I’m a big believer that your job has to be fun! I can already hear some of you mumbling, “But work isn’t supposed to be fun—it’s work,” so let me clarify. You spend a third of your day at work which is a huge time investment, so what you do needs to be engaging and challenging, something that you’re passionate about, and a vocation that makes you grow as a person,
Of course, money is always an issue, but in the long run, you should strive to find a purposeful calling that also pays well. However, many jobs that people think are very enjoyable turn out to be fun only on paper and can be complete nightmares in real life. Reddit users have opened up about the dark sides of their seemingly ‘fun’ jobs in a viral thread on r/AskReddit, and we’ve collected some of their best answers.
Have a read, upvote the answers that you agree with, and let us know if we’ve shattered any illusions about some of these vocations. Want to share the main pros and cons at your own job? Drop us a comment at the bottom of this article.
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Working in an animal shelter. For sure, it’s probably less intense than zookeeping, but the amount of people who apply or volunteer expecting to come in and play with cute puppies all day is absurd. We’re basically animal maids. You deal with animals of all sorts of behavioral and developmental stages [pooping] and pissing everywhere and then you look over and this dog named Chumbawumba swimming in his water bowl so you gotta fill that up six times and dry his kennel out and then you go and mop up the cat room around 10 kittens who want to eat your mop and also four children who are all yelling that there’s puke in the floor and I MUST clean it, NOW. Not to mention all the extra behind the scenes work that the public never sees. How in the summer, during kitten and puppy season, the shelter built to house 500 max has 750 and I didn’t take a lunch or sit at all for any of my shifts for the past six days. How the courts force us to put down animals that we know can be rehabilitated, but we don’t get enough funding to fight it. How animal control just showed up with the fourth pregnant stray of the week but intake is full and even double stacked in some cases, so your coworker fosters the cats on her own. Not even to mention the [awful] people who do dumb [stuff] and end up getting bit or scratched and the animal is the one who bears those consequences. I am the proudest shelter worker in the world. I adore my job, even at its hardest. I didn’t sit for 9 and a half hours today and I found a cat turd in the cuff of my jeans but it doesn’t matter because a bonded pair of adult cats got adopted today. I took six applications this morning and the cat in bank 4 with the goopy eye is already looking better, and we sent a mama out to foster. The hard work is always worth it for these babies.
I will say that having worked both zoo and shelter: zoo was easier on the psyche, shelter easier physically. Don't get to sit at all for either, and vet situations for both were terrifying; but zoo work might have you on the receiving end of larger flightier animals that will not hesitate to do you in, whereas shelters (I worked in a no kill) can have overcapacity animals forcibly taken away to a kill shelter and there is jack all that we could do about it.
Professional photographer.
Not like, hobbyist, but business-owning photographer. Sucks the love right out of your work.
Because you started the business to take pictures.
Then Karen doesn't like the way she looks in one of them so she wants the whole set for free plus a reshoot for free plus those images for free.
Then the two high school kids getting into a very ill-advised marriage at EXACTLY 18 years old wants to book you for their wedding but their budget is only $50.
Then Karen calls back because she loves your work and wants to pay for another shoot, but only if you agree to do her friend's daughter's destination wedding for free.
Then you get a call from your last bride. It's been two weeks since their wedding. WHERE THE [HELL] ARE HER PICTURES?
Then you get no leads from a bridal expo.
Then a client finds out you don't support their candidate and tries to take you to court to get her money back.
Then some insta thot who thinks she's influencing people offers a "collab" where you take pro photos of her and she adds insta filters to it and claims her friend took them. And she's not gonna pay.
And then you get some entitled mom who wants you to photograph every day of her newborn's first year of life for $100.
I went back to being a hobbyist.
Redditor Bwee21’s post on r/AskReddit was incredibly popular. The thread was upvoted nearly 90k times and even got the ‘Top Post’ award. What’s more, the intriguing question about which jobs aren’t as fun as they seem got a whopping 30.5k comments. That just goes to show how much people resonated with the post (and how much some of them wanted to vent about their jobs!).
Sometimes, it’s not the actual job itself that’s the problem but the stressful workplace environment that you spend your days in. Previously, I spoke with life coach Lindsay Hanson about what to do when they realize their workplace is toxic. According to her, we’re all responsible for setting the boundaries for what we’re willing to tolerate.
I'm a marine biologist. I spent the last week measuring defrosted fish heads.
Sounds still awesome to me (no I'm not being sarcastic)
Video game tester.
You aren't spending your time playing completed fully realized games. You are playing the same level of a game over and over seeing if there are bugs.
"If you feel that there's nothing you can do to change the situation and the company or people involved are unwilling to change, then you have to decide whether you're willing to stay in that environment or not," coach Lindsay explained to Bored Panda earlier.
"A good question to ask yourself is, even if this toxic situation were to change, would I still want to work here?" she said that the ball’s always in your court and you make the final decision about whether to stay or to move on.
Being a chef. All the flare and awesomeness they show on vice and Netflix is far from what actually happens in the industry. It’s not all fancy plates and tattooed/cool haired guys doin their thing. It’s a drug infested, law breaking work environment that only benefits the owners of a restaurant
Absolutely. A large percentage of chefs have either cocaine/opiate addiction, or alcoholism. The ego thing is HUGE, the daily work is stressful and there's usually a lot of screaming and name calling involved. You're usually overworked, underslept and underpaid, and if you get to be sucessfull, you'll still be overworked, underslept and underpaid, plus you'll have to deal with clients and other crap. It sounds a lot like the lyrics to It Never Rains In Southern California.
Programmer.
People see it as an anonymous figure typing a few lines of code and gaining access to top secret files.
In reality it’s 10% coding and 90% searching your problems on Stack Overflow.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT. 1) You are on call (on reserve) forever, have a terrible schedule, have no life, and make no money for 5-10 years. 2) While you work for peanuts, you can’t afford to use your flight “benefits” in any substantial way. 3) Then, when you finally get a chance to use your benefits for a trip, you have to fly standby which means you aren’t guaranteed to get on the flight you want. 4) Then, if you do make it out of town you better have like a week off so you can make damn sure you’re back in your base city in time for your next work shift. 5) Did I mention there is an act of US legislation (Railway Labor Act) that allows airlines to exploit so you don’t get paid for certain work hours that you actually need to be working? For example, FAs don’t get paid for boarding, or any time the plane is at the gate. WORST JOB EVER.
According to Lindsay, everyone has two options available to them. The first is choosing happiness (or at least contentment) in the job position you’re in. The second is searching for a way out of your current predicament.
“The idea that you can't change your situation due to the pandemic is very limiting. There are still companies hiring. There are still ways to make money on your own. There is always a way to change your current situation—telling yourself you're stuck feels very limiting," the coach said.
"Again, it comes back to what you're willing to tolerate. You can do everything in your power to bring attention to the toxic situation and attempt to change it. And at the end of the day, you always have control over your own mindset, how you're reacting to the situation, and how much you let it affect you.”
Veterinarian —
TRULY shocked that nobody has said this one yet. We have the highest suicide rate of any profession.
It’s a lot more talking to people about money and a lot less doing medicine and saving animals than people hope going into it. Not all of the animals are grateful, some of them want to bite you because you’re hurting them and they don’t know it’s in their best interest. Clients can be hugely manipulative jerks. There’s lots of student debt. And don’t get me started on near constant exposure to low levels of anesthetic gasses.
Dog hotel. Thought I’d get to play with puppies all day. Instead I cleaned diarrhea off kennel floors for 5 hours a day and stopped tiny dogs from humping each other for the other 3.
Librarian. It’s not all books and being quiet. There are also spreadsheets.
Zookeeper.
Don't get me wrong, it's awesome to be around so many amazing animals and care for them...
But the smells are ridiculously, insanely foul.
I have a really strong stomach and it's still tough for me...we've had some interns quit over it.
I was warned about the smells when getting into the field, but thought "oh I've volunteered at animal shelters, I know what animal stink smells like"
Nope. Not even close.
Being a Character Performer at Disney.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing perks and truly magical moments. I know I’m super lucky and tons of people would love to be in my shoes.
But the day to day work is EXHAUSTING in ways I never thought possible. Guests are ridiculously abusive...I’ve had things said and done to me I never would have imagined. The company isn’t always great - it highly depends on your leadership. And there’s so much focus on your body and face (good and BAD) that it can be incredibly depressing and difficult emotionally.
Plus, you have to accept that there’s very little upward mobility. Most people “grow out of it” and it’s rough to know that one day you’ll get “too old” or “too fat” and you will have to start all over in a new career field. So you constantly are thinking either, 1) what you’re going to do when you leave, 2) how you’re going to keep yourself there. I personally knew it would be temporary, and I now only work there seasonally while I have a “normal career”. But Disney has a way of sucking you in.
Gamemaster at an escape room.
It's the same repetitive script, resetting the same stuff, giving clues and hints about the same things. The patrons are often competitive families who argue, obnoxious impatient 13-year-olds, college students who have been drinking, idiots who break [stuff] and touch [stuff] that I SPECIFICALLY TOLD THEM NOT TO. They never remember your initial instructions. If something gets broken during one group, you have to hurry and fix it before the next group.
Baker. Coming into work at 3/4 am so you can have a six am baked goods is miserable.
I'm a Forensic Scientist and it's literally the only thing people ask me about on dating apps. It's very technical work and it's extremely routine.
But oh! the feeling when something you did turns out extremely well!
programming. please help me. I need a hug. why did I need to be such a nerdy kid when I was younger.
Lifeguarding. Everyone expects baywatch, act, saving lives all the time. But It’s usually just sitting there blowing your whistle telling little kids to stop [messing] around.
Still not so bad at all. It's not like you're cleaning whale poop.
Well I’m a scientist. I don’t know if people usually think of that career as fun, but I think people think it’s a lot more “Eureka!” and a lot less “this data’s has to be manually processed for 600 hours before I can analyze it.
but i think most of us realise the invention of a lightbulb was a 1000 step process
Demolition
Everyone wants to break [stuff] with a sledgehammer. Everyone is tired of lifting that sledgehammer by 5 swings.
Nobody wants to load the broken stuff into bags or a wheelbarrow and take it to the dumpster.
Paleontologist. You don’t get to work with full dinosaur skeletons and do all kinds of awesome expeditions. You’re mostly sitting at a desk looking at some pictures and logging stuff on your computer, maybe examining a fossil occasionally. If you’re lucky you can go on a real dig, and OMG SPEND HOURS IN THE HOT SUN DUSTING OFF ROCKS!!!
Acting.
All the ones we see on TV and movies are the 0.0001% of incredibly lucky and talented people who managed to thrive in a hostile and overcrowded industry.
And even when you are working, the actual job itself is 99% sitting on apple crate in hot makeup waiting for some grips to move a lighting fixture. Then you say three lines over and over again for an hour, and then you wrap.
Lawyer, no it isn't like they show on TV.
Hey, finally case is before the judge, damn the other party didn't show up. Next date that judge has given is 3 months away.
I could not defend someone who is guilty no matter how high the pay!
Google Street View driver.
You're all alone for 8+ hours a day, can almost never take a break, need to constantly be "on" and focused (lest you crash the $25,000 Subaru with $60,000+ worth of camera equipment on it), you end up becoming an amateur meteorologist to keep track of weather patterns and cloud cover, and in my experience there are a lot of people who just get insanely upset at you, at Google, and the job in general for a wide variety of reasons. I enjoyed myself when I did it, but it was nowhere near as glamorous or fun as I or my friends & family assumed.
Edit: Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in my summer job from almost 10 years ago. I'll just answer the most asked questions here real quick:
Pay? $15 an hour, but contingent on hours driven, which were themselves dependent on clear weather to ensure optimal image quality
Why not drive every day no matter the weather? Google got around this problem by making you re-drive routes whose pictures turned out subpar. To prevent people double billing by driving the same easy route constantly, you also had a weekly quota of unique miles driven, so no double dipping.
What could you do in the car? As long as the camera and the napping software (Edit: MAPPING software, thanks for the heads up) was running properly I was on my own. I listened to music, the news, and lots of books on tape. I could stop for short bathroom breaks whenever I felt like it, and had an hour guaranteed for lunch whenever I wanted to take it, which usually amounted to eating in the car on the side of some lonely rural road 90% of the time.
Who would ever think this was fun or glamorous? All I can say is, back in 2012 most people I talked to were pretty excited, myself included, about getting the chance to do any work with Google, let alone this cool new project that would let you see what any place on Earth looked like at street level from the comfort of home. This was the era of Google Plus being a potentially exciting new thing, of Google Glass being the future of tech, and overall it was a different time. That's why everyone I knew thought this was a cool gig.
Working in a music store ( musical instruments )
Your days are spent listening to 50 different people play 50 different riffs poorly simultaneously, as if they're all putting on their own concert.
Accounting isn't the adrenaline rush that most people think it is
No one in the history of humanity has looked at accounting and thought 'now that's thrilling'.
Farming. At least in my experience it's a rough and thankless way to make a living with no days off and no management to cry to when there's a problem.
You: My dad is in the hospital and isn't doing well, can I take a couple days off? The plants:
Also everyone thinks you have the cushiest job ever. Everything is automated now, isn't it? You get tons of bailouts and subsidies and whatnot, right? You get 3 months in winter off, right?
Maybe out west where they're growing a billion acres of corn in one field so the robot tractors can't really get confused and such a machine would actually pay for itself.
Only if you're in Iowa growing ethanol corn.
It's 3 months of building and equipment maintenance with no pay. It's the exact opposite of a paid vacation but it goes for months. No we don't go to Hawaii.
Farming is a really tough job. I can’t imagine why anyone would think it’s easy.
Working in a thrift store? Well I always thought it sounded fun but it's basically just the retail experience but on top of that people think they can haggle with you. I specifically worked in a non-profit thrift store (charity shop) so it was extra infuriating when people tried to return things or talk us down from a $5 shirt. THIS ISN'T A GARAGE SALE.
Cyber Security. Bro, the movies do us no justice. Hacking is not as fast nor is it as easy as the media makes it. It's a great field but you spend a lot of time researching or watching paint dry, especially in the gov side.
Working at a Charles Dickens fair is... Interesting, but not incredibly fun. It is hard to stay in character, and people get so mad when they see the Alice in Wonderland area. Yeah, we know it's not Charles Dickens, but we can't have a kids play area in the world of Oliver Twist, okay?
Trimming weed, Idk why people think working with weed is like working in the willy wonka factory, it’s not. You literally get to make tiny cuts with sticky scissors for 8 hours.
Working at Victoria's Secret. People think it's a lot of hot women coming in to buy underwear, but it's mostly Karens.
Being a writer. I always thought it was my absolute dream job. But the only job I could get after college was working in a content mill as a blog writer. I used to work 70-hour weeks staring at the computer in a basement of an old bank writing nonsense articles about the dangers of mold, fence cleaning, and why you need a commercial awning and the dream turned into a nightmare.
While I still write occasionally, I am now working as a communications person so it is a bit less heavy.
I am a writer: each week I write some 10 humouristic short stories for an important newspaper and each 2-3 years I make a selection (with my editor at the publishing house) of the best stories, for a new book (some 350 pages each). I think constant writing is the best way to do it, but I must admit there are days when my inspiration is far, far away. Writing in some of these days is not a pleasure anymore (sometimes I pick one of my old texts from the archive, some 5-6 years ago, change it a bit and reuse it).
Engineer.
I grew up loving planes and space travel and being interested in how things work. I loved cars and motorcycles and anything mechanical or electrical.
The reality is that you sit behind a desk likely making subcomponents at best, and dealing with issues that arise when it doesn’t work with another component for the final product. Most engineers will not use even half of what their degree was for.
Please note that of course there are exceptions, and many engineers get to do really cool things for their whole career, I’m just saying that most don’t.
My husband went to college for mechanical engineering. Left after 2 years because he could tell it would ultimately be a desk job. He wanted to be in the shop building and fixing and making it work by the power of his brain and hands - not the power of a computer. Most brilliant mechanical mind of anyone I've ever met, and he's happy in his own shop!
A pediatric nurse, being a nurse for children and adolescents. Everyone in nursing school talks about how much they want to work with kids. The reality is that a pediatric nurse sees more cases of abuse and neglect than any other specialty. Doesn't matter where you are in a pediatric hospital, it's the thing you see most.
I've seen so many DCS (Department of Child Services) caseworkers that I've gotten to know some of them and became acquaintances with them. Sure working with children and adolescents is great, but people don't think about the most essential piece of that puzzle which is their families. It doesn't matter how good of care you give to those kids, if you don't loop the parents in to that care you may as well just not be doing anything for them.
Video Game Developer (non-Indie)
They're notoriously overworked, especially during crunch time. The field is highly competitive too, so I imagine if you have the slightest issue with work being your entire life, it wouldn't be hard to replace you.
Voice Acting is also pretty brutal. Voice actors generally don't get paid very well and they're straining their throats or whatever.
Bar bouncer. Hours of tension and boredom interrupted by moments of adrenaline fueled fear for your life. Then some [jerk] pukes cheap booze on your shoes.
Flight attendant. I did it for a year.
Think you’re going to have a week long layover in Paris? Guess again! You’re working the red eye to Detroit! Don’t get too excited yet! You’re laying over in Cleveland tomorrow!
Couple that with the job being boring AF (you just sit around for hours at a time on the flights), and it certainly is much less exciting than you would think it would be.
I always say the more fun it is to go somewhere the worse it is to work there like amusement parks and arcades
An artist, time management is very hard. And it becomes more of a job instead of fun hobby.
Florist. I owned my own stop and I can't tell you how many people would come in and say, "Oh! What a great hobby! It must be so much fun working here!" I'd just roll my eyes at them. Yes, it was fun, but it's also a lot of hard work.
Standing all day, every day. Getting carpal tunnel from the monotonous use of your knife for 8+ hours. Wrangling 30+ pounds of flowers up onto the table so you can strip them, cut them and get them ready for the cooler. Slipping all over the floor because you're walking on 5 inches of flower stems all the time. Always having green shoes and green hands.
You want a manicure? Not in this profession, baby! Your hands are always in water. Always! You have prune hands by the end of each day. In winter, my hands would get so cracked I could barely hold a knife to do my job.
Dealing with morons and asses. Yes, it's retail and I knew I'd be dealing with it, but really? You think I'm doing this out of the kindness of my heart?! I'm doing this to make MONEY!! Flowers are NOT cheap and NO you are not getting a discount or freebies! There is NO haggling for the arrangement in the cooler. THAT is the price and if you don't want to pay that, well that's up to you.
Don't even get me started on dealing with brides and their obnoxious Mothers! Staying up half the night to get a wedding done (after you've already worked a full day) and then having to deliver it the next day early in the morning. Good times!
And all those holidays you want to spend with your family? Kiss those goodbye because by the time the holiday comes, you're so sick of it, you just want to throw up! I didn't do holidays with the fam when I had the shop. Valentine's Day is pure hell. The day is a blur and you don't get time to eat or pee. You don't have time! I've never gotten flowers on Valentine's Day. I did them for everyone else. Christmas is a month and a half of pine, pine and more pine (which I do love TBH). But you're covered in sap all the time and you smell like a forest. Mother's Day and Prom always seemed to be on the same weekend every year, so you'd be wiring flowers until you thought your fingers were gonna fall off.
Being robbed at gunpoint. That was the end of my shop. The stress from that cost me everything.
And, oh yeah. Floral shops smell great when you walk in, right? Well, we couldn't smell it. That was seriously depressing.
These are just a few of the things I HATED about being a Florist.
But, there was a lot of things I loved about it too. I loved being able to be creative everyday. I liked getting my orders out in a time crunch, loved that adrenaline rush! I liked knowing I was going to make someone smile somewhere. I miss the feeling of my knife in my hand. My shop was small, so we did whatever moved us after our orders were done. I miss smelling like pine trees too, but not the sappy, sticky fingers. I loved my loyal customers and I miss working with balloons!
I still do arrangements, just not with real flowers much anymore. I miss that. It was my job, my livelihood and my hobby all in one.
So not even a hard gel manicure would last a week in this job.. oh wow
Casino Dealer/Croupier. That’s the place where the worst humans come to do their business.
Event planner, it’s hell on earth when you have a million things going on and your waiting for everything to come together
barnes and noble, your job has literally NOTHING to do with books & it obviously attracts a lot of that type, myself included
Paramedic (UK). Long hours, nights and weekends. Missing your children’s landmark events because your working or sleeping. Being there when someone’s loved one has passed away and delivering bad news. Copious amounts of bodily fluids. Exposure to every contagious illness going then going home at the end of the day to your loved ones. Most call outs are to poorer parts of town where peoples health is worst. Posher areas have a tendency to feel entitled due to the lack of understanding on how the ambulance service works and expect to be seen quicker because they have called 999. The expectation that ambulances go on blue lights and sirens to every job in a few minutes (some people can wait (10 hours at times)
But you do get the odd free coffee and deliver babies sometimes which is nice
Paramedics save countless lives. The work you do is beyond valuable. Gratitude to all who work in health care.
Not a specific job but traveling for work. I’m in tech and a lot of people starting out talk about wanting to go to customer sites and get “out in the field”... I love to travel for fun but it’s hard to fit in the fun stuff when you have presentations and stuff to worry about and a lot of times your customers aren’t in the fun cities anyway. I also think I prefer the stability in day-to-day schedule of traveling less frequently.
100%, my old workplace was a tour operator, my job was to make sure the hotels' IT was set up and ready for the season. When I joined I though it was great that I would be travelling to different countries. I did see some great places and went to countries I had not visited before, the Alps with no snow is very serene for example. However it very quickly took its toll and the final straw was when I had to take 10 flights in 13 days. That was killer and I needed a week off to recover. The cherry on that cake was that due to a delay in getting to Athens, I missed my connecting flight to Lemnos. I got to the island at 10.30am, did my work and had to get the 5am flight the next morning back to Athens to take the plane to Kos.
I almost forgot, the bad back!!!!!!
This was meant to be an addendum to my post about being a paramedic!!
Beer taster
So first of all, no-one actually wants to drink beer at 9.30 on Monday morning in a corporate office. But you rock up to a dozen glasses of beer in front of you, you make small talk about what your colleague’s kids did on the weekend, and then you’re tasting.
Things you’re tasting could involve:
stuff that’s come back from consumers because it “tastes weird”. Usually because they left it in the back seat of their car in full summer sun for two weeks, and cooked the [hell] out of it
stuff that’s come in from the breweries because something has gone wrong and they can’t figure out what
stuff that the R&D team are working on and haven’t gotten right yet
stuff that the lab team have aged well past the best before date. Just to see how bad it really gets (very)
Other problems (these aren’t all me, they’re a collection from a bunch of colleagues):
if you’re at the breweries, it could be 30 odd samples of exactly the same beer, just from different storage tanks you have to check is ok
if you’re tasting at beer festivals, there are 200 odd whack craft beer samples. Which means by the time you’re done, your palate is wiped, you’re too drunk to enjoy the festival, you have to network with the rest of the industry who are sober, and you spend the weekend recovering. Worse if you’re a small woman and the other tasters are faring better than you
if you go out to client sites to work on new developments, and there’s more tasting involved than you expected or it’s high alcohol content, you end up leaving your car in the middle of nowhere and have to get home and back again. Especially embarrassing when you’re a small woman and the other guys are ok to drive
there’s always one guy who spits and it’s gross
you go out to a bar on the weekend with your mates, and they all ask you for opinions on beer when you’re just trying to enjoy one. Or if you want to switch off from work and order a nice girly cocktail and get given s**t for it
the looks of judgement from the doctor when they ask how often you drink and you tell them the truth
if you want to lose weight, good luck calorie counting that
Don’t get me wrong, there are worse jobs out there. But I don’t even like beer
I get that sometimes you have to take a job you don't want but honestly, why does someone become a bear taster if they don't like drinking beer?
this has currently ruined all job options for me, ive decided I'm going to rely on my parents for the rest of my life
Being a wizard. People think it's all cool spells and magic artifacts and fighting bad guys but most of the time it's riding for days on poorly maintained roads and talking to people trying to figure out how you can help, or trying to de-escalate their arguments with one another. There is no one to ask if the quest you have in mind is going to succeed, you need to sound convincing to the right people and then you are anxious for the next months or years that your adventure could be the death of the group. Living for thousands upon thousands of years has its good sides sure, but it's just as hard moving on from losing loved ones. And in the business you end up in a lot of dangerous situations with people you get to be very close to so losing loved ones you will. During peaceful times the job is a lot of party tricks and magic fireworks, that's pretty joyous actually.
Which is why people want to be paid to do it
Load More Replies... We need an article of jobs that sound dull but have all sorts of interesting stuff going on. My job is like that!
I currently work in a hospital taking garbage/waste and laundry from different wards. I also transport food and medication/pills/shots/you name it to the same wards. It's definitely not the most interesting job out there, but the people I work with are the best co-workers ever. The job isn't stressful at all, but days are long (8-9 hours).
NO! Work does not HAVE to be "fun". However, it should be rewarding, utilize your talents, maintain your interest, and be financially stable, otherwise it will make you miserable. Caveat thought, your own attitude is at least 2/3rds of that equation.
Graphic Designer. It's not about doing what you think is best for the client, it's about doing what the client WANTS. You rarely get to do nice things and get always stuck with endeless changes in your designs, that keeping getting worse and worse. It's a lot of pressure to do things fast and a lot of work too.
Agree with this! I spent 12+ years as a graphic designer before switching to... animal care! Wonder where I’ll be in another 12 years!
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Honestly I loved working as a graphic designer. From the first I've loved the combination of the computer, typography, artistic, and creative challenges. I'm even ok with criticism, because I want to do a great job. So I feel if you really find your calling it really doesn't seem like work. I think these people choose their jobs thinking it would be easy or that they'd love what the do and were just wrong.
I think I have the best job in the world, but it's a tiny niche market that probably won't exist in around 20 years, because technology will be able to do it well. (Right now, the technology SUCKS and has done for at least a decade). I do transcription and translation. I work from home. I pick my own hours. I go on vacation when I want. I am an information nerd, so I am getting to research and learn new things all day every day on literally every topic under the sun. I can work anywhere in the world with an internet connection. I work for myself, by myself, which is bliss for me. I've had SO many different jobs in my life, teacher, librarian, bouncer, writer, singer, safari guide, hospice worker, snake charmer, sales person, wine consultant, diplomatic corps worker, window seller, childcare manager, editor, cryptic crossword compiler. I have lived and worked all over the world doing myriad things. But this job, I love the most and have been doing it for 17 years with complete joy.
I'm an illustrator, which was my dream since I was a kid, but is not all fun as I thought, for sometimes clients can be a real pain, with their unrealistic expectations and poorly explained ideas (the other day got a lady wanting a portrait that should be both abstract and hyper realistic, but also with a touch of 90's contemporary art.. and was very adamant on that. At the end of the day she just wanted a realistic looking portrait, but with decorative elements in the background that resembles a bit like Mondrian, cuz in her mind that was '90's contemporary art' and some random brush strokes for it is a very "abstract" thing.)
I know, right? They don’t know what they want, they only know what they don’t want; and only when they see it.
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im glad being a bartender isnt on here. im going to own a nonalcoholic bar.
Love this, I would totally drink in your bar! Are there fancy mocktails?
Load More Replies... Here’s what I think is also a boring job: Working at a nail salon. I’ve never worked at one myself, but I imagine it’s bad because you just do the same thing all day. And with pedicures, you’re just rubbing your hands all over someone else’s feet (ewww) and there’s probably always that one person who is never happy with the job you do.
I've worked in many, not as a nail technician and believe me is terrible! Customers can be very picky complaining for no reason, smashing their nails and come back with attitude as it's the girls' fault and many other wonderful things! I don't even mention the disgusting part cause you will even have people that haven't washed their feet for days!!!🤢
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I don't know, but mine has disappeared as well. Not enough upvotes? I won't waste my time on that again either way!
Load More Replies... I was a nurse back in the olden days, glass syringes stainless steel needles that had to have the burrs ground off. 3 minute thermometers temps taken 3 times a day for 36 patients, two bathrooms on the ward no piped in anything. Oxygen tents with oxygen cylinders you had to keep an eye on constantly. None of the grate stuff you have today. Even with all theses drawbacks (compared to today). I loved what I did and what I had to do.
Retired ASE Master Automotive Technician here. Loved working on anything mechanical since maybe age 12. ALL of that changed when I got my first job as a mechanic at age 16 and had to deal with a pompous a-hole boss and ignorant customers. 30+ years later all I have to show for it are a few worthless awards, a bad back, a bad knee, a bad shoulder, and contact dermatitis from all the "safe" chemicals I used over my career.
Emergency Department. Save lives! Have steamy sex with hot coworkers! The undying gratitude of the general public! Yeah....not so much. Lots of entitlement when the wait time gets long, which is often. The smells are amazing. There's psychiatric smell, homeless smell, professional drunk smell, homeless drunk smell and geriatric smell. Yes they are all unique and cloying and identifiable. There's the frosted flakes, you know the skin that flies around the room when you peel an elderly patients socks off. Yum. Of course diarrhea, but you know that's not often as bad as you would think, there's a lot of rolling s**t into sheets and dumping. Then there's the seekers, always some nebulous abdominal pain that they know rarely can be verified with a scan, but the fact that they've been to five different hospitals thirty times in the last three weeks gives you a clue. The "my doctor called ahead people". More common than you think and it means nothing in the ED. Get in line. The "excruciating pain"people that think they should be seen immediately. I feel for them, I do. Pain is terrible, but it's not life threatening generally. I say generally because if you have a tearing sensation in your abdomen and horrendous pain, that can be life threatening. But your torn acl does not trump a heart attack or an arterial bleed. People die often and, aside from pediatric patients, it doesn't bother me. But the pain on a mother's face or a husband or son or sister does. Do we save lives? Yes, sometimes. Mostly though it's minor things and reassuring people and weeding out silly things. The best things I do are comfort scared people, hold the hand of somebody dying because they are alone and coming together as a team in crisis. ♥️
Animator, Or most jobs in the arts, You think Oh Boy, I get to draw fun stuff for a living, NOPE. You draw what they say, how they say, when they say. See those big group shots in a feature? That's one guy drawing all that. You have quotas, You are lucky to have a 6 month contract with no insurance, no benefits, no security, you have very angry producers making all the money while you take the bus. When they want to hire you they give you a tour of the office, there's a fun room, which you never get to use because of quotas and deadlines, there's the award winning guy, but don't talk to him as he's too busy to talk. Your job is always a tax cut away from ending and most of the work is farmed out overseas. Many work 16 hour days 7 days a week or more. But you get bagels/ donuts/ pizza on friday.
I've worked several jobs but as a Zoology major I've worked with fish for some years. The worst part on a commercial fish farm was having to clean the filters...8 foot tall...5 foot wide...filled with fish poop. There were times I was covered head to toe trying to clean those things. There were drain pipes etc. but the media had to be removed and there were always clogs. Also, rotting fish is one of the worst smells I've ever encountered.
Jobs are rarely fun. They have to be done, the results have to be good and everything has to be finished on time. That's why a job can be satisfying but it very rarely is funny.
If you like writing, you need to find the right outlet. Find something you are actually interested in.
I do property maintenance. Not the most exciting but I get over $20 an hour and most of the works not too hard.
Archaeologist. People (including teenage me) think it's all about finding amazing discoveries and artefacts. But the reality is minimum wage, short-term contract grunt work in trenches that usually have NOTHING in them. Most archaeology in the UK is done because it's a planning condition for new development. Which means a quick desk-based survey and maybe a quick test trench to check there's nothing of significance there before the building work starts.
i was looking for "porn star". it wasn't on the list. so i guess that means the job really is as fun as it looks!! i'll keep auditioning then.
Porn STAR is hard to find on a list of jobs, I think, like movie star or rock star would probably be hard to find. “Star” anything isn’t exactly a career choice, is it…? I would think it’s more like something that just happens to you due to competency, extreme work, extreme luck and plenty of good contacts in the business.
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adding one HUMAN RESOURCES, you start out thinking your own gonna help people be happy and engaged, you get to give people jobs and help them learn new things. After a short time HR professionals secretly hate people for the self absorbed and entitled A-holes they actually are.
Artist specialising in animal portraits. It's a lonely job. Deadlines are stressful. I get plenty of time wasters who tell me detailed instructions as to what they want and then never get back to me. Some animals are hard to draw, especially if they have short hair - basically, I'm painting each hair buy hand. The money isn't good.
Most of these jobs are difficult and/or dull. I don't understand who would think they would be fun.
An ex-model cured my intended modling career in a sentence; "What for? All you do is change clothes all day"
How about mother ? Just kidding. How about makler on the house /apartment market ?
Who thought most of these jobs were any fun to start with? I work in healthcare research, who could have guessed it is far from fun, stressful, complicated, and a lot of paperwork. Still like it, but a job is typically not fun, the best you can hope for is that it be interesting.
Most of these take a specialization. Most of these are not for most people actually.
Architect. Everyone thinks its like Frank Lloyd Wright kind of designing. No, its restroom remodels and strip mall fit outs. And it doesn't pay nearly as much as people think.
I'm an architect for a residential builder - i love my job :) (although i hate most clients!)
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An old friend of my Father's was a shooter - hunted, shot for target competition, loved the sport. He worked as an air-conditioning engineer up to retirement, then went to his 'dream job'. He opened a gun shop (Toronto, Canada). And it killed him. I worked for him as a clerk, just because I love guns and shooting. Customers are idiots, or a-holes, or children, or senile, or (a few) honest, intelligent sportsmen. Explaining the laws to everyone ten times a day, watching poor-to-bad gun handling all day long, apologizing for the prices of everything. Answering dumb questions. Listening to stories, brags, and lies. Talking to police after break-ins. Paperwork. Don't ever turn your hobby into a livelihood -it'll just kill your love.
When I was younger I was an Entomologist attached to my local museum (New walk museum). The highlights of that was going on field trips to track species levels in a given location, the lows was trying to identify a 0.8 millimeter long beetle that looks almost identical to 20 other species in the same genus.
Bus drivers, who sit for hours in a mobile greenhouse, lucky if you have air conditioning but still intense sunlight then in winter driving a vehicle that is so cold it takes ages to heat up, getting abuse from passengers. Having to deal with motorists who think the bus handles like a micro car and yet they seem to require the space for an oil tanker to turn their own car. Getting up one day of the week at 03:00 only to finish a shift later that week at 00:00 leaving you with a sleep pattern that is in chaos. Being in need to use the toilet but thanks to local government cuts there are no public toilets. Remembering the routes of dozens of services, trying to get there on time time after time even during roadworks, congestion, accidents, bad weather. Yet there are very intelligent people out there driving buses, some ex lecturers who took the job during previous job cuts and are now stuck as they are now seen as lowly bus drivers.
The fact that people don't do any research as to what the job means is worrying. Just a simple google search will tell you the basics. If the job requires traveling, you can't complain about being away from home. Also, I know a lot of people don't have the luxury of choosing, we've all been there, but be a grown up and aknowledge your skills and shortcomings when applying for a job or choosing a major in college. You don't go into IT if you hate computers, do you? Same principle applies to any job/career.
I'm surprised I didn't see "archeologist" here - most of us think it's like being Indiana Jones, but in truth it's more like what the paleontologist does (lots of sitting behind a desk, occasionally dusting rocks).
To be honest i prefer to be with dead "customers". At least they don't complain😅
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Police isn’t as much fun as you might think. Way too much repetitive computer work, cancelled leave at the last minute, having to remember procedure for hundreds of different scenarios, never getting a break, unappreciated, always late off, sometimes by many hours. On the plus side it’s very varied and you learn that most people, even though you’re arresting them, are actually alright.
Fair enough. But what sort of police? What grade? What specific job?
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I wouldn’t mind being a hetero male porn star sounds great. Doing it with good looking girls all day.
this has currently ruined all job options for me, ive decided I'm going to rely on my parents for the rest of my life
Being a wizard. People think it's all cool spells and magic artifacts and fighting bad guys but most of the time it's riding for days on poorly maintained roads and talking to people trying to figure out how you can help, or trying to de-escalate their arguments with one another. There is no one to ask if the quest you have in mind is going to succeed, you need to sound convincing to the right people and then you are anxious for the next months or years that your adventure could be the death of the group. Living for thousands upon thousands of years has its good sides sure, but it's just as hard moving on from losing loved ones. And in the business you end up in a lot of dangerous situations with people you get to be very close to so losing loved ones you will. During peaceful times the job is a lot of party tricks and magic fireworks, that's pretty joyous actually.
Which is why people want to be paid to do it
Load More Replies... We need an article of jobs that sound dull but have all sorts of interesting stuff going on. My job is like that!
I currently work in a hospital taking garbage/waste and laundry from different wards. I also transport food and medication/pills/shots/you name it to the same wards. It's definitely not the most interesting job out there, but the people I work with are the best co-workers ever. The job isn't stressful at all, but days are long (8-9 hours).
NO! Work does not HAVE to be "fun". However, it should be rewarding, utilize your talents, maintain your interest, and be financially stable, otherwise it will make you miserable. Caveat thought, your own attitude is at least 2/3rds of that equation.
Graphic Designer. It's not about doing what you think is best for the client, it's about doing what the client WANTS. You rarely get to do nice things and get always stuck with endeless changes in your designs, that keeping getting worse and worse. It's a lot of pressure to do things fast and a lot of work too.
Agree with this! I spent 12+ years as a graphic designer before switching to... animal care! Wonder where I’ll be in another 12 years!
Load More Replies... Honestly I loved working as a graphic designer. From the first I've loved the combination of the computer, typography, artistic, and creative challenges. I'm even ok with criticism, because I want to do a great job. So I feel if you really find your calling it really doesn't seem like work. I think these people choose their jobs thinking it would be easy or that they'd love what the do and were just wrong.
I think I have the best job in the world, but it's a tiny niche market that probably won't exist in around 20 years, because technology will be able to do it well. (Right now, the technology SUCKS and has done for at least a decade). I do transcription and translation. I work from home. I pick my own hours. I go on vacation when I want. I am an information nerd, so I am getting to research and learn new things all day every day on literally every topic under the sun. I can work anywhere in the world with an internet connection. I work for myself, by myself, which is bliss for me. I've had SO many different jobs in my life, teacher, librarian, bouncer, writer, singer, safari guide, hospice worker, snake charmer, sales person, wine consultant, diplomatic corps worker, window seller, childcare manager, editor, cryptic crossword compiler. I have lived and worked all over the world doing myriad things. But this job, I love the most and have been doing it for 17 years with complete joy.
I'm an illustrator, which was my dream since I was a kid, but is not all fun as I thought, for sometimes clients can be a real pain, with their unrealistic expectations and poorly explained ideas (the other day got a lady wanting a portrait that should be both abstract and hyper realistic, but also with a touch of 90's contemporary art.. and was very adamant on that. At the end of the day she just wanted a realistic looking portrait, but with decorative elements in the background that resembles a bit like Mondrian, cuz in her mind that was '90's contemporary art' and some random brush strokes for it is a very "abstract" thing.)
I know, right? They don’t know what they want, they only know what they don’t want; and only when they see it.
Load More Replies... im glad being a bartender isnt on here. im going to own a nonalcoholic bar.
Love this, I would totally drink in your bar! Are there fancy mocktails?
Load More Replies... Here’s what I think is also a boring job: Working at a nail salon. I’ve never worked at one myself, but I imagine it’s bad because you just do the same thing all day. And with pedicures, you’re just rubbing your hands all over someone else’s feet (ewww) and there’s probably always that one person who is never happy with the job you do.
I've worked in many, not as a nail technician and believe me is terrible! Customers can be very picky complaining for no reason, smashing their nails and come back with attitude as it's the girls' fault and many other wonderful things! I don't even mention the disgusting part cause you will even have people that haven't washed their feet for days!!!🤢
Load More Replies... I don't know, but mine has disappeared as well. Not enough upvotes? I won't waste my time on that again either way!
Load More Replies... I was a nurse back in the olden days, glass syringes stainless steel needles that had to have the burrs ground off. 3 minute thermometers temps taken 3 times a day for 36 patients, two bathrooms on the ward no piped in anything. Oxygen tents with oxygen cylinders you had to keep an eye on constantly. None of the grate stuff you have today. Even with all theses drawbacks (compared to today). I loved what I did and what I had to do.
Retired ASE Master Automotive Technician here. Loved working on anything mechanical since maybe age 12. ALL of that changed when I got my first job as a mechanic at age 16 and had to deal with a pompous a-hole boss and ignorant customers. 30+ years later all I have to show for it are a few worthless awards, a bad back, a bad knee, a bad shoulder, and contact dermatitis from all the "safe" chemicals I used over my career.
Emergency Department. Save lives! Have steamy sex with hot coworkers! The undying gratitude of the general public! Yeah....not so much. Lots of entitlement when the wait time gets long, which is often. The smells are amazing. There's psychiatric smell, homeless smell, professional drunk smell, homeless drunk smell and geriatric smell. Yes they are all unique and cloying and identifiable. There's the frosted flakes, you know the skin that flies around the room when you peel an elderly patients socks off. Yum. Of course diarrhea, but you know that's not often as bad as you would think, there's a lot of rolling s**t into sheets and dumping. Then there's the seekers, always some nebulous abdominal pain that they know rarely can be verified with a scan, but the fact that they've been to five different hospitals thirty times in the last three weeks gives you a clue. The "my doctor called ahead people". More common than you think and it means nothing in the ED. Get in line. The "excruciating pain"people that think they should be seen immediately. I feel for them, I do. Pain is terrible, but it's not life threatening generally. I say generally because if you have a tearing sensation in your abdomen and horrendous pain, that can be life threatening. But your torn acl does not trump a heart attack or an arterial bleed. People die often and, aside from pediatric patients, it doesn't bother me. But the pain on a mother's face or a husband or son or sister does. Do we save lives? Yes, sometimes. Mostly though it's minor things and reassuring people and weeding out silly things. The best things I do are comfort scared people, hold the hand of somebody dying because they are alone and coming together as a team in crisis. ♥️
Animator, Or most jobs in the arts, You think Oh Boy, I get to draw fun stuff for a living, NOPE. You draw what they say, how they say, when they say. See those big group shots in a feature? That's one guy drawing all that. You have quotas, You are lucky to have a 6 month contract with no insurance, no benefits, no security, you have very angry producers making all the money while you take the bus. When they want to hire you they give you a tour of the office, there's a fun room, which you never get to use because of quotas and deadlines, there's the award winning guy, but don't talk to him as he's too busy to talk. Your job is always a tax cut away from ending and most of the work is farmed out overseas. Many work 16 hour days 7 days a week or more. But you get bagels/ donuts/ pizza on friday.
I've worked several jobs but as a Zoology major I've worked with fish for some years. The worst part on a commercial fish farm was having to clean the filters...8 foot tall...5 foot wide...filled with fish poop. There were times I was covered head to toe trying to clean those things. There were drain pipes etc. but the media had to be removed and there were always clogs. Also, rotting fish is one of the worst smells I've ever encountered.
Jobs are rarely fun. They have to be done, the results have to be good and everything has to be finished on time. That's why a job can be satisfying but it very rarely is funny.
If you like writing, you need to find the right outlet. Find something you are actually interested in.
I do property maintenance. Not the most exciting but I get over $20 an hour and most of the works not too hard.
Archaeologist. People (including teenage me) think it's all about finding amazing discoveries and artefacts. But the reality is minimum wage, short-term contract grunt work in trenches that usually have NOTHING in them. Most archaeology in the UK is done because it's a planning condition for new development. Which means a quick desk-based survey and maybe a quick test trench to check there's nothing of significance there before the building work starts.
i was looking for "porn star". it wasn't on the list. so i guess that means the job really is as fun as it looks!! i'll keep auditioning then.
Porn STAR is hard to find on a list of jobs, I think, like movie star or rock star would probably be hard to find. “Star” anything isn’t exactly a career choice, is it…? I would think it’s more like something that just happens to you due to competency, extreme work, extreme luck and plenty of good contacts in the business.
Load More Replies... adding one HUMAN RESOURCES, you start out thinking your own gonna help people be happy and engaged, you get to give people jobs and help them learn new things. After a short time HR professionals secretly hate people for the self absorbed and entitled A-holes they actually are.
Artist specialising in animal portraits. It's a lonely job. Deadlines are stressful. I get plenty of time wasters who tell me detailed instructions as to what they want and then never get back to me. Some animals are hard to draw, especially if they have short hair - basically, I'm painting each hair buy hand. The money isn't good.
Most of these jobs are difficult and/or dull. I don't understand who would think they would be fun.
An ex-model cured my intended modling career in a sentence; "What for? All you do is change clothes all day"
How about mother ? Just kidding. How about makler on the house /apartment market ?
Who thought most of these jobs were any fun to start with? I work in healthcare research, who could have guessed it is far from fun, stressful, complicated, and a lot of paperwork. Still like it, but a job is typically not fun, the best you can hope for is that it be interesting.
Most of these take a specialization. Most of these are not for most people actually.
Architect. Everyone thinks its like Frank Lloyd Wright kind of designing. No, its restroom remodels and strip mall fit outs. And it doesn't pay nearly as much as people think.
I'm an architect for a residential builder - i love my job :) (although i hate most clients!)
Load More Replies... An old friend of my Father's was a shooter - hunted, shot for target competition, loved the sport. He worked as an air-conditioning engineer up to retirement, then went to his 'dream job'. He opened a gun shop (Toronto, Canada). And it killed him. I worked for him as a clerk, just because I love guns and shooting. Customers are idiots, or a-holes, or children, or senile, or (a few) honest, intelligent sportsmen. Explaining the laws to everyone ten times a day, watching poor-to-bad gun handling all day long, apologizing for the prices of everything. Answering dumb questions. Listening to stories, brags, and lies. Talking to police after break-ins. Paperwork. Don't ever turn your hobby into a livelihood -it'll just kill your love.
When I was younger I was an Entomologist attached to my local museum (New walk museum). The highlights of that was going on field trips to track species levels in a given location, the lows was trying to identify a 0.8 millimeter long beetle that looks almost identical to 20 other species in the same genus.
Bus drivers, who sit for hours in a mobile greenhouse, lucky if you have air conditioning but still intense sunlight then in winter driving a vehicle that is so cold it takes ages to heat up, getting abuse from passengers. Having to deal with motorists who think the bus handles like a micro car and yet they seem to require the space for an oil tanker to turn their own car. Getting up one day of the week at 03:00 only to finish a shift later that week at 00:00 leaving you with a sleep pattern that is in chaos. Being in need to use the toilet but thanks to local government cuts there are no public toilets. Remembering the routes of dozens of services, trying to get there on time time after time even during roadworks, congestion, accidents, bad weather. Yet there are very intelligent people out there driving buses, some ex lecturers who took the job during previous job cuts and are now stuck as they are now seen as lowly bus drivers.
The fact that people don't do any research as to what the job means is worrying. Just a simple google search will tell you the basics. If the job requires traveling, you can't complain about being away from home. Also, I know a lot of people don't have the luxury of choosing, we've all been there, but be a grown up and aknowledge your skills and shortcomings when applying for a job or choosing a major in college. You don't go into IT if you hate computers, do you? Same principle applies to any job/career.
I'm surprised I didn't see "archeologist" here - most of us think it's like being Indiana Jones, but in truth it's more like what the paleontologist does (lots of sitting behind a desk, occasionally dusting rocks).
To be honest i prefer to be with dead "customers". At least they don't complain😅
Load More Replies... Police isn’t as much fun as you might think. Way too much repetitive computer work, cancelled leave at the last minute, having to remember procedure for hundreds of different scenarios, never getting a break, unappreciated, always late off, sometimes by many hours. On the plus side it’s very varied and you learn that most people, even though you’re arresting them, are actually alright.
Fair enough. But what sort of police? What grade? What specific job?
Load More Replies... I wouldn’t mind being a hetero male porn star sounds great. Doing it with good looking girls all day.
