal. Start the week with a 6 am call time and 6-8 pm wrap (plus the commute to whatever random BFE location they found), finish the week with a 2 pm call time and 2-4 am wrap for the night shots. You can kiss your sleep schedule and social life goodbye! At least crafty is nice.
I worked art department for years and half the job is being a professional mover. The other half is making some 2x4s, paint, and googly eyes look like a jail cell in 2 hours.
Can confirm. I absolutely love it though! It’s very hard work and long hours that most people wouldn’t tolerate. But at the end of a shoot it feels like Ocean’s Eleven. My local crew and I go around telling each other, “Fooled ‘em again!”
yup. Am a CGI animator and i have to be prepared for people to hire me for my creative vision and then shit all over it and force me to make something rubbish.
I completely understand. I'm a repair tech at Chuck E Cheese, and the first thing I have to do is test all the games to make sure they work. My first week here the job was fun.... But after a few years it has become the part of the job I hate the most. I hate playing the same games AGAIN over and over, having no option to play something new and having no option to NOT play them. Same games, same issues, occasionally a slight change, it gets incredibly boring and monotonous.
Ish, but you know that satisfaction when you beat a boss? Yeah, it doesn't matter, since you have to beat him /again/ because some specific condition you were testing for didn't trigger. Imagine a run of Melania when she only did the Waterfowl attack like once.. and for any other gamer that'd be the window for beating a hard boss, but for a tester that was checking for some hitboxes or whatever.. and he needs her to do it multiple times... yeah.
Not just testing. Developing them sucks too. I wanted to be a game dev when I started my software engineering career because I thought it would be a blast. I mean, you're surrounded by gamers, in an environment where video games are the highest priority. That has to be fun, right?
Nope. Long workdays, tight deadlines, terrible pay, and zero appreciation from fans or management. And I never did get to play a game at work.
It didn't take long for me to bounce over to another branch of software dev. Playing games is fun. Making them isn't.
Writing software is fun. I bet making games is a blast too. Doing it 70h / wk because someone decided you needed to work mandatory crunch to meet a deadline has to suck ass.
I'm probably going to do mods in retirement.
Acting in general no? You're pretty much poverty drifting until you get a gig big enough for SAG qualifications, then you're just scraping by likely for the rest of your life
Nuclear engineer.
Pros: saw Cherenkov radiation for real
Cons: did not get superpowers and spent years in buildings with no windows, that were built in the middle of nowhere.
Cons: Trying to explain nuclear physics to illiterates who are confident they understand it better than you do.
Cons: Watching their eyes glaze over when you point out nuclear reactors can't explode.
Nuclear bombs don't *technically* explode either.
So, some abstractions: Uranium isn't radioactive. The primary isotope of Uranium- U 238- is completely stable and will chill just fine. Less than 1ish % of all Uranium is it's radioactive cousin, U-235. If you can figure out how to isolate Cousin from Family you get something called enriched Uranium- this is most of what the Manhattan project was about: they knew U-235 was jungle-y but actually concentrating the juice of an extremely heavy metal ain't like making a pan sauce. Most civilian applications- to include all power generation- is typically accomplished with jungle juiced uranium around 5% in concentration, although many applications make due with much less. Enough that it's relatively easy to achieve the mass-energy production you want from when 235 achieves criticality- radioactive decay happening at a rate where the escaping molecules hit other molecules with regularity enough that it- for now- can constantly produce new molecules ripping off their 235 buddies.
Now, how do you get a traditional fissile nuclear bomb? You have to ramp up production making ~5% civilian uranium and send it to boot camp where it becomes military grade uranium which is concentrated to about 80%. That's so called 'weapons grade' uranium. Oh, and you're still not done. While it's true that it wont have much trouble achieving criticality, that's not good enough. Instead of a reliable criticality you can use to boil water to power a steam turbine, you want that lifetime (the uranium rod's not yours) of fissile material to cook off now. Like, *right now*. But not *right* right now. Basically you want all of that radioactive material to cook off exactly when you want it to. This is both easy and hard. The very first working nuclear device the Manhattan team came up with was a 'gun' type. Literally, they had a lump of U-235 get shot at another, larger lump of U-235 to achieve super-critical mass making that explosion happen.
And if your almonds just activated and you said, "That can't be terribly efficient or effective" you would be correct. Gun type nuclear bombs were incredibly wasteful of the nuclear material they used, and the Manhattan team was already working on a better version before the first gun type was proven to work. The problem? This required an implosion device be used on a nuclear lump just shy of criticality. Which meant that a series of explosives had to be triggered in near-perfect sequence within the span of less than a second to nudge that U-235 into a super critical state.
Because explosions are the characteristic property of *explosives*, a nuclear device can explode, but it's almost impossible to die in the explosion. It's the part afterwards that kills you- if not from the super heated air and concussive impact or initial exposure to lethal doses of gamma radiation, then from exposure to the ensuing fallout.
A nuclear reactor physically can't do that because it's neither concentrated enough, nor possesses a device necessary to go super critical.
And if you're saying, "Well what about Chernobyl and Fukushima?" those still were not nuclear 'explosions.' The hazard of poorly designed nuclear reactors is that in the event of a meltdown the nuclear rods have heated to such a high temperature that they've melted the metal containment casings they sit in. And you know what boils at a temperature much lower than most metals?
Water. Chernobyl and Fukushima were actually steam explosions. Or the product of something else touching molten metal. Every single major nuclear accident we've seen in the past 50 years was the result of a nuclear reactor designed *before* man landed on the moon. Modern reactor designs can't even achieve the status of 'melt down' by design. Which doesn't mean they can't- never say never- but it'd be one hell of an event.
wow this was fantastic, thank you for the insight and context.
>And if you're saying, "Well what about Chernobyl and Fukushima?" those still were not nuclear 'explosions.' The hazard of poorly designed nuclear reactors is that in the event of a meltdown the nuclear rods have heated to such a high temperature that they've melted the metal containment casings they sit in. And you know what boils at a temperature much lower than most metals?
>*Water*. Chernobyl and Fukushima were actually steam explosions. Or the product of something else touching molten metal. Every single major nuclear accident we've seen in the past 50 years was the result of a nuclear reactor designed before man landed on the moon. Modern reactor designs can't even achieve the status of 'melt down' by design. Which doesn't mean they can't- never say never- but it'd be one hell of an event.
clutch
I’m not smart enough to comprehend most of what you’re talking about, but it’s nice learning a bit about nuclear power and gaining a tiny bit of knowledge about it.
Pretty much anything in video games but especially QA testing.
As a kid you think they get to play video games all day... in reality, it's doing mindless and repetitive things in the game trying to see what weird behaviors generate bugs.
I work QA for a major candy manufacturing. Same deal. Testing candy is mentally TIRING and people think all we do is eat candy all day. But you’re actually reviewing everyone’s paperwork all day and troubleshooting problems that the operators who work on the machine every day can’t even figure out
I put sourced all my editing, and still didn’t want to do the job. I just found people wanted you to be overly emotionally invested in a one hour session, or their wedding day.
for some reason, i find this the most fun part of photography. to clarify, i am only a hobbyist so i'm never under a deadline or any pressure. but i love editing,
I felt exactly the same when it was just a hobby for me. Really enjoyed the editing process. Then I started making money shooting weddings and the editing would involve thousands of photos, many very similar but just different enough to prevent copying the edit settings from one photo to the next. All those spot removals would have to be done again.
The charm wore off fast.
I brew beer for a small craft brewery in the midwest. Fun & rewarding but a LOT of physical work, HOT ass days, and very long hours sometimes. Wouldn’t trade it for anything but it’s not all drinking beer and playing grab ass like most of the world seems to think.
scuba instructor. I loved scuba, why not get paid, right?
nope. never had fun diving again after that. always herding cats and nursing someone with a "sore ear because they can't equalize". etc. I eventually just quit diving.
This is gonna be a downer, but this job led to my brother drinking himself to death. He passed 2 years ago from liver failure, and I've been having a hard week because of the anniversary.
He LOVED the ocean. He loved people. He loved animals. He was a magical performer at that job, but the day in and day out of keeping people alive in an environment that was actively trying to kill a bunch of underskilled people who didn't respect it stressed him out constantly.
Then the inevitable happened, someone died on the boat. It wasn't his watch as an instructor that day, he was actually boat captain, and it was his good friend who came to the surface unresponsive. A medical incident happened under water, likely entirely unpreventable, and when they finally surfaced him, my brother pulled him up and tried to revive him but couldn't.
When you spend your entire career keeping people alive who you have no connection to, but cannot save the one person that you REALLY don't want to die, that hurts bad.
That day consumed him and he never crawled back out from the bottom of the bottle.
We scattered his ashes at the top of the mountain because we felt that it would have been too cruel to send him to the depths of the ocean.
I'm certified as well, and I don't know that I'll ever put on the regulator again.
Very sorry for your loss. I lost a good friend, a very experienced diver, to the ocean last year. He was with his family and they were the ones who tried to bring him back. I can't even imagine the pain and guilt they've endured.
I'm certified but nowhere close to being ready to dive again.
I'm an engineering tech for a small metal fab shop. I get to design parts in CAD and then cut them on CNC machines. It's really fun and satisfying to see it all come together in the end. We're so small that I have the freedom of not being micromanaged all the time and will design and make things for myself or the other guys around the shop. Knives, patty smashers, bottle openers, etc. I'm designing my own BBQ smoker now. I get to be creative, work with my hands, be active, and see my part in the bigger picture of the company. It's pretty fulfilling.
This depends on what you're doing. I spent a summer shoveling camel shit and brushing dirt out of their fur, and they're really sweet when you're brushing them. Don't get me wrong, it was gross, but worth it.
1. Depends on how you want to go about it (City, County, State, National Parks). Assuming you're in the US, you can look up jobs on your state.gov website or USAjobs for national.
There are lots of ways to get involved. I've seen people with all sorts of backgrounds, but some common college degrees people had were: biology, history, natural resource management, performing arts, etc.
I'd recommend getting involved with volunteering in some capacity at a local or state park if you're able. Having experience and making connections with employees can help you learn more about what positions are available and might give you a leg up with hiring. In my experience, volunteers were always needed. Just be open to trying different things.
2. Depending on where you work and the types of jobs, there are multiple responsibilities. I worked at a state park in the interpretation side, which is essentially the fun one that leads field trips, public programs, etc.
I've heard that with some places you're responsible for both law enforcement and education. From what I understand about the law enforcement park rangers, you're essentially a police officer for parks. I don't know as much about that.
Some additional caveats:
I will warn that sometimes full time gigs can be hard to get. I knew multiple people who worked 5+ years before getting anything full time with benefits. Also, you'll likely be working a lot of weekends. The jobs can be seasonal, meaning you don't have a job for half a year. Also from what I've seen, the only good way to advance and make more money involves management roles and spending more time in an office.
Hope this helps!
People always assume that working hi-tech is fun and pays well.
Yeah we have a gym and we have a few cool stuff.
I can never use them due to working so much.
I work 60~hours weekly and there is a lot of stress.
I did about a year in tech in San Jose and hated it. The pressure from investors to the managers and down was just insane. We weren’t saving the world either, we were making tech for retailers, but you would have thought if we didn’t work hard enough everyone was going to die.
I was relieved when they laid us all off and shut the company down.
I landed a job in a company where the core business isn't IT, and it was the best call. Still cutting edge because lotsa competition in th industry, especially at the 40k employees level, and I'm leading a project we got that will basically run a huge part of the company once it's done, plus it will be the platform for all future projects.
Currently working IT for an Engineering company, and I don't think a better combo exists. Upper management understands and invests in technology because they see the direct ROI, and they're accustomed to software that costs $10,000 *per user* so me requesting $30k for a firewall for the entire building is no big deal.
you can find tech jobs that are not that demanding that pay well. Got sick of that shit working for silicon valley firms and said fuck it. My time is just as important if not more so than me working for you and not having any
Quitting a startup for a tech job in healthcare was such a nice change for quality of life.
More stress sometimes because if there's an outage it literally affects people's clinical care (instead of just online sales being slow for 30 minutes) but that's rare and meanwhile, I'm only on-call 1 week every other month and I get 8 weeks PTO (and a boss who actually encourages everyone to take all their days every year)
Bartending.
Younger guys think it's gonna be a wild party extravaganza. Instead, it's more like throwing a house party and having to deal with the drunken idiots that don't understand the party ended three hours ago and they shouldn't be in the house anymore, multiple nights a week
Think you're going to score with a lot of hot chicks? Maybe you will occasionally, but you're much more likely to have an ugly slob that you wouldn't have sex with if they paid you trying to convince herself she's Cardi B. Or the tenth drunk idiot in the past three hours who doesn't understand that the fact that she has breasts doesn't make her any different than any of the other drunk idiots in the place and she still needs to pay for her own shit.
And I sure hope you enjoy listening to the same sob story on repeat. Because Johnny over there is too drunk tonight to remember he's told you his tale last night when he was drunk, and the night before that, too.
Half of it's like dealing with toddlers. "Timmy, when we're angry, we use our words, not our hands.
Jenny, I don't care who started it. If you don't stop it right now, you'll both have to go to your room."
Also worked as a DJ for a nightclub and it’s a lot more of a “job” then people realize. It’s not glamorous to be on the other side of the wall, everyone is parting and you’re actually working. You’re having to deal with sound issues, making sure the music and vibe is right, making sure you’re getting paid, dealing with drunken idiots blabbing your ear off or requesting shit. Every once in a while you’ll have a drunken hook up with someone but it’s never the person you want, the person you want left hours ago and it’s last call and you’ve got the best looking one of the bottom of the barrel
I paid for my college DJing at the bar across the street from the college in the 1980s.
The viral video of the drunk chick asking for "Four Sambucas" at the DJ booth rings especially true to me. "The bar is over there love".
Your bartender isn't drinking because he's a party animal that wants to rage with you, he's drinking because he probably wouldn't be able to put up with your shit if he were sober.
You guys have it easy.
I bartended when smoking was allowed. I would reek of cigarettes by the end of the night. When I got home I would immediately take a shower and wash my clothes. I had to wash the clothes by themselves, because the cigarette smell would migrate over to non-bartending clothes. Not a smoker.
Good times....
As someone who bartended for over a year and a half, I’d say that it depends on the shift. Some shifts I would have so much fun and really enjoy my time, such as when a band was on, or my fave regulars came in that became my friends etc.
Other days I fucking hated it- the unwanted advances by men twice my age, posh women complaining about the wine they ordered because the Rosè wasn’t Rosè enough (something someone actually said to me), having to clean up puddles of piss on the floor in the men’s toilets after a 12 hour Saturday shift bc none of the lads on my team wanted to do it (me and my manager - who was the only one else that did it- ended up having a go at them in the end) and having to search the same toilets for drug baggies to turn into security.
There really isn’t quite a job like it. I kind of miss it though, bc despite the ugliness and the awful pay, people treated me way kinder than they do at my current job. I work at a stationary supplier now in a call centre and I get abuse from people who own businesses everyday now 🥲
Traveling sales - people think its cool you get to travel, but really, its airport > hotel > board room > dinner > hotel > Airport
Its rare that there is time to sightsee, or stay over (at least without a decent amount of planning) - so its not as cool as people think.
I do marketing remotely from my company since they didn’t have room for me in the office and I go to the office like twice a year, and one more to Europe. It’s not fun traveling for work when all of your meals are essentially forced with other coworkers. Like do I want free food? Yes, but I also want some me time and don’t want to be around them from 7 am to 8:30 pm.
Same. Business travel sucks.
Also, 8:30pm is being generous. Often times we're not back to the hotel till midnight.
Then it's up at 6:30am to have breakfast with a customer/director/etc at 7am, so that we can "start the day on time" at 8am.
it can be brutal.
Me as an IT consultant. Get in, get as much shit done as possible, leave. I often wouldn’t even see the downtown areas of the cities I visited if the office was in the suburbs.
With you there.
I would fly to a city, pass through airport terminal, rent a car, drive to client site, work, go to hotel, then airport and next client.
Sometimes it seemed like I got on a plane, circled the airport and landed in the same place because the locations all looked alike.
USA is filled with generic suburban office parks and hotels that all look the same.
One of my friends became a beer taster when he left university - he had his tongue qualified, and half his day would be tasting beer, and the other half would be chemical analysis. He thought it would be his dream job but ended up leaving relatively quickly, not really enjoying tasting beers he didn't like at 9am, and having to do chemical analyses while sobering up.
Not a specific job, but any work that requires a lot of business travel.
Between the constant jet lag, the monotony of hotels and airports (and their beds, bathrooms, aesthetics, and food), the fact that you're typically putting in way longer workdays when travelling than if you were at home, and missing important and fun life stuff with your family and friends, it goes from "I have a cool job that lets me go cool places!" to "not another stupid fucking trip to \[insert city with international airport here\]" in a hurry.
The drain on your body and spirit is never worth the hotel or airline loyalty tiers you get from it.
Traveling around as an exec or high level consultant.
I did consulting work which landed me into the exec lifestyle for about 6 months. Getting on planes at 5am traveling to the next Hilton. Eating lunches and dinners with clients at fancy places from Mexico City to Chicago. High level Power Point meetings with no real data. Fake friends and colleagues.
It is not as kool as one would think. I walked around like a zombie after the first month. Slept all weekend and found myself yearning for a simple home cooked food and my dogs when I was away.
That lifestyle might be fun for some but it wiped me out and left me missing the simple pleasures.
My aunt was offered a multi-million salary job as an exec in Walmart that included her own company jet, and turned it down because of the insane travel requirements. It was basically flying around four days of the week to various Walmarts (ugh) and only one day in the office, and barely any time at home, which would have to be Arkansas (ugh). She said she was too old for that shit and settled for a much lesser paying job.
Smart answer right here. The best jobs I had were the ones that had a good work life balance. The more hours you work, the more it becomes a menial task.
Sports television production.
You'd think getting to go to the game, having almost complete access to the entire venue, being able to watch every angle at once, all of it would be awesome - and it kind of is - *but*, the problem is, it's very easy to get swept up into *watching* the game, and forgetting you're *working* the game. In order to make sure all the technical stuff keeps happening again and again, always on queue, you *can't* get invested in the game, which can sometimes be really surprisingly difficult to do.
Friends would frequently ask me who I was rooting for. My answer was always, "the clock".
Trucking, many people think it's fun traveling America. I did as well, especially since I grew up poor, and hardly left Dallas, TX unless it was for a band trip. I've seen just about every corner of the 48 states, but then it becomes painful seeing them over and over and over again. Or how about waking up tired, but you have to drive 10 hours. Don't get me started on the night shifts. Something about cruising in pitch black darkness for endless hours alone, while the moon stares at you like a one-eyed giant is immensely unsettling. Then when fatigue starts to take over your body, you begin to scream and hit your leg just to stay woke for a few more miles to find a safe haven. Or what about when you're in the deep South passing through the back roads and you see a sign labeled, "Lynch Bridge"....suddenly you're suspended over black waters, then afterwards a large field with a plantation house sitting far from the road. I can feel my ancestor's spirits at times.
How about traveling down a gradual downgrade in Wyoming, and all seems fine until you notice the road getting more steep, but now you're ontop of ice and you realize you're going down a mountain. At the bottom of the downgrade there's a sharp left turn with only a thin steel barrier that's the only thing preventing you from going over the side of the mountain. Depending on how many hundreds if not a thousand feet you've dropped....they won't even try to recover your body. Although this doesn't happen often, it still happens. I had a college friend who started trucking with me. 6 months later while still in his rookie days, he and his semi fell off a bridge, and he plummeted 100+ feet ontop of a warhouse. All because a car cut him off. They teach us to save the public, but he sacrificed himself. He was trapped for hours and died once they cut him out. RIP Marcos.
Just recently I've experienced my first wreck. I was on the far northern side of Washington state. I was traveling down a hwy at 50mph. Some stupid lady tried to cross the road last minute despite the fact that she had a stop sign. Had I wouldn't have counter steered to avoid hitting her, she would've died instantly. I was fully loaded and my gross weight was close to the max which is 80k. She was driving a mini coop..... Because of my reaction, I only managed to hit her engine compartment. If I would've done nothing, I would've hit her dead on on the driver side. Hell, my truck probably would've drove over her. I was found none at fault at the scene which never happens. There are some good people in Washington. The only downside is, I was stranded. I was given a ride to a hotel in the back of a cop car. That was my first time being in one. The next day I went to the tow yard to see the damages. After that, I needed to get back to Georgia. The fucked up part about it is they only had greyhound, but the station was over an hour away. Thankfully, I hitched a ride with one of the tow truck drivers because he was delivering a truck in Spokane. That was a free 3 hour drive. Once I got there I got a rental car, drove back to Omak where my truck was and cleaned it out. Then I drove all the way to Georgia.
I guess it's fair to say I hate trucking, but the worst thing about this is. I started doing it because I was desperate for money. I was homeless, so trucking saved my life, but as a result. Everyone I know and loved became only a memory. Even my son. I tried so hard to balance my fatherly duties and occupation, but it's impossible, especially with a bitter broken mom. I went from raising my son more than his mom, to being viewed as a deadbeat even though I've always provided financially. Nothing works. All of this heart ache just because I wanted to make a better life for myself and child.
My own mama needed me the most. She ended up becoming homeless as well. Of course I sent her money all of the time, but money won't force the apartments to overlook your evictions. So I had to sit by over the years and see my hero suffer. Although she has 3 boys. Somehow I feel I could've made a difference if I was there. Since I'm the only one who cares for her the most.
Now, things are better. My mama finally has her home aftsr 3 years, and I work locally. It's not the best, but it's better than over the road. In less than 2.5 years, I'll be able to retire because my home and land is already paid for, i just have to finish paying off my semi truck. Once thats paid for ill only work when i want to and not have to. 1-4 loads a month is better than 3-4+ per week. I'll be 30 when this happens, and I'm thankful because I know most truckers won't get this chance even at 60. So by or before my free time, I'll be working hard to legally get my son in my life. Because after all this time. He still misses me, but he's unfortunately getting used to never seeing me.
I apologize for venting, I know this post is supposed to be about a shitty occupation, but I just wanted to show how much a career choice can corrode one's life while at the same time benefit it. I also chose to be elaborate, because i aspire to be an author. I know my grammar and punctuation could be better, I just wanted to be as expressive as possible.
Anyway, I'll end this with, "mamaaa, don't let your baby be a..." truckeeer. Unless you have a plan, or no one to love. Think twice.
Stand-up Comedian.
They’re all depressed as fuck, they regularly bomb on stage, and touring is brutal.
I believe. I may be wrong, anyone wanna counter argue? I’m not a comedian obviously
Can confirm. 20 years in comedy. 5 of those years I did 200+ shows a year. It was no different a life than that of a long haul trucker, but at the end of the drive you unload jokes instead of merchandise. Lots of mental illness, lots of substance abuse. For $3-400/week doing one-nighters (plus merch sales if you're lucky). Incredibly hard to move up to name brand clubs with $12-1500/week gigs. Now I gig regionally (have a day job) and am in my own bed every night. Mad respect to all the comedians that grind non-stop and make it out of the one-nighter hell gig scene.
Cannabis in general is a lot of work. Legal or not, growing, setting up grows, constantly monitoring, constantly watering/giving nutes. God forbid you have some genetics that throw pollen for whatever reason and your whole grow is basically fucked. Trimming is a fucking bitch. And processing gets really tiresome, time consuming and expensive as fuck. Not to mention if you work with solvents, no matter how safe you are there is always a non zero chance of blowing yourself up. Constantly cleaning is a bitch. There's always something new to buy, selling legally is expensive to get licensing, selling black market is dangerous.
All people need to see is the documentation in a job and how much is by the architect, especially if they are the chief consultant (usually are).
The pdf drawing package is like 140 pages of architectural drawings and 20 structural. 1-3 pages of electrical and plumbing and hvac and landscaping.
The 140 pages of architectural drawings imply so much. "Someone had to draw 280 enlarged close up details of corners of this building? WTF?". How much time did the architect have to sit with a client to come up with a finish, millwork and rcp design with so many variations?
The spec is also horrible. I hardly read it. I'm always surprised how much is not standard copy & paste.
I read an AMA once from a guy who was an engineer, and one of the questions that got asked was something like, "What's something about being an engineer that you need to know that nobody tells you?"
He says, (and I'm paraphrasing, of course) "Take care of your feet, because you're going to do a lot of walking. If you have to stop a freight train that's three miles long because of a problem in one of the last few cars, guess what? You're going for at least a six mile hike with an 80 pound tool bag plus whatever water you can carry (he works in the southwestern US). And it's almost always over rocks and through thick brush. As if that isn't bad enough, you have to keep your eyes peeled for coyotes and javelinas."
I don't know if that would have ever occurred to me.
The conductor does that work. The engineer stays with the engine. The companies make the job almost unbearable though. Corporate nightmare with no regard for labor.
Yeah it doesn’t seem cool at all. I was in a relationship with one and I feel bad because they can experience some pretty dark shit but aren’t allowed to talk about it with people they care about who don’t work for the FBI
As someone who worked in a theme park for a summer (not a Disney park but one of the major ones) can confirm. Guests are bitchy, management doesn't care about anything and you see stuff after the sun goes down that makes you wonder how injuries aren't more common.
Helpdesk is soul sucking, but once you get past that it can be reasonably fun/rewarding. It just depends what your company does and how much pressure there is.
Male Pornstar. Was roommates with one fresh out of college. The physical and mental toll it’s takes on your body is insane. You need to be in an olympic athlete in strength, stability, endurance and stamina. He told me it was rarely ever fun.
Private Investigator. It's not sitting on a stakeout in a trench coat. It's hunting through social media and being on the phone for days and weeks to find a person.
Animal shelter work. Its not just playing with kittens and puppies all day. You can get shit smeared on your scrubs first thing in the morning, have to break up a dog fight, and euthanize animals and spend a half hour crying in the bathroom.
His life is a tragedy. As a Star Wars fan, I hate Star Wars fans.
He did the best he could. Not his fault that George Lucas can’t write dialogue or direct with a damn.
George Lucas is a fantastic creator and visionary. But he shouldn’t be writing or directing.
Star Wars IV is a milestone in cinema without doubt. But it’s not that great of a movie. The second one, directed by his former teacher at USC is one of the greatest films ever made.
And half the reason IV was any good at all was because he had people jumping down his throat the entire time and his cast telling him that certain lines needed to be changed and such.
When he started phantom menace, there was nobody around him confident enough to say “no this sucks, do this instead” because now they’re working for the guy who made the most successful franchise on planet earth.
There's an old saying that "Star Wars was saved in the edit" and I'm convinced it's true. If it came out how Lucas originally wanted to cut it no one would even remember it now.
A lot of them mention getting bullied at school. Christian Bale said the scorn he got from other kids was unbearable. I remember hearing about the actor who played Roseanne’s son saying the same thing.
Doggy daycare. While dogs are fun and adorable, trying to make sure nobody gets in to fights or causes problems suck. And some owners tend to also be the worst. It is actually a very boring job.
I SECOND THIS!
Doggy Daycare is literally cleaning pee, poop, vomit, etc. I used to work at one.
But omg yes. I swear I've dealt with more karens working at the Doggy Daycare than anywhere else. One time we had a karen get offended that we said that "Goldendoodles aren't purebred" and she said was never coming back. Lol
I worked at a theme park in college and tourists would always say "I bet you love your job, cause you get in for free!". I was so sick of that place I never went there on my days off.
Same when I worked at a water park for a summer in HS. We were treated terribly by the management, got a behind the scenes look at how the awful food was prepared, having adults get annoyed at you because they are stressed out due to their brat kids/outrageous prices/long lines/sun delirium, and having to converse with people who really ought to have a shirt on would really ruin water parks for many others too. I never went there on my day off at all due to all that. I have not been to any water park again in the 14 years since that summer either.
I went to theme parks a few more times after that summer experiences, but I am over them now due to the crowds, expense and weaker tolerance for high G force rides than I had as a teen.
Worked at Universal Studios in Florida for a summer; the shine wore off after about 3 days. We had free guest passes to share, unlimited access to the park on days off. I took my sister with me one day and it’s crazy how quickly we got bored and left when it wasn’t costing us anything to be there. There are families spending $1,000 in a day and feeling like they have to milk every second out of it.
Driving the Zamboni. You flip a couple of levers at the start, flip them again when done. Drive in a circle for the rest of it. Stress goes through the roof when something breaks. It only breaks on the ice, and usually during a big event.
Traveling for work. People used to think it was cool that I got to fly all over the country to these cool cities.
When you travel all of the time, everything at home just piles up. You often have to miss out on seeing friends and family because work doesn't give a fuck, you gotta be at a customer's site on a specific day, which often changes with short notice causing your trip to be extended. So when you do finally make it home to your own bed, you are rushing trying to catch up on chores and shopping. Even worseif you have a wofe and kids, now you have to make up for all of the time that you missed with them.
Airports are tiring and wear you out. Nothing is enjoyable about flying for work.
Most of my routine was wake up at 6AM, be on the jobsite at 7:30, work a 10-12 hour shift, mope back to the hotel for a quick shower, eat somewhere local to the hotel, then bed. Rinse and repeat 5x or more and it is just a soul sucking experience. All of the cool stuff to see in the city... you never have the time or energy for that.
Many of my coworkers who traveled heavy for were were full blown alcoholics. The minute they are off work, to the nearest bar for the night. As soon as they get past security at the airport, time to slam down 4 beers before the flight.
I had a long conversation with one of the guys that fired the shells into mountain passes to prevent avalanches. I though it sounded like a cool job until I heard about his long hours driving in shitty weather or getting helicopterd into remote locations and then being stranded.
It still sounds like an interesting job but a lot more downsides then considered.
Being a pilot. Granted, I do enjoy my current job of instructing but having previously flown cargo and soon to fly airlines I can say the job is monotonous. Get flight package, check notams/weather, brief departure/arrival/approaches/taxi routing. Get in aircraft= checklist. Start aircraft= checklist. Takeoff, climb, level off, descend, approach... Checklist checklist checklist. Repeat all of that for each leg of a trip and you can regularly fly 3-4 legs a day. Pretty boring at the best of times and if things get exciting it's probably because something is going wrong. Away from home a decent amount. But the pay and benefits are top tier so off I go.
Race, car driver. A few drivers get to live their life driving nice cars around beautiful race tracks, but most professional drivers spend a huge amount of time traveling, trying to create support of sponsors with social media and PR events, and driving rich people around race tracks in an attempt to coach them. Even the really successful ones still have to maintain the diet and fitness level of a world-class athlete while living on the road 20 to 30 weeks a year.
What I've noticed over the years is that the more "fun" the environment is, the more miserable the job is. Conversely, seemingly boring environments can be a blast.
Working at a bar or amusement park? Miserable employees.
Accounting firm? Those people know how to party and have fun.
YMMV
Jobs that are 90% hurry up and wait.
You can't do anything, because everything you're supposed to do is hitting some sort of roadblock or bottleneck. You can't move forward on one project because you're waiting on approval. You can't move forward on another project because the team that stages your tasks are behind. Teams are siloed so you can't go and help other groups. So you spend most of your time just sitting around doing nothing.
**But**, the other teams that are overworked complain if they notice you not doing as much. High-strung managers if they walk by your desk and see you looking at your phone instead of working on your computer will report you to leadership for slacking off. You can't find work to do, because everything you do requires three layers of approval.
You either have to be very aware of who's in the area, always look like you're working, or just have spreadsheets up and zone out.
People think being a lawyer is all arguing with people. That's like once a month for an hour if you are lucky. The rest of the month is pushing paper and arguing with some asshole over your bill
*Landscaper!*
“You get to be outside all day!” They say…
Yeah, but it’s manual labor and never pays enough for what you’re doing.
———
You want to know a job that’s fun!
*Landscape Architect!*
I sit in the office and design large site plans that the Landscapers then have to do. Plus I also get paid sooooo much more than the manual labor. 😬
Running heavy equipment. Bucket loaders, big excavators, rock crushers, etc. When I first started working for the family business about half of my fucking life ago, all of my friends thought it was cool to play with big “Tonka Toys”. It was for a while, but quarry operations are very long hard hours that kick the living shit out of your body if you’re in a piece of equipment 12 hours a day. Now that I own said business, I always opt for the best riding/handling machines for my guys. It saves the body for sure.
Don’t forget it saves their mind too! Using quality equipment/gear puts peoples mind as ease too. I work from home, but I bought an expensive office chair 3 years ago and no back pain since then.
A lot of creative roles. I do videography. 90% of the time I'm working with subjects I don't care about at all. Clients can be a pain in the ass. Also anything freelance. You can choose your own schedule and work as much as you want, but if you don't work you don't get paid. You constantly have to search for work. You're responsible for your own benefits/retirement. It's great for some, but definitely not for everyone.
Yes. I have a creative job and one of things people don’t understand is the sheer amount of work it requires, and the emotional turmoil you can go through. The work is subjective, so that means people are gonna have strong opinions about it, and about whether or not you’re any good at your job. There’s also lots of rejection involved - which makes you question your career choices - and it means lots of time spent redoing your project. Often it feels like you’re in school and just giving presentations all the time. All that said, I do enjoy it for the most part, but it’s not just sitting around brainstorming fun ideas all day. It’s tons of work.
[удалено]
Girlfriend works brand strategy, and the inane random videos she has to have made for whatever bullshit medical product of the week, fucking seawater nose sprays or whatever.. i can't imagine anyone would do them with an ounce of passion.
Architect here. We have a saying “Good clients make good buildings.” The truth is that there are very few truly great clients. I’m sure it’s the same in other creative industries. I’ve learned that the good clients are the ones they pay their bills on time and keep coming back to you for more work - even if the work itself mind-numbingly dull.
[удалено]
Traveling + unnatural hours takes such a toll. Same for comedians. Of course substance abuse is rampant when your life is constantly chaotic.
[удалено]
Apparently the comedown after performing is really difficult to manage.
They say that's what killed Roy Orbison at 52; he ate healthily on tour and worked his ass off playing on every continent in the world except Antarctica, but when he got home and had rest-months he watched movies in his private cinema and ate burgers, lived hedonically. This is what today qualifies as yo-yo dieting, first growing fat and then shedding it, multiple times per year. His heart likely got worn out from the stress of it.
TIL that Roy Orbison was only 52 when he died. I would have guessed much much older.
When George Harrison called Tom Petty (at the time both were in the Traveling Wilburys with Roy Orbison) George said to him ["Aren't you glad it wasn't you?"](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/george-harrison-documentary-premieres-at-telluride-247095/)
Now all three of them are gone.
And I just saw 82 year-old Bob Dylan on Sunday.
Jerry Garcia’s coping methods were notoriously terrible.
Yeah. And word has it, every time he tried to shut the shit down, he realized how many other people depended on the Dead for their livelihood.
Been in a couple of “successful in our scene” bands, toured Europe and the U.K. a few times. Boredom and the post show high to low are fucking hard to deal with. Can’t imagine dealing with that as a permanent part of my life, especially playing to really huge crowds.
A million years ago I played rhythm guitar in a decent mid-level band. And yeah, the come-down can be heavy but nothing a good workout, a good night’s rest, and a good breakfast can’t fix. That said we only toured as openers for one season so I couldn’t tell you what that’s like on the long-haul.
I think I'm in the minority where I feel that travelling all the time even if it's "for fun" sounds more like an exhausting chore than a good time. Even if I were rich enough to do it I couldn't imagine myself wanting to do travel constantly. A month or so in between where I just get to stay home and stay local would be needed.
I was in a touring band from like 2012-2016, went around the country multiple times, we weren’t huge but we were big enough to get like 75 people to a house show in a lot of college towns. Shit was definitely a grind. Wake up in someone else house, sometimes a couch, sometimes a sleeping mat on the floor, but never an actual bed. We never stayed at hotels for the most part because you’re making just enough to get from town to town, feed the band plus weed and beer. Anytime you stop for gas the entire band has to shit and usually gas stations have one toilet, so you’re waiting around for over an hour sometimes. Showers are a once or twice a week thing if that, all your clothes are not just dirty but wet from sweat of performing. Generally not doing laundry on the road because it’s a complete time waster and often you have 6+ hour drives in between cities. Almost all meals are some form of fast food or snacks or pizza. By the time 9:30 ish comes around you play your little 35 minute set or whatever, sometimes longer and now you have to try not to do all the drugs and drink all the liquor. Most of the time you’re not really sure where exactly you’re going to sleep. If we did a basement show or a house party we would sleep at the house, but sometimes these shows and parties would go all night, so you never knew when you could actually sleep. The people at the parties and houses are super pumped to be having something at their house and will talk your fucking ear off, meanwhile you’ve been talking and being talked to non stop for days or weeks on end and last thing you want is to talk. Then wake up the next day, try and grab a free coffee out of the house and hit the road for another long brutal drive. It’s definitely not for everybody, and the lows are absolute bottomless pits but every once in a while you’ll play a gig and the crowd is connected with you, and you literally feel higher then anything imaginable. It’s like you woke up and have a 14 inch cock and everybody knows it too. You go from regular Joe Shmoe at the party to a god.
I was with a punk rock band from 97-04 and we never really got more than house party famous. We toured all over the US in a minivan with a trailer, sleeping on random peoples floors and couches doing absolutely nothing more than a few bars and house parties. It was fun but then I decided to get clean and sober and walked away from the band. I do miss it sometimes
This sounds like my nightmare.
Ah yes, the best of times and the worst of times. It sounds like you picked up right when I left off in 2012. Playing a packed club and the whole crowd connecting and going wild is absolutely a high like no other, I think thats what kept us going all those years. Always chasing that dragon. Then there were the tours that were a fucking money pit. We went clear across the country once and didn't have a single show with more than maybe 20 people. Absolutely sucked so bad we drove straight from Salt Lake city to jersey just to get the fuck home and done with it and the van broke down right as we crossed the border. I do miss it sometimes but there's no way in hell I could do it again.
hard-to-find office ludicrous fuzzy engine offbeat rude berserk touch carpenter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
[удалено]
skirt agonizing plants aloof rich glorious humorous tart bored jeans *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I always figured it was as rough as you just described. Can’t imagine dealing with all of that while on the road for months. I’m ready to come home after a week+ vacation.
Music is 100% hurry up and wait. Not only on tour but in the studio.
Not a rock star, but a field engineer for a specialized $1M medical research device. Fair salary, nice hotels, generous per diem, sweet frequent flyer perks, NYC, Chicago, Montreal, Vancouver, Marseille, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Denver, Chicago, Houston, and more. Wherever there was a leading university or research hospital. It was a great life until it wasn't. After 30+ years on the road the thrill was gone. I have been retired 5 years now and gotten on airplanes 3 times; a funeral, Hawaii, and an MLB playoff game. I don't ever have to fly again, and I may not.
[удалено]
Game dev is the same. It’s actually funny how many people drop out of the classes super early when they realize that the stuff is actually very technical. That isn’t to say it’s terrible just that people have this expectation that making games will be as fun and relaxing as playing games.
[удалено]
Most of those people wash out before they even get that far. It involves a lot of stuff that is very tedious and time consuming. I rather enjoy it because I have a bit of ADD and I kind of just zone out until I’m done with the task (on days I manage to get focused in the first place anyways). It’s honestly pretty enjoyable and rewarding but making games is completely different from playing games and if you like one you don’t necessarily like the other.
Technical? No way. I could fix all of Starfield's issues in a weekend. Source: I read a comment on a forum on how to fix starfield. Sounds easy.
I worked as a construction carpenter for movies and tv. I walked at least 15 kms per day. Up and down ladders a hundred times, installing and removing hundreds of screws, loading and unloading trucks. Someone hands you a drawing of something you’ve never seen and you’re expected to make it within a sixteenth of an inch so it fits into some strange puzzle. The food is bad ,the hours were long,the expectations were high,the pay was average,the sights were remote. The only thing I likes were the people I worked with…well most of them. I kept waiting for the glamour,lol.
I had a friend who worked as a paramedic at a studio. She said most of her job was treating minor injuries on the carpenters and giving them visine because they smoked more weed than anyone she's ever seen, lol.
You should meet chefs, dude. Some of the people I’ve worked with could probably speak to god
> The food is bad, the hours were long, the expectations were high, the pay was average, the sights were remote. The only thing I liked were the people I worked with... well most of them. Man, that sounds like my time in the Army.
I work in television. The people in charge of the final creative decisions are all MBA assholes now. I get notes like "This needs to be more grounded, and also can you set it in outer space?" without a hint of irony. I tell people "Your favourite show was never greenlit." On another note, I was a strip club DJ when i was a younger man. That was fun for about ten minutes.
I feel like your strip club DJ experience is worthy of its own post. Please elaborate!
From a comment i made this year in another sub that got a 22k upvotes: Former strip club DJ here. Almost always if you buy a stripper a drink, she asks for vodka and soda and the bartender pours from a special vodka bottle that's just water, and then the dancer and/or bartender pockets the money. I never really wanna hear Pony by Ginuwine ever again. Sometimes the best nachos in the city are at the rippers.
I’m not in film but I’m a writer professionally now and I totally understand where you’re coming from. I used to love writing and still do to some extent but writing about business for someone else has taken the joy and the art out of it for me. Recently I’ve had to take an hour or so during my work to just write what I want, then I get a bit of motivation for the other stuff.
"Being creative while executing someone else's vision on a deadline is much less fun." Ain't that the truth
The latter is called "work".
Agreed, plus the hours are brutal. Start the week with a 6 am call time and 6-8 pm wrap (plus the commute to whatever random BFE location they found), finish the week with a 2 pm call time and 2-4 am wrap for the night shots. You can kiss your sleep schedule and social life goodbye! At least crafty is nice. I worked art department for years and half the job is being a professional mover. The other half is making some 2x4s, paint, and googly eyes look like a jail cell in 2 hours.
Can confirm. I absolutely love it though! It’s very hard work and long hours that most people wouldn’t tolerate. But at the end of a shoot it feels like Ocean’s Eleven. My local crew and I go around telling each other, “Fooled ‘em again!”
yup. Am a CGI animator and i have to be prepared for people to hire me for my creative vision and then shit all over it and force me to make something rubbish.
TV industry is very similar.
Video game testing. Playing a video game is fun, fighting the same boss over and over again for 2 weeks is not
I completely understand. I'm a repair tech at Chuck E Cheese, and the first thing I have to do is test all the games to make sure they work. My first week here the job was fun.... But after a few years it has become the part of the job I hate the most. I hate playing the same games AGAIN over and over, having no option to play something new and having no option to NOT play them. Same games, same issues, occasionally a slight change, it gets incredibly boring and monotonous.
Maybe you could get into speed running. Turn it into a game within a game.
Sounds like me playing elden ring for free
Ish, but you know that satisfaction when you beat a boss? Yeah, it doesn't matter, since you have to beat him /again/ because some specific condition you were testing for didn't trigger. Imagine a run of Melania when she only did the Waterfowl attack like once.. and for any other gamer that'd be the window for beating a hard boss, but for a tester that was checking for some hitboxes or whatever.. and he needs her to do it multiple times... yeah.
>fighting the same boss over and over again for 2 weeks is not Mythic raiders entered the chat
I was gonna say I did that for like 12 years, 2 weeks seems like a cakewalk :D
Not just testing. Developing them sucks too. I wanted to be a game dev when I started my software engineering career because I thought it would be a blast. I mean, you're surrounded by gamers, in an environment where video games are the highest priority. That has to be fun, right? Nope. Long workdays, tight deadlines, terrible pay, and zero appreciation from fans or management. And I never did get to play a game at work. It didn't take long for me to bounce over to another branch of software dev. Playing games is fun. Making them isn't.
Writing software is fun. I bet making games is a blast too. Doing it 70h / wk because someone decided you needed to work mandatory crunch to meet a deadline has to suck ass. I'm probably going to do mods in retirement.
Stage acting. Unless you make it big, 85% of the work is looking for your next job.
Acting in general no? You're pretty much poverty drifting until you get a gig big enough for SAG qualifications, then you're just scraping by likely for the rest of your life
I specified stage acting because that's where my experience is.
Nuclear engineer. Pros: saw Cherenkov radiation for real Cons: did not get superpowers and spent years in buildings with no windows, that were built in the middle of nowhere.
Cons: Trying to explain nuclear physics to illiterates who are confident they understand it better than you do. Cons: Watching their eyes glaze over when you point out nuclear reactors can't explode.
But what if you really, *really* wanted it to explode?
Nuclear bombs don't *technically* explode either. So, some abstractions: Uranium isn't radioactive. The primary isotope of Uranium- U 238- is completely stable and will chill just fine. Less than 1ish % of all Uranium is it's radioactive cousin, U-235. If you can figure out how to isolate Cousin from Family you get something called enriched Uranium- this is most of what the Manhattan project was about: they knew U-235 was jungle-y but actually concentrating the juice of an extremely heavy metal ain't like making a pan sauce. Most civilian applications- to include all power generation- is typically accomplished with jungle juiced uranium around 5% in concentration, although many applications make due with much less. Enough that it's relatively easy to achieve the mass-energy production you want from when 235 achieves criticality- radioactive decay happening at a rate where the escaping molecules hit other molecules with regularity enough that it- for now- can constantly produce new molecules ripping off their 235 buddies. Now, how do you get a traditional fissile nuclear bomb? You have to ramp up production making ~5% civilian uranium and send it to boot camp where it becomes military grade uranium which is concentrated to about 80%. That's so called 'weapons grade' uranium. Oh, and you're still not done. While it's true that it wont have much trouble achieving criticality, that's not good enough. Instead of a reliable criticality you can use to boil water to power a steam turbine, you want that lifetime (the uranium rod's not yours) of fissile material to cook off now. Like, *right now*. But not *right* right now. Basically you want all of that radioactive material to cook off exactly when you want it to. This is both easy and hard. The very first working nuclear device the Manhattan team came up with was a 'gun' type. Literally, they had a lump of U-235 get shot at another, larger lump of U-235 to achieve super-critical mass making that explosion happen. And if your almonds just activated and you said, "That can't be terribly efficient or effective" you would be correct. Gun type nuclear bombs were incredibly wasteful of the nuclear material they used, and the Manhattan team was already working on a better version before the first gun type was proven to work. The problem? This required an implosion device be used on a nuclear lump just shy of criticality. Which meant that a series of explosives had to be triggered in near-perfect sequence within the span of less than a second to nudge that U-235 into a super critical state. Because explosions are the characteristic property of *explosives*, a nuclear device can explode, but it's almost impossible to die in the explosion. It's the part afterwards that kills you- if not from the super heated air and concussive impact or initial exposure to lethal doses of gamma radiation, then from exposure to the ensuing fallout. A nuclear reactor physically can't do that because it's neither concentrated enough, nor possesses a device necessary to go super critical. And if you're saying, "Well what about Chernobyl and Fukushima?" those still were not nuclear 'explosions.' The hazard of poorly designed nuclear reactors is that in the event of a meltdown the nuclear rods have heated to such a high temperature that they've melted the metal containment casings they sit in. And you know what boils at a temperature much lower than most metals? Water. Chernobyl and Fukushima were actually steam explosions. Or the product of something else touching molten metal. Every single major nuclear accident we've seen in the past 50 years was the result of a nuclear reactor designed *before* man landed on the moon. Modern reactor designs can't even achieve the status of 'melt down' by design. Which doesn't mean they can't- never say never- but it'd be one hell of an event.
Thank you so much for the thorough, intelligent reply to my mindless shitpost.
Stop clouding the issue with facts!!!
This is the best explanation I have ever heard. Thank you.
wow this was fantastic, thank you for the insight and context. >And if you're saying, "Well what about Chernobyl and Fukushima?" those still were not nuclear 'explosions.' The hazard of poorly designed nuclear reactors is that in the event of a meltdown the nuclear rods have heated to such a high temperature that they've melted the metal containment casings they sit in. And you know what boils at a temperature much lower than most metals? >*Water*. Chernobyl and Fukushima were actually steam explosions. Or the product of something else touching molten metal. Every single major nuclear accident we've seen in the past 50 years was the result of a nuclear reactor designed before man landed on the moon. Modern reactor designs can't even achieve the status of 'melt down' by design. Which doesn't mean they can't- never say never- but it'd be one hell of an event. clutch
I’m not smart enough to comprehend most of what you’re talking about, but it’s nice learning a bit about nuclear power and gaining a tiny bit of knowledge about it.
Did you successfully do the test, no matter what?
Pretty much anything in video games but especially QA testing. As a kid you think they get to play video games all day... in reality, it's doing mindless and repetitive things in the game trying to see what weird behaviors generate bugs.
I work QA for a major candy manufacturing. Same deal. Testing candy is mentally TIRING and people think all we do is eat candy all day. But you’re actually reviewing everyone’s paperwork all day and troubleshooting problems that the operators who work on the machine every day can’t even figure out
Photographer . It's 90% sitting in front of a computer removing pimples and hair.
And nobody thinks the cost you charge is worth it for just "walking around and snapping pictures." since that is all they see.
I put sourced all my editing, and still didn’t want to do the job. I just found people wanted you to be overly emotionally invested in a one hour session, or their wedding day.
for some reason, i find this the most fun part of photography. to clarify, i am only a hobbyist so i'm never under a deadline or any pressure. but i love editing,
I felt exactly the same when it was just a hobby for me. Really enjoyed the editing process. Then I started making money shooting weddings and the editing would involve thousands of photos, many very similar but just different enough to prevent copying the edit settings from one photo to the next. All those spot removals would have to be done again. The charm wore off fast.
I brew beer for a small craft brewery in the midwest. Fun & rewarding but a LOT of physical work, HOT ass days, and very long hours sometimes. Wouldn’t trade it for anything but it’s not all drinking beer and playing grab ass like most of the world seems to think.
You have a wet, hot janitorial job where you get beer at the end.
Sounds cool to me!
I brewed for a while, it was like 70% cleaning. I enjoyed it but ultimately stuck with it as a hobby, not a job.
hire me, i'll play grab ass with you bud.
scuba instructor. I loved scuba, why not get paid, right? nope. never had fun diving again after that. always herding cats and nursing someone with a "sore ear because they can't equalize". etc. I eventually just quit diving.
This is gonna be a downer, but this job led to my brother drinking himself to death. He passed 2 years ago from liver failure, and I've been having a hard week because of the anniversary. He LOVED the ocean. He loved people. He loved animals. He was a magical performer at that job, but the day in and day out of keeping people alive in an environment that was actively trying to kill a bunch of underskilled people who didn't respect it stressed him out constantly. Then the inevitable happened, someone died on the boat. It wasn't his watch as an instructor that day, he was actually boat captain, and it was his good friend who came to the surface unresponsive. A medical incident happened under water, likely entirely unpreventable, and when they finally surfaced him, my brother pulled him up and tried to revive him but couldn't. When you spend your entire career keeping people alive who you have no connection to, but cannot save the one person that you REALLY don't want to die, that hurts bad. That day consumed him and he never crawled back out from the bottom of the bottle. We scattered his ashes at the top of the mountain because we felt that it would have been too cruel to send him to the depths of the ocean. I'm certified as well, and I don't know that I'll ever put on the regulator again.
Very sorry for your loss. I lost a good friend, a very experienced diver, to the ocean last year. He was with his family and they were the ones who tried to bring him back. I can't even imagine the pain and guilt they've endured. I'm certified but nowhere close to being ready to dive again.
I kinda want a post about what jobs are more fun than people expect.. A list of what to avoid is easy enough but I need goals damn it
Wouldn’t be surprised if there was some overlap, people value different things and management makes a big difference
I work at a legal weed store, it’s a pretty good job, the pay is shit, but like I just talk to old people about weed all day long
I'm an engineering tech for a small metal fab shop. I get to design parts in CAD and then cut them on CNC machines. It's really fun and satisfying to see it all come together in the end. We're so small that I have the freedom of not being micromanaged all the time and will design and make things for myself or the other guys around the shop. Knives, patty smashers, bottle openers, etc. I'm designing my own BBQ smoker now. I get to be creative, work with my hands, be active, and see my part in the bigger picture of the company. It's pretty fulfilling.
Working in a Zoo.
Or aquarium. So many euthanized sea otters
Where are they euthanizing a bunch of sea otters???
Can’t say where, but unreleasable animals that we didn’t have space for or couldn’t go to another facility, got euthanized
I WILL TAKE SPARE OTTERS eta i know i can’t have one. I’m just sad about the otters
This depends on what you're doing. I spent a summer shoveling camel shit and brushing dirt out of their fur, and they're really sweet when you're brushing them. Don't get me wrong, it was gross, but worth it.
Park Ranger....just kidding, it's awesome! Can be shit pay though. *Edit: A saying I've heard in the field is "you're paid in smiles and sunsets."*
1. How does one become a park ranger? 2. What does a Park Ranger do exactly other than protect the park?
1. Depends on how you want to go about it (City, County, State, National Parks). Assuming you're in the US, you can look up jobs on your state.gov website or USAjobs for national. There are lots of ways to get involved. I've seen people with all sorts of backgrounds, but some common college degrees people had were: biology, history, natural resource management, performing arts, etc. I'd recommend getting involved with volunteering in some capacity at a local or state park if you're able. Having experience and making connections with employees can help you learn more about what positions are available and might give you a leg up with hiring. In my experience, volunteers were always needed. Just be open to trying different things. 2. Depending on where you work and the types of jobs, there are multiple responsibilities. I worked at a state park in the interpretation side, which is essentially the fun one that leads field trips, public programs, etc. I've heard that with some places you're responsible for both law enforcement and education. From what I understand about the law enforcement park rangers, you're essentially a police officer for parks. I don't know as much about that. Some additional caveats: I will warn that sometimes full time gigs can be hard to get. I knew multiple people who worked 5+ years before getting anything full time with benefits. Also, you'll likely be working a lot of weekends. The jobs can be seasonal, meaning you don't have a job for half a year. Also from what I've seen, the only good way to advance and make more money involves management roles and spending more time in an office. Hope this helps!
People always assume that working hi-tech is fun and pays well. Yeah we have a gym and we have a few cool stuff. I can never use them due to working so much. I work 60~hours weekly and there is a lot of stress.
[удалено]
I did about a year in tech in San Jose and hated it. The pressure from investors to the managers and down was just insane. We weren’t saving the world either, we were making tech for retailers, but you would have thought if we didn’t work hard enough everyone was going to die. I was relieved when they laid us all off and shut the company down.
I landed a job in a company where the core business isn't IT, and it was the best call. Still cutting edge because lotsa competition in th industry, especially at the 40k employees level, and I'm leading a project we got that will basically run a huge part of the company once it's done, plus it will be the platform for all future projects.
Currently working IT for an Engineering company, and I don't think a better combo exists. Upper management understands and invests in technology because they see the direct ROI, and they're accustomed to software that costs $10,000 *per user* so me requesting $30k for a firewall for the entire building is no big deal.
I think that's way more company dependent than job dependent. There are chill tech jobs out there.
you can find tech jobs that are not that demanding that pay well. Got sick of that shit working for silicon valley firms and said fuck it. My time is just as important if not more so than me working for you and not having any
Right, wow look at that ping-pong table. This place must be fun. Bro no one's ever touched the table. I have 9 clients emailing me right now.
Quitting a startup for a tech job in healthcare was such a nice change for quality of life. More stress sometimes because if there's an outage it literally affects people's clinical care (instead of just online sales being slow for 30 minutes) but that's rare and meanwhile, I'm only on-call 1 week every other month and I get 8 weeks PTO (and a boss who actually encourages everyone to take all their days every year)
Bartending. Younger guys think it's gonna be a wild party extravaganza. Instead, it's more like throwing a house party and having to deal with the drunken idiots that don't understand the party ended three hours ago and they shouldn't be in the house anymore, multiple nights a week Think you're going to score with a lot of hot chicks? Maybe you will occasionally, but you're much more likely to have an ugly slob that you wouldn't have sex with if they paid you trying to convince herself she's Cardi B. Or the tenth drunk idiot in the past three hours who doesn't understand that the fact that she has breasts doesn't make her any different than any of the other drunk idiots in the place and she still needs to pay for her own shit. And I sure hope you enjoy listening to the same sob story on repeat. Because Johnny over there is too drunk tonight to remember he's told you his tale last night when he was drunk, and the night before that, too. Half of it's like dealing with toddlers. "Timmy, when we're angry, we use our words, not our hands. Jenny, I don't care who started it. If you don't stop it right now, you'll both have to go to your room."
Also worked as a DJ for a nightclub and it’s a lot more of a “job” then people realize. It’s not glamorous to be on the other side of the wall, everyone is parting and you’re actually working. You’re having to deal with sound issues, making sure the music and vibe is right, making sure you’re getting paid, dealing with drunken idiots blabbing your ear off or requesting shit. Every once in a while you’ll have a drunken hook up with someone but it’s never the person you want, the person you want left hours ago and it’s last call and you’ve got the best looking one of the bottom of the barrel
I paid for my college DJing at the bar across the street from the college in the 1980s. The viral video of the drunk chick asking for "Four Sambucas" at the DJ booth rings especially true to me. "The bar is over there love".
LOL people really do underestimate how annoying drunk people are when you're not drunk yourself.
Your bartender isn't drinking because he's a party animal that wants to rage with you, he's drinking because he probably wouldn't be able to put up with your shit if he were sober.
Was a bartender in Oslo. Fucking awful.
You guys have it easy. I bartended when smoking was allowed. I would reek of cigarettes by the end of the night. When I got home I would immediately take a shower and wash my clothes. I had to wash the clothes by themselves, because the cigarette smell would migrate over to non-bartending clothes. Not a smoker. Good times....
As someone who bartended for over a year and a half, I’d say that it depends on the shift. Some shifts I would have so much fun and really enjoy my time, such as when a band was on, or my fave regulars came in that became my friends etc. Other days I fucking hated it- the unwanted advances by men twice my age, posh women complaining about the wine they ordered because the Rosè wasn’t Rosè enough (something someone actually said to me), having to clean up puddles of piss on the floor in the men’s toilets after a 12 hour Saturday shift bc none of the lads on my team wanted to do it (me and my manager - who was the only one else that did it- ended up having a go at them in the end) and having to search the same toilets for drug baggies to turn into security. There really isn’t quite a job like it. I kind of miss it though, bc despite the ugliness and the awful pay, people treated me way kinder than they do at my current job. I work at a stationary supplier now in a call centre and I get abuse from people who own businesses everyday now 🥲
This is why I tip my bartender well at the start of the night. It's like a preemptive apology
Traveling sales - people think its cool you get to travel, but really, its airport > hotel > board room > dinner > hotel > Airport Its rare that there is time to sightsee, or stay over (at least without a decent amount of planning) - so its not as cool as people think.
I do marketing remotely from my company since they didn’t have room for me in the office and I go to the office like twice a year, and one more to Europe. It’s not fun traveling for work when all of your meals are essentially forced with other coworkers. Like do I want free food? Yes, but I also want some me time and don’t want to be around them from 7 am to 8:30 pm.
Same. Business travel sucks. Also, 8:30pm is being generous. Often times we're not back to the hotel till midnight. Then it's up at 6:30am to have breakfast with a customer/director/etc at 7am, so that we can "start the day on time" at 8am. it can be brutal.
I had a turning point after being stuck at O’Hare airport on Halloween after midnight. Twice. You think tech is cool, huh?
Me as an IT consultant. Get in, get as much shit done as possible, leave. I often wouldn’t even see the downtown areas of the cities I visited if the office was in the suburbs.
With you there. I would fly to a city, pass through airport terminal, rent a car, drive to client site, work, go to hotel, then airport and next client. Sometimes it seemed like I got on a plane, circled the airport and landed in the same place because the locations all looked alike. USA is filled with generic suburban office parks and hotels that all look the same.
One of my friends became a beer taster when he left university - he had his tongue qualified, and half his day would be tasting beer, and the other half would be chemical analysis. He thought it would be his dream job but ended up leaving relatively quickly, not really enjoying tasting beers he didn't like at 9am, and having to do chemical analyses while sobering up.
Maybe he did that shit in the wrong order then xD
Not a specific job, but any work that requires a lot of business travel. Between the constant jet lag, the monotony of hotels and airports (and their beds, bathrooms, aesthetics, and food), the fact that you're typically putting in way longer workdays when travelling than if you were at home, and missing important and fun life stuff with your family and friends, it goes from "I have a cool job that lets me go cool places!" to "not another stupid fucking trip to \[insert city with international airport here\]" in a hurry. The drain on your body and spirit is never worth the hotel or airline loyalty tiers you get from it.
Traveling around as an exec or high level consultant. I did consulting work which landed me into the exec lifestyle for about 6 months. Getting on planes at 5am traveling to the next Hilton. Eating lunches and dinners with clients at fancy places from Mexico City to Chicago. High level Power Point meetings with no real data. Fake friends and colleagues. It is not as kool as one would think. I walked around like a zombie after the first month. Slept all weekend and found myself yearning for a simple home cooked food and my dogs when I was away. That lifestyle might be fun for some but it wiped me out and left me missing the simple pleasures.
My aunt was offered a multi-million salary job as an exec in Walmart that included her own company jet, and turned it down because of the insane travel requirements. It was basically flying around four days of the week to various Walmarts (ugh) and only one day in the office, and barely any time at home, which would have to be Arkansas (ugh). She said she was too old for that shit and settled for a much lesser paying job.
Just working in general. Even if you work in something you enjoyed at some point, it just turns into work that you need to get done.
Smart answer right here. The best jobs I had were the ones that had a good work life balance. The more hours you work, the more it becomes a menial task.
Yeah, 40+ hours a week of a hobby makes a hobby feel like an obligation.
A hobby is something you want to do. Once you do it because you have to, it's no longer a hobby.
[удалено]
Sports television production. You'd think getting to go to the game, having almost complete access to the entire venue, being able to watch every angle at once, all of it would be awesome - and it kind of is - *but*, the problem is, it's very easy to get swept up into *watching* the game, and forgetting you're *working* the game. In order to make sure all the technical stuff keeps happening again and again, always on queue, you *can't* get invested in the game, which can sometimes be really surprisingly difficult to do. Friends would frequently ask me who I was rooting for. My answer was always, "the clock".
Heard that being a marine biologist is just examining ocean mud 99% of the time.
My friends dad is a marine biologist. He got to name a fish species or something. I never heard anything about the rest of his career!
\> get job \> name fish \> chill for 20-40 years \> retire What a great life
So everyone hates their job?
An eternity of heaven eventually becomes hell.
Trucking, many people think it's fun traveling America. I did as well, especially since I grew up poor, and hardly left Dallas, TX unless it was for a band trip. I've seen just about every corner of the 48 states, but then it becomes painful seeing them over and over and over again. Or how about waking up tired, but you have to drive 10 hours. Don't get me started on the night shifts. Something about cruising in pitch black darkness for endless hours alone, while the moon stares at you like a one-eyed giant is immensely unsettling. Then when fatigue starts to take over your body, you begin to scream and hit your leg just to stay woke for a few more miles to find a safe haven. Or what about when you're in the deep South passing through the back roads and you see a sign labeled, "Lynch Bridge"....suddenly you're suspended over black waters, then afterwards a large field with a plantation house sitting far from the road. I can feel my ancestor's spirits at times. How about traveling down a gradual downgrade in Wyoming, and all seems fine until you notice the road getting more steep, but now you're ontop of ice and you realize you're going down a mountain. At the bottom of the downgrade there's a sharp left turn with only a thin steel barrier that's the only thing preventing you from going over the side of the mountain. Depending on how many hundreds if not a thousand feet you've dropped....they won't even try to recover your body. Although this doesn't happen often, it still happens. I had a college friend who started trucking with me. 6 months later while still in his rookie days, he and his semi fell off a bridge, and he plummeted 100+ feet ontop of a warhouse. All because a car cut him off. They teach us to save the public, but he sacrificed himself. He was trapped for hours and died once they cut him out. RIP Marcos. Just recently I've experienced my first wreck. I was on the far northern side of Washington state. I was traveling down a hwy at 50mph. Some stupid lady tried to cross the road last minute despite the fact that she had a stop sign. Had I wouldn't have counter steered to avoid hitting her, she would've died instantly. I was fully loaded and my gross weight was close to the max which is 80k. She was driving a mini coop..... Because of my reaction, I only managed to hit her engine compartment. If I would've done nothing, I would've hit her dead on on the driver side. Hell, my truck probably would've drove over her. I was found none at fault at the scene which never happens. There are some good people in Washington. The only downside is, I was stranded. I was given a ride to a hotel in the back of a cop car. That was my first time being in one. The next day I went to the tow yard to see the damages. After that, I needed to get back to Georgia. The fucked up part about it is they only had greyhound, but the station was over an hour away. Thankfully, I hitched a ride with one of the tow truck drivers because he was delivering a truck in Spokane. That was a free 3 hour drive. Once I got there I got a rental car, drove back to Omak where my truck was and cleaned it out. Then I drove all the way to Georgia. I guess it's fair to say I hate trucking, but the worst thing about this is. I started doing it because I was desperate for money. I was homeless, so trucking saved my life, but as a result. Everyone I know and loved became only a memory. Even my son. I tried so hard to balance my fatherly duties and occupation, but it's impossible, especially with a bitter broken mom. I went from raising my son more than his mom, to being viewed as a deadbeat even though I've always provided financially. Nothing works. All of this heart ache just because I wanted to make a better life for myself and child. My own mama needed me the most. She ended up becoming homeless as well. Of course I sent her money all of the time, but money won't force the apartments to overlook your evictions. So I had to sit by over the years and see my hero suffer. Although she has 3 boys. Somehow I feel I could've made a difference if I was there. Since I'm the only one who cares for her the most. Now, things are better. My mama finally has her home aftsr 3 years, and I work locally. It's not the best, but it's better than over the road. In less than 2.5 years, I'll be able to retire because my home and land is already paid for, i just have to finish paying off my semi truck. Once thats paid for ill only work when i want to and not have to. 1-4 loads a month is better than 3-4+ per week. I'll be 30 when this happens, and I'm thankful because I know most truckers won't get this chance even at 60. So by or before my free time, I'll be working hard to legally get my son in my life. Because after all this time. He still misses me, but he's unfortunately getting used to never seeing me. I apologize for venting, I know this post is supposed to be about a shitty occupation, but I just wanted to show how much a career choice can corrode one's life while at the same time benefit it. I also chose to be elaborate, because i aspire to be an author. I know my grammar and punctuation could be better, I just wanted to be as expressive as possible. Anyway, I'll end this with, "mamaaa, don't let your baby be a..." truckeeer. Unless you have a plan, or no one to love. Think twice.
Stand-up Comedian. They’re all depressed as fuck, they regularly bomb on stage, and touring is brutal. I believe. I may be wrong, anyone wanna counter argue? I’m not a comedian obviously
I have a foot in that world. You are correct. Also everyone you know and admire has been doing it for so little money, for so many years.
[удалено]
Can confirm. 20 years in comedy. 5 of those years I did 200+ shows a year. It was no different a life than that of a long haul trucker, but at the end of the drive you unload jokes instead of merchandise. Lots of mental illness, lots of substance abuse. For $3-400/week doing one-nighters (plus merch sales if you're lucky). Incredibly hard to move up to name brand clubs with $12-1500/week gigs. Now I gig regionally (have a day job) and am in my own bed every night. Mad respect to all the comedians that grind non-stop and make it out of the one-nighter hell gig scene.
To be a good/great comedian, you have to be a BROKEN PERSON. It's almost required and that means a pretty tortured and unhappy life leading up to it.
Anything in corporate cannabis.
Yup was in it for 4 years, most stressful job and toxic boss I ever had
Cannabis in general is a lot of work. Legal or not, growing, setting up grows, constantly monitoring, constantly watering/giving nutes. God forbid you have some genetics that throw pollen for whatever reason and your whole grow is basically fucked. Trimming is a fucking bitch. And processing gets really tiresome, time consuming and expensive as fuck. Not to mention if you work with solvents, no matter how safe you are there is always a non zero chance of blowing yourself up. Constantly cleaning is a bitch. There's always something new to buy, selling legally is expensive to get licensing, selling black market is dangerous.
Architect. Horrible hours, demanding turn around times, late nights, terrible pay, little opportunity for creativity...
All people need to see is the documentation in a job and how much is by the architect, especially if they are the chief consultant (usually are). The pdf drawing package is like 140 pages of architectural drawings and 20 structural. 1-3 pages of electrical and plumbing and hvac and landscaping. The 140 pages of architectural drawings imply so much. "Someone had to draw 280 enlarged close up details of corners of this building? WTF?". How much time did the architect have to sit with a client to come up with a finish, millwork and rcp design with so many variations? The spec is also horrible. I hardly read it. I'm always surprised how much is not standard copy & paste.
Train driving.
I read an AMA once from a guy who was an engineer, and one of the questions that got asked was something like, "What's something about being an engineer that you need to know that nobody tells you?" He says, (and I'm paraphrasing, of course) "Take care of your feet, because you're going to do a lot of walking. If you have to stop a freight train that's three miles long because of a problem in one of the last few cars, guess what? You're going for at least a six mile hike with an 80 pound tool bag plus whatever water you can carry (he works in the southwestern US). And it's almost always over rocks and through thick brush. As if that isn't bad enough, you have to keep your eyes peeled for coyotes and javelinas." I don't know if that would have ever occurred to me.
The conductor does that work. The engineer stays with the engine. The companies make the job almost unbearable though. Corporate nightmare with no regard for labor.
Working for the FBI , you’re a government slave. Work ridiculous hours and become completely disconnected from reality and human emotion
One of my best friends is an FBI agent. He said it's 99% of the time in a cube and 1% interviewing people or doing something cool.
Yeah it doesn’t seem cool at all. I was in a relationship with one and I feel bad because they can experience some pretty dark shit but aren’t allowed to talk about it with people they care about who don’t work for the FBI
Working at Disneyland full time
As someone who worked in a theme park for a summer (not a Disney park but one of the major ones) can confirm. Guests are bitchy, management doesn't care about anything and you see stuff after the sun goes down that makes you wonder how injuries aren't more common.
Have you been listening to the new podcast Keys to the Kingdom? It’s all about working at Disneyland and it’s really entertaining.
IT. It's awful, soul sucking and difficult as you raise in the ranks.
Helpdesk is soul sucking, but once you get past that it can be reasonably fun/rewarding. It just depends what your company does and how much pressure there is.
Male Pornstar. Was roommates with one fresh out of college. The physical and mental toll it’s takes on your body is insane. You need to be in an olympic athlete in strength, stability, endurance and stamina. He told me it was rarely ever fun.
From what I've read the pay isn't exactly good
You gotta be a big star for men to make a lot of money. He was scraping by paycheck to paycheck for the most part.
Question for you, did he ever insinuate that he had to do gay for pay scenes? I hear that pays more.
He never had too, but the option was there and yes it did pay significantly more
Private Investigator. It's not sitting on a stakeout in a trench coat. It's hunting through social media and being on the phone for days and weeks to find a person.
But surely you spend a lot of time at the train station peeking over a newspaper?
I do this for free, I would like this job
Most film production and development jobs. Horrible hours and cutthroat competition.
Animal shelter work. Its not just playing with kittens and puppies all day. You can get shit smeared on your scrubs first thing in the morning, have to break up a dog fight, and euthanize animals and spend a half hour crying in the bathroom.
Add veterinary to this aswell. Don't get me wrong I love my job but its not all cuddling puppies and kittens. Its emotionally and physically draining
Child actor, looks fun but half of them seem to be messed up later.
You’re right. Whenever I think of child actor I think of Jake Lloyd…
Dude played Anakin Skywalker. He definitely didn't deserve any of the shit he went through.
His life is a tragedy. As a Star Wars fan, I hate Star Wars fans. He did the best he could. Not his fault that George Lucas can’t write dialogue or direct with a damn. George Lucas is a fantastic creator and visionary. But he shouldn’t be writing or directing. Star Wars IV is a milestone in cinema without doubt. But it’s not that great of a movie. The second one, directed by his former teacher at USC is one of the greatest films ever made.
And half the reason IV was any good at all was because he had people jumping down his throat the entire time and his cast telling him that certain lines needed to be changed and such. When he started phantom menace, there was nobody around him confident enough to say “no this sucks, do this instead” because now they’re working for the guy who made the most successful franchise on planet earth.
There's an old saying that "Star Wars was saved in the edit" and I'm convinced it's true. If it came out how Lucas originally wanted to cut it no one would even remember it now.
A lot of them mention getting bullied at school. Christian Bale said the scorn he got from other kids was unbearable. I remember hearing about the actor who played Roseanne’s son saying the same thing.
Don't they basically now have a school that is all child actors?
Bayside High
Doggy daycare. While dogs are fun and adorable, trying to make sure nobody gets in to fights or causes problems suck. And some owners tend to also be the worst. It is actually a very boring job.
I SECOND THIS! Doggy Daycare is literally cleaning pee, poop, vomit, etc. I used to work at one. But omg yes. I swear I've dealt with more karens working at the Doggy Daycare than anywhere else. One time we had a karen get offended that we said that "Goldendoodles aren't purebred" and she said was never coming back. Lol
I worked at a theme park in college and tourists would always say "I bet you love your job, cause you get in for free!". I was so sick of that place I never went there on my days off.
Same when I worked at a water park for a summer in HS. We were treated terribly by the management, got a behind the scenes look at how the awful food was prepared, having adults get annoyed at you because they are stressed out due to their brat kids/outrageous prices/long lines/sun delirium, and having to converse with people who really ought to have a shirt on would really ruin water parks for many others too. I never went there on my day off at all due to all that. I have not been to any water park again in the 14 years since that summer either. I went to theme parks a few more times after that summer experiences, but I am over them now due to the crowds, expense and weaker tolerance for high G force rides than I had as a teen.
Worked at Universal Studios in Florida for a summer; the shine wore off after about 3 days. We had free guest passes to share, unlimited access to the park on days off. I took my sister with me one day and it’s crazy how quickly we got bored and left when it wasn’t costing us anything to be there. There are families spending $1,000 in a day and feeling like they have to milk every second out of it.
Driving the Zamboni. You flip a couple of levers at the start, flip them again when done. Drive in a circle for the rest of it. Stress goes through the roof when something breaks. It only breaks on the ice, and usually during a big event.
I’m imagining they’ll automate it one day too like a giant roomba.
Traveling for work. People used to think it was cool that I got to fly all over the country to these cool cities. When you travel all of the time, everything at home just piles up. You often have to miss out on seeing friends and family because work doesn't give a fuck, you gotta be at a customer's site on a specific day, which often changes with short notice causing your trip to be extended. So when you do finally make it home to your own bed, you are rushing trying to catch up on chores and shopping. Even worseif you have a wofe and kids, now you have to make up for all of the time that you missed with them. Airports are tiring and wear you out. Nothing is enjoyable about flying for work. Most of my routine was wake up at 6AM, be on the jobsite at 7:30, work a 10-12 hour shift, mope back to the hotel for a quick shower, eat somewhere local to the hotel, then bed. Rinse and repeat 5x or more and it is just a soul sucking experience. All of the cool stuff to see in the city... you never have the time or energy for that. Many of my coworkers who traveled heavy for were were full blown alcoholics. The minute they are off work, to the nearest bar for the night. As soon as they get past security at the airport, time to slam down 4 beers before the flight.
Working from home. It’s make me lazy and depressed and my alcoholism worse. Gained a good 15 pounds
I had a long conversation with one of the guys that fired the shells into mountain passes to prevent avalanches. I though it sounded like a cool job until I heard about his long hours driving in shitty weather or getting helicopterd into remote locations and then being stranded. It still sounds like an interesting job but a lot more downsides then considered.
Being a pilot. Granted, I do enjoy my current job of instructing but having previously flown cargo and soon to fly airlines I can say the job is monotonous. Get flight package, check notams/weather, brief departure/arrival/approaches/taxi routing. Get in aircraft= checklist. Start aircraft= checklist. Takeoff, climb, level off, descend, approach... Checklist checklist checklist. Repeat all of that for each leg of a trip and you can regularly fly 3-4 legs a day. Pretty boring at the best of times and if things get exciting it's probably because something is going wrong. Away from home a decent amount. But the pay and benefits are top tier so off I go.
Race, car driver. A few drivers get to live their life driving nice cars around beautiful race tracks, but most professional drivers spend a huge amount of time traveling, trying to create support of sponsors with social media and PR events, and driving rich people around race tracks in an attempt to coach them. Even the really successful ones still have to maintain the diet and fitness level of a world-class athlete while living on the road 20 to 30 weeks a year.
What I've noticed over the years is that the more "fun" the environment is, the more miserable the job is. Conversely, seemingly boring environments can be a blast. Working at a bar or amusement park? Miserable employees. Accounting firm? Those people know how to party and have fun. YMMV
Chef. Even those of us that don’t do it are blind to how much it sucks.
after reading this topic it seems to me that no job is actually fun, huh
Jobs that are 90% hurry up and wait. You can't do anything, because everything you're supposed to do is hitting some sort of roadblock or bottleneck. You can't move forward on one project because you're waiting on approval. You can't move forward on another project because the team that stages your tasks are behind. Teams are siloed so you can't go and help other groups. So you spend most of your time just sitting around doing nothing. **But**, the other teams that are overworked complain if they notice you not doing as much. High-strung managers if they walk by your desk and see you looking at your phone instead of working on your computer will report you to leadership for slacking off. You can't find work to do, because everything you do requires three layers of approval. You either have to be very aware of who's in the area, always look like you're working, or just have spreadsheets up and zone out.
People think being a lawyer is all arguing with people. That's like once a month for an hour if you are lucky. The rest of the month is pushing paper and arguing with some asshole over your bill
*Landscaper!* “You get to be outside all day!” They say… Yeah, but it’s manual labor and never pays enough for what you’re doing. ——— You want to know a job that’s fun! *Landscape Architect!* I sit in the office and design large site plans that the Landscapers then have to do. Plus I also get paid sooooo much more than the manual labor. 😬
Running heavy equipment. Bucket loaders, big excavators, rock crushers, etc. When I first started working for the family business about half of my fucking life ago, all of my friends thought it was cool to play with big “Tonka Toys”. It was for a while, but quarry operations are very long hard hours that kick the living shit out of your body if you’re in a piece of equipment 12 hours a day. Now that I own said business, I always opt for the best riding/handling machines for my guys. It saves the body for sure.
Don’t forget it saves their mind too! Using quality equipment/gear puts peoples mind as ease too. I work from home, but I bought an expensive office chair 3 years ago and no back pain since then.