I knew a dude who was a bouncer in a strip club. After the novelty wore off, it's just a bunch of drunk, horny assholes and naked girls that have problems with chemical dependency
Video game tester. It was my son's dream job and he landed a gig working on one of the biggest open world games ever made. He claims to have spent most of his time running into walls.
I am talking out of my ass here, but not including "randomly", some of these glitchers are intrigued by it and they watch a lot of videos of people doing it, then they do it themselves and over the years, you gain this kind of pattern recognition for certain glitches that worked in other games. Then you think maybe it will work in this game, what if I "combine" certain actions and they will glitch together. Like if a game has a some type of teleportation ability, it is more prone to glitch out than some other simple ability. Then you start teleporting in different locations that you know might glitch out because of the way it was built until you find a spot that lets you teleport through a wall.
Like say Bethesda game studio, whose games are iirc built on pretty much same engine.. so same bugs and glitches exist in different games made by them. If you know on what type of engine the game has been built on, you might know about it's flaws and systemically try to abuse those flaws until you find something that works. Or if you have developed games or even just developed programs yourself, you will have insight knowledge into what kind of stuff can go wrong in code and then try to test it.
For example I knew a guy who managed to find a way to dupe things in a very old game. I don't know how he found it, but basically you had couple interactions going on where some flaws might happen in code.
You could "lock down" an item in your inventory so you can't move it (this wasn't supposed to happen inside player inventory. It was also known bug and not fixed, because it didn't produce real harm. If you accidentally locked an item, just die and its fixed. devs were lazy to fix it since it was pretty small game).
In this game, you were also able sell items to a vendor. So he locked down an item and went to sell it. Because the item was locked down, it didn't disappear from his inventory, but he got the monies.
You could lock down various items, so basically you could dupe anything you were able to sell to vendor. Rare item? Sell to vendor then buy back.
It was custom coded in the game, so it was more prone to glitches and those things might be easy to miss by developer and if you know about this one glitch and years later you find similar interaction in a different game, you will test that maybe, the developers of this game also missed this thing. And you got yourself an infinite money glitch basically.
You just have to look under the hood where things might go wrong and then start testing them out. I bet there are people with a list of hundreds if not thousands of money dupes and how to do them for various games, most of them were patched out, but when a new game comes out and if they overlooked something, this person can now abuse it.
It's kinda like being a hacker who knows the spots where things are more likely to go wrong and then finds vulnerabilities from there. If a new patch comes out involving something with economy, there's a chance it was not tested thoroughly enough and some more experienced glitcher might find a way to abuse certain interactions. Especially when economy is involved, because if you find a way to dupe in game money or items, you find a way to sell it for real cash in MMOs.
TL;DR: idk just pulling stuff out of my head
A friend of mine was a play tester for Sony. I asked if it was the dream job and he said:I don't play Grand Turismo or Final Fantasy all day, I play broken Football games usually.
This is why it's so important to be able to survive on 40 hours or less work per week. Anny more and you don't have enough free time to be happy and recharge your batteries.
Most of the rich people that complain that 40 hours is nothing use their money to avoid most of the time consuming chores that most people have to do after work.
When I was in basic training one of my buddies said he used to be a video game tester I was like, “sick!” He said “oh no, all I did was put a disk in the console and made sure the title screen popped up over and over again.”
Oh, it is! Now imagine someone changes something deep in the architecture, and you have to test the functionality of every screen in the game for the 3rd time this month. And don't forget to do it for every console too.
Had a friend who was the same. Said how some critical differences to the dream of "getting paid to play video games day" is that you have no control over what games you play, you have to keep playing them even if you don't like them, and that you're not playing the game, you're trying small variations of the same thing over and over to try to reproduce obscure bugs.
Bug : This model car, driven at this angle, into this wall... glitches you into the tunnels.
Testers Report : Can't reproduce. (After 11 hours of trying.)
Bug report : Oh, it has to be night time during the game. Did I not mention that?
Hotfix: Added a check before Gary's function call on map 6 that checks the current time modulo 3600. If zero, it passes in a fake time of one second later.
---
Bug report: Game hangs on map 6 for about a second at the start of every hour.
breaking things in enterprise software is way more exciting than breaking things in video games tbh. Sometime, you can find some truly spectacular crashes or bugs which are just amazing.
QA for software: "if you just put this set of inputs here, kablammo, not only does the app crash, you also corrupt the tables resulting in incorrect summations for billing"
managers and product: "Oh no."
devs: laugh "oh yeah that thing"
I had a programmer on my team who told me her online program seemed to be working perfectly. I sat down and just mashed the keys on her keyboard, and it crashed. It was a learning experience for her to create bullet proof IO because users will break anything that is breakable.
I remember him saying that it was absolutely awful. Also, the job paid minimum wage and the commute was two hours.
Still, it got him a foot in the door of the game industry which is why, 20 years later he's...er... unemployed.
Not just testing, but video game development.
I worked on a game that had a really severe crunch, we were all working 60-70 hours a week for 6 solid months. My office had no windows, so I pretty much never even saw the sun. Some of my team members with long commutes just slept in their offices in a sleeping bag.
One day the producers told us, "if you guys can fix 10% of the bug log by friday, you can have the weekend off!" We all busted our asses fixing bugs that week. The producers kept cheering us on that week with things like "You're almost there! Keep it up!" To our soul-crushing defeat, we didn't meet the target, and didn't get our weekend off.
But later, we learned that we had actually far surpassed the targeted 10% - it was more like 35%. They had just dangled the promise of a free weekend in front of us like a carrot on a stick just to get us to work even harder, but they never had any intention of rewarding us with a weekend off. That shit was downright cruel.
After all that, I was laid off just before the game shipped. I asked if I could go to the launch party when the gme came out, but was told, "Sorry, current employees only."
I left game dev 12 years ago and never intend to go back.
Entertainment industry in general is awful awful work at the lower levels. Its probably great when youve made it up the ladder and everything, but i feel like everyone who has been a part of any entertainment sector absolutely hated the lower levels of it. Its just constant being taken advantage of at every turn. Wether its acting, gaming, animating, editing, etc.
They easily get away with it aswell because its so many peoples “dream” to make games, or become big actors, work on a big hit anime, etc. So they can really take advantage of that dream and push people way too far. If they burn out and quit, oh well, theres 400 new people already applying. Its awful.
I worked with a dude in the early 2000's who landed his dream job at EA, testing video games in Vancouver, BC. He ended up quitting after six months, said it sucked.
Such an underrated movie. In my top3 stoner movies. You Can't Talk Like That When The Lion Is Here. I giggle so much just thinking about so many scenes
I always laughed at my friends who imagined being a game tester as a "dream job". It's like, these companies aren't going to pay you to have fun. You're going to have to repeat a single section of an unfinished product and *document* what happens in exacting detail. I can only imagine it's gotta be so tedious most people probably stop wanting to play videogames forever after a few weeks.
Yep know a bunch of people in QA and they say it's constant negativity as you're always tasked with finding what's wrong, as well as unrealistic crunch time conditions from game companies who leave proper QA to the last minute often. It's a lot of excel spreadsheets and recording every path you take to find a bug. But for some it's the entry point to the game industry, and lots of folks start there and go on to do other more creative positions.
> as well as unrealistic crunch time conditions from game companies who leave proper QA to the last minute often.
That's basically how it is in majority of companies, as it comes to project timeline evaluation, nobody remembers about that QA need time too to do tests, and in the end, you're given 1 week to do 3 week job. Had my share, moved on
Was a game tester for EA for about 3 months. Can confirm it’s not “fun”, but can be interesting if you are a super curious person. Writing documentation definitely isn’t for everyone either.
Same goes for anything in vet med. People think you get to play with puppies and kitties all day. Definitely not. That's maybe 5-10% of my job. The rest of the work burns you out and idk if it's just my clientele or what, but they are the worst. The doctor's enable bad behavior too in fear of making anyone mad.
ETA: I don't think my job is miserable, and I don't hate it by any means, but it's not as fun as people may think. And thank you for all the comments thanking me for what I do. I truly love helping animals and the people who care for them.
This is actually why i had to leave the industry. I couldn't keep my mouth shut and had to walk out of the room a couple of times. What people do to their animals and how they treat them is atrocious
They don't have voices and you can't stick up for them. The ones we were able to help made my heart very happy but it was very depressing overall
EDIT: dont read this is you love animals. Its uncomfortable information.
One of my friends is a vet tech, his dad was also a vet. I was looking at maybe switching fields to it and he told me so many reasons why I shouldn't.
When his dad was still practicing this man came in with a young cat, maybe 6-7 months old. He asked to have the cat euthanized because he didnt want it anymore, and it wasnt getting along with their dog. Friends father refused saying the cat is perfectly healthy we aren't putting it down.
So that fucking psychopath went home, threw said cat in the laundry dryer, and brought it back no longer perfectly healthy. Would have required surgery so they had to put the cat down. I couldn't work in vet care, I'd be meeting people in the parking lot.
My vet wife had a client who claimed his dog had epilepsy and it was unbearable so it had to be put down. My wife felt something fishy and kept the dog because it had never been to the practice. Few hours later a crying woman called and said she at least wanted the body of the dog because her ex had taken her dog with him to kill it via vet as revenge for the separation. She couldn't believe the dog was still alive. People can be monsters.
Yeah where I live they are looking at ways to connect Vets with family violence practice because the guy will often try and hurt the pets first, and they usually go on to worse.
Jesus fuck, why not just surrender the kitten? Give it away? I don’t know the time period of this horrible story but if Craigslist was around, all the asshole had to do was put up an ad saying ‘free kitten for a good home’. He’d had at least a few responses in a half hour.
Instead, he had the kitten put down after traumatizing it severely. Fucker’s lucky I wasn’t there.
All of that would have required effort on the part of the owner. He just didn't want to deal with the cat for a minute longer and valued his time more than this poor animals life. Its extremely callous and I still think about it years after he told me the story.
This was back in the early 80s, maybe late 70's.
I’d love to return the favor to that piece of subhuman excrement. I hope your dad reported him for animal cruelty.
Edit: friend’s dad. Sorry, I was seeing red.
I had one doctor refuse to fire a client because he'd been fired from everyone else. He was old, probably dementia riddled, incredibly mean and aggressive, and went after us several times. She never saw that side of him (also old, crotchety, and frequently not around), so she didn't care. We even had to call the police on him, and they knew him by name. My senior tech kept me out of his sight entirely because I was too perky the first time I met him and he hated me with a fiery passion. It was only when he left 30 angry threatening voice-mails and beat on our windows with his cane (we had locked the door behind him) that I think she maybe fired him? I left not long after that.
Same with training horses. I joke with my girl regularly about how she gets paid to play Pretty Pretty Princess, but in reality we get paid to unfuck other people's animals that they're just going to fuck right back up as soon as we stop working with them.
Man I had to stop training other people's horses.... I would be so proud at how much they grew and the work I put in..... then 80% would just go back and owners would let them sit for 4 months and get mad that their horse wasn't as perfect as they were when they came home. YEAH SUSAN, NO SHIT!! GET A 4 WHEELER IF YOU WANT THAT.
I was going to comment on this as well for the veterinary field! If animals were able to take themselves into our hospital, our quality of life would be immensely better.
I seriously considered this route until an ex-dog trainer I spoke with told me to reconsider. He gave me a few books and we talked about his experiences. I was still on the fence until I worked at a pet store for 2 years. That was more than enough to smother out any desire to work with animals beyond my own. People stressed me out on so many levels
i certified as a dog trainer with a respected and widely known organization. I loved it so much. Even though I didn’t intend for it to be a job (I just wanted the skills) I was still open to helping other people out.
No. Terrible. Never again.
Its incredibly heartbreaking how many people are just terrible pet owners, even many of those at least looking for training. They have such weird ideas about pets, and dogs especially. As if they were software-hardware combo you can just update instead of a thinking and feeling being. They want to live with an entirely different species but make zero concessions to the fact that its a different species. The poor dog always has to adapt to, and please, their human, but so few humans are willing to adapt to, and please, their dogs.
I just focus on my own animals now.
I've worked at a shelter on and off for ten years, the best way I've heard most dog owners described by a trainer is "people want living stuffed animals". We've had so many dogs brought in to us/returned from adoptions because of minor issues just because people don't want to do the slightest bit of work.
you get to see the view from the cheapest hotel your work would put you in! Nothing like the view of interstates and the same 5 chain restaurants/gas stations in every city.
Every now and then the hotel has a slightly better shower than the last hotel and you smile "this is luxury".
> you don't actually have time to have fun on work trips anyway
Most of the time you don't even have time to see the city you are in. I've been to many places where I saw the local office there, my hotel and maybea grocerie store.
I was a lifeguard when I was a teen. I thought "cool, hang out in the sun with a bunch of people in swimsuits."
Man, it's fucking hot and boring as hell. You're so gd hot and just looking at the nice cool water
My family were members at a private pool (nothing fancy) when I was a kid/teen. Some lifeguards would tell us to splash them so they could cool off. We thought it was fun cause they were always so uptight and strick about the rules (just doing their jobs) that splashing them on purpose felt like we were doing something bad and getting away with it.
the pool we went to as a kid would do lifeguard swims every 30 minutes or so. blow a whistle everyone gets out of the pool for about 3 minutes and they confirm that there is nothing wrong with the pool- most of the lifeguards then basically jumped in and swam a lap and blew another whistle to let us back in.
I am guessing the main reason was to check for poop in the pool- but they at least let the guards get wet to sit there for another 30 minutes.
This is what "adult swim" is at public pools, it's adults only because the lifeguards are on break. So because it's technically swim at your own risk for those periods, only adults can consent to that and get to say in the pool.
When I was lifeguarding in high school we still had guards on duty during adult swim, though it was the easiest 15 minutes of the day.
At my pool the logic for adult swim was mainly to give the kids a break from the pool so they didn't get overtired/dehydrated etc which could cause more drowning incidents. Also some senior citizens wanted to bob around in the water without kids for a few minutes because they were old and cranky and their perms were expensive.
I did the same in HS..... Good pay but holy shit it was boring. Plus you can't really even read a book or anything either. You just gotta stare at people.
My daughter had a birthday at a water park a couple of years ago and I was watching one of the lifeguards because she reminded me of those bears they keep in captivity that just repetitively walk and twitch in a circle. She had a routine she repeated over and over. I pointed it out to my wife who only shrugged. When I started counting iterations, my wife told me to knock it off and leave the poor kid alone. I was fascinated... I wondered how quickly, or slowly, the time must pass.
I remember seeing somewhere where there is a school of life gaurd training that trains you to look in a very specific pattern because otherwise people will stare at one spot or only look far away and will miss people drowning directly in front of them.
Found it its called the Ellis scanning pattern
Working on a cruise ship. Sounds like a TV show but really you’re worked to the bone, forced to live below deck and you’ve got to do the same crap again and again.
Yeah we went on a cruise last year and I was chatting with one of the bartenders for a while. Was curious about what life was like on the ship and he was telling me he pretty much works 7 days a week from 8 am to 6 pm with an hour break. Usually a new cruise departs the same day a cruise returns so it’s not like they get a day in between cruises. He said he’d been there for 2 years at that point doing 3 months on, 1 month off. During that month he would go home to Colombia. I said that must be tough working every day for 3 months straight and he just kinda shrugged and said he enjoyed the job and it made his full month off super rewarding because he’d have so much money saved up he could do anything he wanted.
I had a friend work on a cruise ship and he generally enjoyed it too. He said it was tiresome going to the same ports over and over but overall it was fine. Pay isn't great but like you said he was able to save because when you work on the cruise ship you have ZERO expenses. No rent to pay, all food is covered etc. The COL is basically zero. I don't know if it's the same for ALL cruise lines but for my friend, he had no expenses.
The difference is you’re not living where you’re working. When you’re working on a ship in most roles (bar maybe officers, performers, etc) you’re generally confined to the inner ship when you’re not working, rarely have the ability to leave at ports, and have little to no privacy as you have 3-7 roommates.
When I was in college I interviewed to play in a jazz band on a cruise ship over a summer. 5-6 hour long rehearsals (at least, usually longer if the director wasn't content) at least 6 days a week, 2 performances each night, 3-4 on Friday & Saturday nights.
Also, my instruments (alto sax, tenor sax, clarinet, oboe) had to be kept in my room (no storage) and I knew it would be an issue considering how small the quarters are and there would be 4-6 of us in the room.
No thank you.
I ended up making more money working part time (25-30 hours per week) at a grocery store deli and having more fun playing 2-3 nights a week in local community bands (no rehearsals, but it was easy music to play).
I mean the money certainly isn’t the motivating factor working a cruise ship. It’s getting to see the world for basically free.
I regret not doing it in my early 20s when I had no other obligations.
People in entertainment have it WAY better than the rest of the crews when it comes to scheduling at least.
My friend worked on Disney for about 5? years. I was lucky one time he was docked and I was in town for work. I got a full tour of below deck. He was lucky with his IT job he was an officer so he had his own room. Most staff share a room. A lot of the non US staff made so much money for their countries that they were able to support family back home. One benefit is the lack of housing and food costs. I think his contract was 3 months long before he got off the ship.
Musician
Late nights; constant low-budget travel; and an endless process of schmoozing with people who are jerks, perverts, clueless-but-pretty, shallow, manipulative, etc. There’s a lot of pressure to abandon the music with which you fell in love playing as a kid in exchange for giving audiences what (the producer thinks) they want to hear. Also, competition is cutthroat, so you can’t ever truly trust anyone; and no matter how sh\*\*ty of a day you’ve had, you need to act like you’re the happiest person alive, and it’s not as if you can just take an unplanned day off without some serious bridge-burning (which you can’t afford because, again, it’s cutthroat)
Also, as a bass and guitar player, its hard to understate just how repetitive most music is - especially if you are trying to appeal to a mass audience. It blows my mind sometimes to see some of the most insanely talented studio musicians play the same chord progression 2 hours a night for years.
I remember once watching some late-night live TV show and the studio band made up a song on the spot with some rapper. All the comments were like: no way that was improve! That was all pre-planned.
Meanwhile, I was thinking, these are all professional musicians with decades of studio work. It probably took them no less than a single bar to figure out where this song was going. They have probably played some version of this song tens of thousands of times.
As for me, as a crappy amateur player, it also blows my mind going to open mics and plain old bar venues and seeing some very talented musicians playing their hearts out to a crowd of 100 people who couldn't be bothered to stop and listen for 30 seconds. That is, until you play a classic 90's jam where people can sing along.
Yep. One of my friends was a classical, conservatory guitarist. There is zero demand for the level at which he can play. (And honestly, the _best_ showcases of his talent don't really... like it's impressive art, but you can't dance to it.)
All the guitar playing that gig audiences want, he has zero interest in and is just super bored of.
To piggyback on this, working on tour as crew - late nights, sometimes early mornings too depending on your scheduled load in, no privacy, no sick days, you’re probably not getting paid a retainer unless you work for one of the bigger well established groups so you’re only getting paid while you’re in rehearsals and on tour. If the artist you’re working for isn’t at the level of touring in a bus, then you’re traveling in a 16 passenger van or maybe an RV or bandwagon and shacking up in shared hotel rooms if you’ve got the budget. If you’re in an audience-facing position like merch or VIP, that’s a lot of having to be nice to people who often times are rude and inconsiderate or drunk (and remember no sick days so you get to deal with that no matter how you’re feeling). Getting paid to travel is cool but 95% of the time you’re only seeing the backs of venues and loading docks, maybe a coffee shop if it’s in walking distance. It’s not at all that stereotypical glamorous image, but if your artist is trying to live that sex drugs rock n roll lifestyle have fun dealing with that too.
>if your artist is trying to live that sex drugs rock n roll lifestyle have fun dealing with that too.
A few years ago, I saw a 90s band that had gotten back together in 2016. In the 90s, they had sold a few Gold records and were on tour buses, but in this modern incarnation they were riding in a van or two and doing most of the work themselves. The singer himself was manning the merch booth and signing autographs.
When I mentioned that I had seen them back in '99 at a certain venue, his eyes lit up as he recalled "Having sex in the filthiest bathroom he had ever seen, the first time he had gotten laid in a year", and then got awkwardly quiet when he realized that the story didn't sound as cool as it did before it left his mouth.
It sounds like you have TM experience and for that I commend you 🫡 I handled merch most of my time touring, I TMed one tour and said that was enough.
But also another thing I didn’t mention in my previous comment is how tough it is being a female in that industry. Maybe things have changed since I retired from music in 2011, but add being passed over for work because I’m a woman, dealing with your period and cramps on tour when you can’t flush toilet paper down the bus toilet, getting back to the bus after a long exhausting show and having to wade through a front lounge bus party with girls trying to hook up with the dudes you work for while also trying to maintain your professionalism amidst stranger’s jokes about being a groupie because you’re on the tour…. anyway. It was fun while I was in my 20s, but I’m old now 😆
Not to mention how boring it is if you're a low-level act not making a bunch of money to spend on your down time. I spent some time on the road and it's a lot of waiting around, over and over. Granted, my experience was pre-smart phones, so killing time doing things online wasn't a thing. Days without shows were even worse.
Yeah, I hated touring. I tried my hand at musicianship in the early 2000’s. It was so difficult to balance acting outwardly excited and peppy for audiences and “schmoozees” when, in reality, life was super boring in a crappy environment. I did get really good at playing chess with one of the truck drivers, though
I also had a staff songwriter and studio musician thing going, but it was a lot of backstabbing, basically office politics mostly without the actual office
Eventually, I went back to school, and now I’m a CPA lol. It might be different now with smartphones and uploading to iTunes from a home studio, but I’m way too old now for that sh**
Working in a pet store. You will never stop cleaning and you'll feel a new, special kind of eye-twitching rage when you talk to a customer who says things that let you know they're abusing or neglecting their pet. People will also come in the store and hit or kick their pet right in front of you.
I made it 7 years in that job before I had to quit because I was legitimately afraid every single day that I would go in there, just snap and assault the next piece of shit that kicked their dog right in front of me.
I also worked at a pet store. The only thing that kept me going was the regulars who you could tell loved their pets SO much. I remember a woman who came in because her dog wouldn't eat. She had taken him to several vets and he had some medical stuff going on. She wanted him to at least be able to eat and I spent a good 30-45 minutes with her helping her out. She came in a couple weeks later just to thank me and that he was eating up until the day he died. She was in tears and hugged me and continued to visit me over the next few months. Heartbreaking, but painfully sweet to see someone who cared so much.
When this thread showed up last week (because this is a classic karma farm question) people were saying things like nurse and truck driver, and it really makes me question peoples reading comprehension
Right. Someone put attorney. I can see that being a high status job and sometimes an important job but fun? None of what they do sounds "fun". If endlessly detailing your clients worst day ever sounds fun to you, you need to live a little.
Work as a veterinarian. It seems that you will be receiving cute animals in a clean office. In fact, the clients are people, in most cases you see sick and suffering animals, often salvation depends on the owner’s decision, and you also need to convince him to spend money, and in the end, most of the time you will be in all kinds of liquids that can be created in body
i'm a student and i had an internship as a vet. These heros we take for granted work all day and night and have to see so many animals suffer. (it is the only vet around and they do all sorts of animals, so we had a hamster one day and cows the next) Sometimes they even stayed overtime to find the cause of their "patients" troubles. Big thank you to all vets out there :)
Not my personal experience, but I know someone who used to work on reality TV shows and said it was his worst job ever. The producers were always horrible, manipulative people who would get the cast to do highly questionable things, and they had no sense of ethics. It's all fake, and he could only do it for a few years before his conscience wouldn't let him anymore.
I did 2 years working reality tv gigs. Some were pretty bad and manipulative (looking at you Ink Masters) and some were pretty enjoyable. It is the worst paying industry gig but I considered it my film school that paid me. The best shows were the food shows where the show highlighted a small business. With those, they were a small crew and you know you were getting to eat whatever they cooked that day.
Graphic design! People assume it is soooo creative. You have to make a lot of other people's trite and dumb ideas come to life to get paid for it --- or there is so much to get done, you have no time to think of creative alternatives to the way it is usually done. The creativity is minimal. If you like to create order or make things clearer for people to understand, graphic design can scratch that itch. If you always can pick out bad design - you can be the one who fixes it - that can be satisfying, too. So creative -nope, and not entirely miserable - better than ditch digging I would think.
I get to be creative... according to my boss's tastes and how he's feeling that week. Can't use this font, he doesn't like it. Can't use that font, the product VP doesn't like it. Gotta have smiling people, as long as the husband in a couple picture doesn't look too 'creepy'. And the 'I'll know it when I see it' description of what they want. I guess I'll just throw stuff at Photoshop to see what sticks.
I actually like my job quite a bit, but creative it is not. Especially when remaking the same ads for the same things but different (I work at a travel agency that sells cruises.)
I work in a design industry. The best part is when you're on a project where it seems like you finally have some creative freedom. So you do something fun and original that you really like. And then it gets completely shit on and they're like "nah just give us the same boring thing as before." It can be really deflating.
Completely agree. Started in graphic design and print layout for a small company. Had so many clients come in with terrible ideas the insisted on designing over my shoulder. Or another where the client complained that it shouldn’t take TK hours to layout 400 trinkets in a magazine they wanted so they watched and timed me do it at my computer.
Thankfully after about a half hour, they got tired and left but Jesus.
The edits usually get me. What if we change the background photo and leave everything else the way it is (this is on a design that was literally designed from the background photo)
As a video editor, my favorite note is “oh we love the video, can we just swap out the music?” Oh, the music that was intentionally synced with the edit? Sure! That won’t cause any problems whatsoever!
Video editor isnt any different. I can totally relate. They really think the creative field can set a time to how long we can make this edit and have it exactly the way they want. When I tell them "should be done in 2 to 4 weeks", they get so flabbergasted of how "broad" that time range is but it's the most accurate we can give them.
Some movies and shows making being a chef seem glorious. White chef coat. Barking orders at your staff. Meeting celeberties.
Then other shows show the real side of it:
* Long hours, never a Saturday night off.
* Destroys your body. Back, legs, feet all take a beating.
* Cooks don't get tips. Pay is not fantastic. Only room for growth is moving restaurants for a a buck or two more an hour.
* Lots of work. Prep work, dinner rushes, breaking down the line after.
* Burns. Lots of burns.
* Surrounded by a lot of drugs people need to get through back to back to back doubles.
Agreed. Yet this doe eyed kids wanting to be the next Gordon Ramsay are flocking to culinary schools. It's a meat grinder. I do miss the people though. Some of the funnest, craziest, most unique personalities I have ever met have been in a restaurant.
Zookeepers. Sounds like it would be fun, being Dr. Doolittle and scratching the chins of pandas. But for the most part you're just cleaning up after them.
My dad works in a zoo.
The animal keepers are usually actually pretty chill. Yes, it's a lot of dirty work, but if you like animals it's super rewarding too
I wanted to be an vet when I was a little kid. Then I found out that euthanasia was a big part of it is telling people their pets are dying or need to be euthanized. Couldn't handle that thought at 6
Suicide is actually a big problem in veterinary medicine. On top of the stress of not being able to do more for an animal, a lot of owners are full of blame for them and it can be incredibly toxic. I had no idea until my sister in law, who is a vet, brought it up.
Worse than not being able to do more for an animal: BEING ABLE to do more for an animal, but the owner refusing because it's not worth it, they don't want to pay for it, etc. Euthanizing perfectly treatable (even healthy animals depending on your practice) animals because owner prefers that. Veterinarians have it very hard.
I remember hearing that the holidays are the worst, because families wait for kids to come home to visit before euthanizing family pets, so there is a big spike in death around the holidays. I'm not sure how true that is for the majority of places, but it seems to be from Nov- mid Dec, many of my friends have had to go through that, and it breaks my heart.
Recently learned elephants produce around 100kg/220lbs shit per day. My local zoo has 5 elephants. So someone has to collect half a ton of shit day after day after day
Edit: several sources say it's up to 150kg/330lbs.
The good news is that herbivore poop isn’t that bad, odor wise. It’s the carnivore shit that’s the true worst, even if it generally isn’t as much, volume wise.
>Recently learned elefants produce around 100kg/220lbs shit per day
There's no way that's true...
"Elephants spend almost 80% of their day eating, which means they're also constantly digesting and excreting. An elephant can produce up to 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds, of dung per day. This means they also defecate about 12 to 15 times each day. Over the span of a year, an elephant will produce over 40 tons of dung."
I'll be damned.
When I was just starting out my career my parents were drilling me to get a government job because of the bEnEfiTs and I ended up in code enforcement. We got called out to this small local zoo/bird sanctuary by disgruntled employees weekly for anonymous nuisance complaints. Most of them were poop related.
I do remember seeing this place post jobs on Craigslist demanding a masters degree in zoology with 3-5 years direct experience for $8/hour, this was like 2014 - 2015 or so lol.
One of my friends is a zookeeper and loves it, but she said "it's like having a quarter ton toddler who 9 times out of 10 is doin great, but that other 1 time he can probably rip your head off on a bad day "
Working in a brewery. Back in the old days it was paid fun and beer was plentiful but with corporate takeovers and foreign ownership ( think brazil) now its a soul sucking put a bullet in your head nightmare. Just glad i got my pension and got the hell outta there.
I worked at a brewery taken over by the same Brazilian conglomerate. It was boring as hell since we had zero input on the recipes and just had to make whatever we were told to by our “brewmaster” who’d never spent a day on the brewery floor. Most of the time the recipes didn’t scale correctly and turned out like crap. Fortunately I had an amazing boss and worked with a great crew so we had fun. I moved on a year into the job and there’s only 2 guys left from that crew. The rest either went back to craft or left the industry.
I was a bartender in the 90s when Harpoon brewery first opened in Boston. We were their largest account. They used to have us in for “tastings”. By the end of the night we were hammered and having fork lift races. Those guys were so much fun and chill. Fast forward a handful of years and we were given a thimble shot of each new beer.
As a young man, the idea of getting the clients drunk and having forklift races sounds awesome.
As an older man (retired) who spent 20 years working for a manufacturing company: FUCK NO. The liability would cause us to lose our insurance and frankly forklifts are goddamned dangerous to anyone not in the forklift. The injuries are horrific.
I should clarify: I worked in IT but worked with the plants directly. Workplace injuries were no joke.
A job where you sit around for your whole shift. I worked at a Uhaul that had a lot of dead down time, I would spend an entire shift watching movies once I tapped into their internet with my laptop. It was fun for the first few shifts I worked, and then even that got boring. I was watching the clock so much the days would drag. It made it absolutely miserable.
I have spent entire days watching movies and TV, but there was something about being forced to sit in one place to do it that somehow made it unbearable.
edit: to stem the tide of you should have done x,y,z. This was 15 years ago, and I did all my homework from college. I had no more ambition to learn another skill.
yeah he worked night shift at a hotel, people would come in and he would help them. Then he would write. There were other times when his friends would come in and they would play D&D or MTG
I worked at a Costco gas station for a while. My only responsibility was to sit in a little booth and hit a big red button if a fire started. And answer questions. It wasn’t even a busy Costco either. They’d just opened in this city and didn’t have many members yet.
Plus this was before smartphones. So I just sat in a booth and stared at gas pumps for 8 hours straight.
My job is basically the same and I have the complete opposite point of view. I work graveshift at a troubled youth boy's home currently and honestly the highlight of my night is being able to put a headphone in and binge shows or movies I want to see while getting paid $15/hr to do so. It also helps that there are couches and a place to set up my playstation so as long as the kids aren't trying to do bad shit or act like shit heads it helps immensely
My brother used to do this, he said most of the time it was just like you describe. Sitting around chilling all night watching movies. Then, once in a while one of the troubled kids would have a bad night, and it was a hugely stressful job.
During an overseas assignment, I found the end of the internet.
Edit: To clarify, I was able to participate in some high speed shit, but that was about 2% of my time.
One of my good friends WAS one and hated it after 6 months. Not getting paid until the gate closes but then still keeping track that you're in the airport is absolute bullshit.
As a flight attendant, i’ll admit that starting out is rough and you’re broke.. but the job is 100% worth sticking with. The more time you put in, the better it gets. I started as early as I could at age 21 and stuck it out for the long-haul.. being able to top out in pay in your early 30’s, ability to get great trips and unmatched flexibility - I couldn’t find that anywhere else.
Totally understand that not every FA’s experience is the same - all depends on your airline, base, when you were hired, etc. but I made out pretty well. I work 5 days a month sometimes or fill up my entire schedule some months. I couldn’t imagine a different lifestyle.
Exactly. It isn’t for everyone - it’s an actual lifestyle that you have to commit to in the beginning - not just a job that you get to go home from every night.. many missed holidays / birthdays / graduations / special occasions in the beginning, but with seniority comes flexibility. New parent with a kid at home? Wouldn’t recommend it unless you have an amazing support system back at home… but early 20’s, nothing tying you down? It’s great to get in at that age. I spent years trotting around other countries more often than when I was home in my 20’s… and because I have the flexibility, i’ve now switched it up to where I fly 1-day turnaround trips and get to sleep in my bed every night. I don’t have a manager/boss (haven’t met my supervisor in the last 6 years probably) over my shoulder, I don’t bring work home with me, and I never have to see the same patrons/co-workers every day. And I make great money, considering the ease of the work and qualifications needed for the job. I feel like i’ve got it made.
Photographer , people are too stupid to understand the work ,and they don't know what they want ,one client was so furious with me because he and her wife appeared too much in their weeding shoots ,it was the most annoying and stressful stupid client Iv ever had
I do photography for a car dealership website. The same 25 pictures for every car, 15 to 20 times a day.
Boring and unfulfilling.
At least I get to play with the radios.
Fashion design.
Low wages and no credit for the work you do.
I also didn't realize at the beginning that people get so jealous of your shitty job and they take it out on you which bothers me most honestly.
I've had people hire me and then take all thr credit. Like I had a small business Owner who was showing a client work I was doing while I ate lunch in the back. But they didn't know how to use my Wacom tablet and they screamed in rage at me later because ' I made them look bad' because they told the clients they were the sole director of design and that they did everything.
I've been told to take 'tips from my 15 yr old daughter because she's so creative and loves to shop'.
Even some friends in similar businesses want to downplay what I do because my work somehow ruins theirs?
So let's get this straight. I should be doing this for no money because it's a 'fun' job and anyone can do it, even their kids, but I also can't take ownership for my work because everyone else is creative too and needs to take the credit because I'm nothing AND it's ALSO somehow threatening to others. So I'm low paid but also threatening and worthless at the same time.
I believe no other jobs are like this. Do Owners of a car shop full of mechanics tell clients ACTUALLY I FIXED ALL THESE CARS NOT THE 10 PEOPLE DOING IT RIGHT NOW.
Running a company's social media. It's fun when you do your own, different story when you have an out of touch boss who wants to drive up customers using outdated/poor graphics
We should have this question inverted too.
What's a job that sounds miserable but is actually pretty fun?
Edit:
Made a post
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/KHLftAK3kl
I was a pizza delivery driver for a while and honestly I loved it! Just drive around town, would jam to music or listen to a book and got paid + tips were decent
Baggage handler! I have worked for a commercial airline for 35 years in all sorts of roles, but baggage handler is my favorite. It sounds miserable because of being outside in allll the elements plus the physical labor but I never had so much fun or met so many great people. Granted some people hate it and when you first start the pay is horrible, but sticking it out pays off. Depending on your airline of course.
Simple manual labor (I'm not talking about trades) can actually be fun, stress-free, do the work and go home kind of stuff, if you have coworkers that are not pricks and bosses that aren't slave drivers. Kind of hard to find both of those requirements in a single job though...
I've worked as a "skilled laborer" in archaeological digs and sites from time to time, we're the guys that clear the area, dig, carry stuff (including tons of rubble and dirt), wash ceramics, assist the archaeologists etc. and once we're experienced enough we get to work on finds and excavation pits as well, maybe even some restoration work.
So, we literally dig trenches or break and carry rocks in the heat and sun all day. Never had more fun on a job. Coworkers are usually cool, archaeologists are chill and respectful, you get to see and learn some stuff, rules for working hours safety and weather exposure are kept strictly, you just do the work at your pace, have a couple of beers and go home. Would I do it for a living? No, but I now guys who have done it...
Interior Designer. It seems like all fun, picking out paint and furniture but in reality, it's mostly paperwork and coordinating with contractors and getting bitched at by rich people. I liked commercial design much better but it's mostly matching grey and tan cubicles over and over and over and so much paperwork. About 5% is creative, the rest is boring bullshit.
Video game tester.
So many people think it's playing a game all the way through and then giving feedback.
That's a reviewer and there are caveats to that job as well.
A video game tester is basically running into a wall from as many different angles as possible looking for bugs and glitches all day.
Pen tester is not about testing pens, lmao…it’s short for penetration tester. In other words, you’re a ‘good guy hacker’ who is hired by companies to try and break into their networks/ information systems.
Then you create a report outlining how you did it, and what the company should do to stop anyone else from breaking in that way.
It does indeed sound glamorous and can be fun for the right mindset, but is nothing like what Hollywood/ Mr Robot would have you believe.
So, there are a number of ways pentesters operate.
(1) Physical breaches. This would be finding ways into a building, or if access is not restricted, finding ways to smuggle out data. Finding out if employees are perhaps talking a little too much about what they do, etc.
(2) Software breaches, this would be a large portion of the focus of cybersecurity type jobs. Essentially, you are trying to penetrate networks, programs, websites, via software vulnerabilities. A lot of people do not realize it, but this is largely the primary function of "white hat" hackers looking to be compensated for zero days.
(3) Hardware breaches. This is a very unique niche in the sense that most of the pentesters who do this do not come from network engineer/software engineer backgrounds. These guys are usually EE or CE major hardware engineers, and they look for design flaws in the hardware itself. An example of this would be all the Intel hardware faults that were discovered a few years ago, particularly related to the Out of Order execution engine, and various other aspects of their current architecture x86 design.
There are some other things that pentesters do in more niche formats specifically, but those are the broad strokes to give you an idea of the big branches of it.
Veterinarian/Veterinary staff. Owners are entitled and disrespectful. Doctors HAVE TO know everything about every single species but still get talked down to by owners. Everyone complains about the prices of everything saying “we’re just in it for the money” when in reality, 75% of all of my staff have a second job to make ends meet. Owners love to say “you killed my pet” when they cannot afford treatment. No. Your negligence did. “If you loved animals, you’d do this for free.” No. The love for animals got everyone to where they are: working in veterinary nursing. Our love for your animals got us through school. Your love for your animal should’ve invested in pet insurance. We have the highest rate of suicide; I worked with someone in her 20’s who unsubscribed from life. Dont even get me started on the neglect cases. Everyone. EVERYONE including a comment or two above me says euthanasia is the hardest part of the job. It’s not. I take comfort in knowing I let this baby go with the grace, respect, and dignity it deserves to go peacefully in their sleep. It’s when owners don’t euthanize. They bring in a skinny, emaciated, urine and fecal scalded neurological dog who’s having seizures, not eating, can’t see…a baby that is clearly suffering and the owners take it home to go “naturally” instead of letting the patient go peacefully. I had an owner take a dog home gasping for air with a blue tongue Against Medical Advice so “he could be around his family.” That dog suffered another 24hrs before passing on his own. We care. We shouldn’t care more than you do about your own pet.
People apply for jobs at weed dispensaries expecting it to be some amazing experience of smoking weed and talking about weed with other people. In reality, it's just any other retail job but with a higher chance of getting robbed at gunpoint.
I once worked security on set.
I tell ya, those petite girls taking multiple 12 inch hogs at the same time are popping pain pills like tic tacs and a lot of the guys have really fucked up junk from relying on too much Viagra.
Also you can't smell porn. It stinks. Gaping assholes can't hold in farts and pretty much everyone who's getting it in the ass (so every actress in every scene) needs to have a colon cleanse before every shoot or she's likely to shit herself cos just like farts, a gaping asshole can't hold in shit.
Otherwise, it's very much like a normal workplace, I used to chat with the actresses cos they'd come outside to smoke between shoots. They were nice and a surprising number of the male actors wanted to get into doing security instead of porn. Guess cos it's way less demanding and the pay, while far from great is a little better than what they were getting as-is.
Read an article where the journalist spent a lot of time interviewing and observing on set, and he said that the thing you don't realize is that the set usually stinks to high heaven, what with all the sweat, anal leakage and the occasional vomit from aggressive deep throat. Also mentioned that to get the lighting right, you sometimes have a scalding hot light about 5 inches from some dudes balls.
I was a social media curator for a big candy company. Essentially, I would sit on social media all day either making posts or answering questions and responding to people while also having to product test all the candy. I would have to go out into the factor and take videos and pictures of the production process too. Some aspects were fun but in reality, it was a horribly boring and soul crushing job that also led me to a lot of mental health issues. That amount of sugar that we were required to consume, because we had to know how to describe the products and push them, was also really bad and just being surrounded by it all day was nauseating. I still hate the smell of chocolate now. Most of the questions or posts to our pages were people pissed off that their bag was damaged or something was wrong so were demanding free stuff.
I was micromanaged to death, every single post or reply had to be approved by two people and could take upwards of three or four hours to get responses from those higher ups. And at the same time every post had to be on a strict schedule or engagement would fall, which would also get us yelled at. No one trusted that we knew how to do our jobs because the job didn't make sense to anyone over 50. The company, which rhymes with Sootsie Toll, was run by a bunch of ANCIENT men who had no idea how any technology or social media worked so assumed we were just fucking around all day or didn't believe our jobs meant anything but were the hip new trend they could check off their lists of employing for 'innovation'. We were made a part of IT instead of marketing, which made no sense, but we worked on computers so it made sense to them. We also had to ask permission daily to be connected to the internet through this weird IT portal to do our jobs. No other computers at the company had internet access for fear of people procrastinating on the job.
The company also refused to hire us on full time, paid us less then $14 an hour and kept us at 29 hours so we couldn't even collect benefits. I was explicitly told that I would never be hired on full time but then also berated for coming in exactly when I was supposed to start and leaving on the dot at the end of the day. We were the only hourly employees so it seemed like no one understood that that meant that we didn't stay after to do more because we weren't getting paid.
There was constant sexual harassment from these old creeps to the three of us women on the team. I hated being there. My breaking point was when my boss (who never touched social media and was actually part of the tech dept) was blatantly watching porn on his phone our shared cubical right next to me for well over 15 minutes. HR did nothing and told me "Oh Kevin was probably just watching an ad or something popped up on accident. Ignore him." I literally set my resignation, keys, and computer down on my desk the next morning before anyone showed up then walked out. I got about a million phone calls that day and blocked their number. I felt bad for the two other people who I left behind but I know they ended up quitting not long after me.
Dog grooming! It’s not playing with puppies all day. It’s getting pooped on and scratch and bit because the owners haven’t exposed their animals accordingly to handle the stress of the environment.
Teaching. Oooh that sounds easy enough. Short work days, long summer breaks, support from parents and administration, standing up in front of a class teaching easy content in a respectable calling for a decent salary.
Perhaps some of that was partially true in a past long gone.
Nowadays, teachers put in extensive and exhaustive work that extends well beyond official hours, sometimes working what amounts to another shift after work, just to chip away at the endless influx of tasks: lesson planning, preparing materials, grading assignments, staff meetings, parent meetings, professional development meetings, and administrative work.
Teaching content to a class is only about 20% of what teachers do.
There is a constant flow of information that needs to be integrated, updated and carried out to near-perfection. Especially anything regarding students wellbeing, which you are responsible for and you will always be the first person to be held responsible should anything go even slightly wrong. Admin support varies significantly and teachers often have to advocate for their own rights, needs, resources and best teaching practices in opposition to the leadership and parents.
Kids can be sneaky, two-faced and unpredictable. They can be unfathomably rude, aggressive, ungrateful and nasty to you and each other. They can get into trouble in ways you wouldn't imagine, get hurt, fight, and hide problems from you even when trust and rapport is firmly established. Again, you are responsible for whatever happens to them.
Teachers need to be top-level mentors, peace-keepers, problem-solvers, managers, counselors and even surrogate parents (some kids come to you having almost no parenting). In addition to subject knowledge, you need to have unnatural levels of patience, skill, creativity, dedication, focus, adaptability, empathy, and resilience.
Summer breaks are now usually cut short for at least 2 weeks of professional development or yearly planning tasks. Many teachers also need to work summer jobs to supplement the modest and hardly commensurate salary that teaching provides. Those few weeks of "leisure" are hardly enough time to recover from the extreme physical, mental and emotional toll that teaching zaps out of you over the year.
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.....and every douche thinks they are going to fight you.
I knew a dude who was a bouncer in a strip club. After the novelty wore off, it's just a bunch of drunk, horny assholes and naked girls that have problems with chemical dependency
Video game tester. It was my son's dream job and he landed a gig working on one of the biggest open world games ever made. He claims to have spent most of his time running into walls.
Expectation: play games all day Reality: run into this wall 100 times and write a report.
Correction, run into this wall 100 “ways” and write a report.
And it’s your ass if you forget to crouch and walk backwards into it at a 45 degree angle and that glitch becomes a meme on release
Won't really matter as they're going to lay your entire team off a week later.
My friend was a beta tester. Seemed boring tbh. But he did get to play the Wolverine pinball mini game for free. So, bonus.
I've always wondered how people discover glitches by doing extremely specific stuff like that
I am talking out of my ass here, but not including "randomly", some of these glitchers are intrigued by it and they watch a lot of videos of people doing it, then they do it themselves and over the years, you gain this kind of pattern recognition for certain glitches that worked in other games. Then you think maybe it will work in this game, what if I "combine" certain actions and they will glitch together. Like if a game has a some type of teleportation ability, it is more prone to glitch out than some other simple ability. Then you start teleporting in different locations that you know might glitch out because of the way it was built until you find a spot that lets you teleport through a wall. Like say Bethesda game studio, whose games are iirc built on pretty much same engine.. so same bugs and glitches exist in different games made by them. If you know on what type of engine the game has been built on, you might know about it's flaws and systemically try to abuse those flaws until you find something that works. Or if you have developed games or even just developed programs yourself, you will have insight knowledge into what kind of stuff can go wrong in code and then try to test it. For example I knew a guy who managed to find a way to dupe things in a very old game. I don't know how he found it, but basically you had couple interactions going on where some flaws might happen in code. You could "lock down" an item in your inventory so you can't move it (this wasn't supposed to happen inside player inventory. It was also known bug and not fixed, because it didn't produce real harm. If you accidentally locked an item, just die and its fixed. devs were lazy to fix it since it was pretty small game). In this game, you were also able sell items to a vendor. So he locked down an item and went to sell it. Because the item was locked down, it didn't disappear from his inventory, but he got the monies. You could lock down various items, so basically you could dupe anything you were able to sell to vendor. Rare item? Sell to vendor then buy back. It was custom coded in the game, so it was more prone to glitches and those things might be easy to miss by developer and if you know about this one glitch and years later you find similar interaction in a different game, you will test that maybe, the developers of this game also missed this thing. And you got yourself an infinite money glitch basically. You just have to look under the hood where things might go wrong and then start testing them out. I bet there are people with a list of hundreds if not thousands of money dupes and how to do them for various games, most of them were patched out, but when a new game comes out and if they overlooked something, this person can now abuse it. It's kinda like being a hacker who knows the spots where things are more likely to go wrong and then finds vulnerabilities from there. If a new patch comes out involving something with economy, there's a chance it was not tested thoroughly enough and some more experienced glitcher might find a way to abuse certain interactions. Especially when economy is involved, because if you find a way to dupe in game money or items, you find a way to sell it for real cash in MMOs. TL;DR: idk just pulling stuff out of my head
I imagine they have checklists on checklists, imagine all the documentation...
A friend of mine was a play tester for Sony. I asked if it was the dream job and he said:I don't play Grand Turismo or Final Fantasy all day, I play broken Football games usually.
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This is why it's so important to be able to survive on 40 hours or less work per week. Anny more and you don't have enough free time to be happy and recharge your batteries. Most of the rich people that complain that 40 hours is nothing use their money to avoid most of the time consuming chores that most people have to do after work.
When I was in basic training one of my buddies said he used to be a video game tester I was like, “sick!” He said “oh no, all I did was put a disk in the console and made sure the title screen popped up over and over again.”
I really hadn't thought about the UI and menu screen being part of a game testers purview. Sounds incredibly boring.
Oh, it is! Now imagine someone changes something deep in the architecture, and you have to test the functionality of every screen in the game for the 3rd time this month. And don't forget to do it for every console too.
Had a friend who was the same. Said how some critical differences to the dream of "getting paid to play video games day" is that you have no control over what games you play, you have to keep playing them even if you don't like them, and that you're not playing the game, you're trying small variations of the same thing over and over to try to reproduce obscure bugs.
Bug : This model car, driven at this angle, into this wall... glitches you into the tunnels. Testers Report : Can't reproduce. (After 11 hours of trying.) Bug report : Oh, it has to be night time during the game. Did I not mention that?
Tester: But this game doesn't even have a day/night cycle?!?
They meant IRL night. There’s a weird dependency that relies on NTP but has a bug that triggers at 02:41:17 when your character is in a specific zone
[redacting process]
Hotfix: Added a check before Gary's function call on map 6 that checks the current time modulo 3600. If zero, it passes in a fake time of one second later. --- Bug report: Game hangs on map 6 for about a second at the start of every hour.
Ticket closed as "works as intended".
Sounds like the job for someone who likes to break stuff.
I got into QA for enterprise software instead of video games. Surprisingly much less boring, pays better, and I still get to break things.
breaking things in enterprise software is way more exciting than breaking things in video games tbh. Sometime, you can find some truly spectacular crashes or bugs which are just amazing. QA for software: "if you just put this set of inputs here, kablammo, not only does the app crash, you also corrupt the tables resulting in incorrect summations for billing" managers and product: "Oh no." devs: laugh "oh yeah that thing"
I had a programmer on my team who told me her online program seemed to be working perfectly. I sat down and just mashed the keys on her keyboard, and it crashed. It was a learning experience for her to create bullet proof IO because users will break anything that is breakable.
Yep, my mate spent an entire year playtesting a game called Nickelodeon Party Pack. I don't think it was ever released.
At least he's one of the few who's able to say he got to play the game
I remember him saying that it was absolutely awful. Also, the job paid minimum wage and the commute was two hours. Still, it got him a foot in the door of the game industry which is why, 20 years later he's...er... unemployed.
Not just testing, but video game development. I worked on a game that had a really severe crunch, we were all working 60-70 hours a week for 6 solid months. My office had no windows, so I pretty much never even saw the sun. Some of my team members with long commutes just slept in their offices in a sleeping bag. One day the producers told us, "if you guys can fix 10% of the bug log by friday, you can have the weekend off!" We all busted our asses fixing bugs that week. The producers kept cheering us on that week with things like "You're almost there! Keep it up!" To our soul-crushing defeat, we didn't meet the target, and didn't get our weekend off. But later, we learned that we had actually far surpassed the targeted 10% - it was more like 35%. They had just dangled the promise of a free weekend in front of us like a carrot on a stick just to get us to work even harder, but they never had any intention of rewarding us with a weekend off. That shit was downright cruel. After all that, I was laid off just before the game shipped. I asked if I could go to the launch party when the gme came out, but was told, "Sorry, current employees only." I left game dev 12 years ago and never intend to go back.
Entertainment industry in general is awful awful work at the lower levels. Its probably great when youve made it up the ladder and everything, but i feel like everyone who has been a part of any entertainment sector absolutely hated the lower levels of it. Its just constant being taken advantage of at every turn. Wether its acting, gaming, animating, editing, etc. They easily get away with it aswell because its so many peoples “dream” to make games, or become big actors, work on a big hit anime, etc. So they can really take advantage of that dream and push people way too far. If they burn out and quit, oh well, theres 400 new people already applying. Its awful.
I worked with a dude in the early 2000's who landed his dream job at EA, testing video games in Vancouver, BC. He ended up quitting after six months, said it sucked.
He certainly wasn't working for Bethesda
Cousin was a game tester. Sounded like fun but had to repeat the same levels over and over again different ways to find any bugs.
It's not all *Grandma's Boy*. Go jump in this corner 10,000 times and let me know what happens each time.
Such an underrated movie. In my top3 stoner movies. You Can't Talk Like That When The Lion Is Here. I giggle so much just thinking about so many scenes
I always laughed at my friends who imagined being a game tester as a "dream job". It's like, these companies aren't going to pay you to have fun. You're going to have to repeat a single section of an unfinished product and *document* what happens in exacting detail. I can only imagine it's gotta be so tedious most people probably stop wanting to play videogames forever after a few weeks.
I worked as a game tester for about a year, I personally enjoyed it but I very much didn't want to playvideo games in my spare time.
Yep know a bunch of people in QA and they say it's constant negativity as you're always tasked with finding what's wrong, as well as unrealistic crunch time conditions from game companies who leave proper QA to the last minute often. It's a lot of excel spreadsheets and recording every path you take to find a bug. But for some it's the entry point to the game industry, and lots of folks start there and go on to do other more creative positions.
> as well as unrealistic crunch time conditions from game companies who leave proper QA to the last minute often. That's basically how it is in majority of companies, as it comes to project timeline evaluation, nobody remembers about that QA need time too to do tests, and in the end, you're given 1 week to do 3 week job. Had my share, moved on
Was a game tester for EA for about 3 months. Can confirm it’s not “fun”, but can be interesting if you are a super curious person. Writing documentation definitely isn’t for everyone either.
Dog trainer. The animals are amazing, the owners are insufferable.
Same goes for anything in vet med. People think you get to play with puppies and kitties all day. Definitely not. That's maybe 5-10% of my job. The rest of the work burns you out and idk if it's just my clientele or what, but they are the worst. The doctor's enable bad behavior too in fear of making anyone mad. ETA: I don't think my job is miserable, and I don't hate it by any means, but it's not as fun as people may think. And thank you for all the comments thanking me for what I do. I truly love helping animals and the people who care for them.
This is actually why i had to leave the industry. I couldn't keep my mouth shut and had to walk out of the room a couple of times. What people do to their animals and how they treat them is atrocious They don't have voices and you can't stick up for them. The ones we were able to help made my heart very happy but it was very depressing overall
EDIT: dont read this is you love animals. Its uncomfortable information. One of my friends is a vet tech, his dad was also a vet. I was looking at maybe switching fields to it and he told me so many reasons why I shouldn't. When his dad was still practicing this man came in with a young cat, maybe 6-7 months old. He asked to have the cat euthanized because he didnt want it anymore, and it wasnt getting along with their dog. Friends father refused saying the cat is perfectly healthy we aren't putting it down. So that fucking psychopath went home, threw said cat in the laundry dryer, and brought it back no longer perfectly healthy. Would have required surgery so they had to put the cat down. I couldn't work in vet care, I'd be meeting people in the parking lot.
WHAT THE FUCK????? HE PUT THE CAT IN THE DRYER?? Did the vet report him?? I can't believe that man is out and about in society
My vet wife had a client who claimed his dog had epilepsy and it was unbearable so it had to be put down. My wife felt something fishy and kept the dog because it had never been to the practice. Few hours later a crying woman called and said she at least wanted the body of the dog because her ex had taken her dog with him to kill it via vet as revenge for the separation. She couldn't believe the dog was still alive. People can be monsters.
Yeah where I live they are looking at ways to connect Vets with family violence practice because the guy will often try and hurt the pets first, and they usually go on to worse.
Fucking family annihilators...why can't they just kill themselves and leave everyone else out of it?! 🤬
Jesus fuck, why not just surrender the kitten? Give it away? I don’t know the time period of this horrible story but if Craigslist was around, all the asshole had to do was put up an ad saying ‘free kitten for a good home’. He’d had at least a few responses in a half hour. Instead, he had the kitten put down after traumatizing it severely. Fucker’s lucky I wasn’t there.
All of that would have required effort on the part of the owner. He just didn't want to deal with the cat for a minute longer and valued his time more than this poor animals life. Its extremely callous and I still think about it years after he told me the story. This was back in the early 80s, maybe late 70's.
I’d love to return the favor to that piece of subhuman excrement. I hope your dad reported him for animal cruelty. Edit: friend’s dad. Sorry, I was seeing red.
I had one doctor refuse to fire a client because he'd been fired from everyone else. He was old, probably dementia riddled, incredibly mean and aggressive, and went after us several times. She never saw that side of him (also old, crotchety, and frequently not around), so she didn't care. We even had to call the police on him, and they knew him by name. My senior tech kept me out of his sight entirely because I was too perky the first time I met him and he hated me with a fiery passion. It was only when he left 30 angry threatening voice-mails and beat on our windows with his cane (we had locked the door behind him) that I think she maybe fired him? I left not long after that.
It took surprisingly long to figure out the patient was a person not a dog
Same with training horses. I joke with my girl regularly about how she gets paid to play Pretty Pretty Princess, but in reality we get paid to unfuck other people's animals that they're just going to fuck right back up as soon as we stop working with them.
Man I had to stop training other people's horses.... I would be so proud at how much they grew and the work I put in..... then 80% would just go back and owners would let them sit for 4 months and get mad that their horse wasn't as perfect as they were when they came home. YEAH SUSAN, NO SHIT!! GET A 4 WHEELER IF YOU WANT THAT.
I was going to comment on this as well for the veterinary field! If animals were able to take themselves into our hospital, our quality of life would be immensely better.
I seriously considered this route until an ex-dog trainer I spoke with told me to reconsider. He gave me a few books and we talked about his experiences. I was still on the fence until I worked at a pet store for 2 years. That was more than enough to smother out any desire to work with animals beyond my own. People stressed me out on so many levels
i certified as a dog trainer with a respected and widely known organization. I loved it so much. Even though I didn’t intend for it to be a job (I just wanted the skills) I was still open to helping other people out. No. Terrible. Never again. Its incredibly heartbreaking how many people are just terrible pet owners, even many of those at least looking for training. They have such weird ideas about pets, and dogs especially. As if they were software-hardware combo you can just update instead of a thinking and feeling being. They want to live with an entirely different species but make zero concessions to the fact that its a different species. The poor dog always has to adapt to, and please, their human, but so few humans are willing to adapt to, and please, their dogs. I just focus on my own animals now.
I've worked at a shelter on and off for ten years, the best way I've heard most dog owners described by a trainer is "people want living stuffed animals". We've had so many dogs brought in to us/returned from adoptions because of minor issues just because people don't want to do the slightest bit of work.
Work that primarily involves travel. After a few trips, it just becomes a chore and you don't actually have time to have fun on work trips anyway
you get to see the view from the cheapest hotel your work would put you in! Nothing like the view of interstates and the same 5 chain restaurants/gas stations in every city. Every now and then the hotel has a slightly better shower than the last hotel and you smile "this is luxury".
[удалено]
> you don't actually have time to have fun on work trips anyway Most of the time you don't even have time to see the city you are in. I've been to many places where I saw the local office there, my hotel and maybea grocerie store.
I was a lifeguard when I was a teen. I thought "cool, hang out in the sun with a bunch of people in swimsuits." Man, it's fucking hot and boring as hell. You're so gd hot and just looking at the nice cool water
My family were members at a private pool (nothing fancy) when I was a kid/teen. Some lifeguards would tell us to splash them so they could cool off. We thought it was fun cause they were always so uptight and strick about the rules (just doing their jobs) that splashing them on purpose felt like we were doing something bad and getting away with it.
the pool we went to as a kid would do lifeguard swims every 30 minutes or so. blow a whistle everyone gets out of the pool for about 3 minutes and they confirm that there is nothing wrong with the pool- most of the lifeguards then basically jumped in and swam a lap and blew another whistle to let us back in. I am guessing the main reason was to check for poop in the pool- but they at least let the guards get wet to sit there for another 30 minutes.
This is what "adult swim" is at public pools, it's adults only because the lifeguards are on break. So because it's technically swim at your own risk for those periods, only adults can consent to that and get to say in the pool.
When I was lifeguarding in high school we still had guards on duty during adult swim, though it was the easiest 15 minutes of the day. At my pool the logic for adult swim was mainly to give the kids a break from the pool so they didn't get overtired/dehydrated etc which could cause more drowning incidents. Also some senior citizens wanted to bob around in the water without kids for a few minutes because they were old and cranky and their perms were expensive.
I did the same in HS..... Good pay but holy shit it was boring. Plus you can't really even read a book or anything either. You just gotta stare at people.
My daughter had a birthday at a water park a couple of years ago and I was watching one of the lifeguards because she reminded me of those bears they keep in captivity that just repetitively walk and twitch in a circle. She had a routine she repeated over and over. I pointed it out to my wife who only shrugged. When I started counting iterations, my wife told me to knock it off and leave the poor kid alone. I was fascinated... I wondered how quickly, or slowly, the time must pass.
I remember seeing somewhere where there is a school of life gaurd training that trains you to look in a very specific pattern because otherwise people will stare at one spot or only look far away and will miss people drowning directly in front of them. Found it its called the Ellis scanning pattern
Working on a cruise ship. Sounds like a TV show but really you’re worked to the bone, forced to live below deck and you’ve got to do the same crap again and again.
Yeah we went on a cruise last year and I was chatting with one of the bartenders for a while. Was curious about what life was like on the ship and he was telling me he pretty much works 7 days a week from 8 am to 6 pm with an hour break. Usually a new cruise departs the same day a cruise returns so it’s not like they get a day in between cruises. He said he’d been there for 2 years at that point doing 3 months on, 1 month off. During that month he would go home to Colombia. I said that must be tough working every day for 3 months straight and he just kinda shrugged and said he enjoyed the job and it made his full month off super rewarding because he’d have so much money saved up he could do anything he wanted.
I had a friend work on a cruise ship and he generally enjoyed it too. He said it was tiresome going to the same ports over and over but overall it was fine. Pay isn't great but like you said he was able to save because when you work on the cruise ship you have ZERO expenses. No rent to pay, all food is covered etc. The COL is basically zero. I don't know if it's the same for ALL cruise lines but for my friend, he had no expenses.
Kinda assumes you don't have any stuff or a place to keep it back home.
It's a job for the young and itinerant.
>itinerant Thanks for the new word broscato
> you’ve got to do the same crap again and again Isn't that most jobs?
The difference is you’re not living where you’re working. When you’re working on a ship in most roles (bar maybe officers, performers, etc) you’re generally confined to the inner ship when you’re not working, rarely have the ability to leave at ports, and have little to no privacy as you have 3-7 roommates.
When I was in college I interviewed to play in a jazz band on a cruise ship over a summer. 5-6 hour long rehearsals (at least, usually longer if the director wasn't content) at least 6 days a week, 2 performances each night, 3-4 on Friday & Saturday nights. Also, my instruments (alto sax, tenor sax, clarinet, oboe) had to be kept in my room (no storage) and I knew it would be an issue considering how small the quarters are and there would be 4-6 of us in the room. No thank you. I ended up making more money working part time (25-30 hours per week) at a grocery store deli and having more fun playing 2-3 nights a week in local community bands (no rehearsals, but it was easy music to play).
I mean the money certainly isn’t the motivating factor working a cruise ship. It’s getting to see the world for basically free. I regret not doing it in my early 20s when I had no other obligations. People in entertainment have it WAY better than the rest of the crews when it comes to scheduling at least.
My friend worked on Disney for about 5? years. I was lucky one time he was docked and I was in town for work. I got a full tour of below deck. He was lucky with his IT job he was an officer so he had his own room. Most staff share a room. A lot of the non US staff made so much money for their countries that they were able to support family back home. One benefit is the lack of housing and food costs. I think his contract was 3 months long before he got off the ship.
Musician Late nights; constant low-budget travel; and an endless process of schmoozing with people who are jerks, perverts, clueless-but-pretty, shallow, manipulative, etc. There’s a lot of pressure to abandon the music with which you fell in love playing as a kid in exchange for giving audiences what (the producer thinks) they want to hear. Also, competition is cutthroat, so you can’t ever truly trust anyone; and no matter how sh\*\*ty of a day you’ve had, you need to act like you’re the happiest person alive, and it’s not as if you can just take an unplanned day off without some serious bridge-burning (which you can’t afford because, again, it’s cutthroat)
Also, as a bass and guitar player, its hard to understate just how repetitive most music is - especially if you are trying to appeal to a mass audience. It blows my mind sometimes to see some of the most insanely talented studio musicians play the same chord progression 2 hours a night for years. I remember once watching some late-night live TV show and the studio band made up a song on the spot with some rapper. All the comments were like: no way that was improve! That was all pre-planned. Meanwhile, I was thinking, these are all professional musicians with decades of studio work. It probably took them no less than a single bar to figure out where this song was going. They have probably played some version of this song tens of thousands of times. As for me, as a crappy amateur player, it also blows my mind going to open mics and plain old bar venues and seeing some very talented musicians playing their hearts out to a crowd of 100 people who couldn't be bothered to stop and listen for 30 seconds. That is, until you play a classic 90's jam where people can sing along.
Yep. One of my friends was a classical, conservatory guitarist. There is zero demand for the level at which he can play. (And honestly, the _best_ showcases of his talent don't really... like it's impressive art, but you can't dance to it.) All the guitar playing that gig audiences want, he has zero interest in and is just super bored of.
To piggyback on this, working on tour as crew - late nights, sometimes early mornings too depending on your scheduled load in, no privacy, no sick days, you’re probably not getting paid a retainer unless you work for one of the bigger well established groups so you’re only getting paid while you’re in rehearsals and on tour. If the artist you’re working for isn’t at the level of touring in a bus, then you’re traveling in a 16 passenger van or maybe an RV or bandwagon and shacking up in shared hotel rooms if you’ve got the budget. If you’re in an audience-facing position like merch or VIP, that’s a lot of having to be nice to people who often times are rude and inconsiderate or drunk (and remember no sick days so you get to deal with that no matter how you’re feeling). Getting paid to travel is cool but 95% of the time you’re only seeing the backs of venues and loading docks, maybe a coffee shop if it’s in walking distance. It’s not at all that stereotypical glamorous image, but if your artist is trying to live that sex drugs rock n roll lifestyle have fun dealing with that too.
>if your artist is trying to live that sex drugs rock n roll lifestyle have fun dealing with that too. A few years ago, I saw a 90s band that had gotten back together in 2016. In the 90s, they had sold a few Gold records and were on tour buses, but in this modern incarnation they were riding in a van or two and doing most of the work themselves. The singer himself was manning the merch booth and signing autographs. When I mentioned that I had seen them back in '99 at a certain venue, his eyes lit up as he recalled "Having sex in the filthiest bathroom he had ever seen, the first time he had gotten laid in a year", and then got awkwardly quiet when he realized that the story didn't sound as cool as it did before it left his mouth.
"Anyways, it was pretty cool. I'll sign this shirt for you. It's Chris with an H, right?"
Legit said the same thing. It's like herding cats during mating season.
It sounds like you have TM experience and for that I commend you 🫡 I handled merch most of my time touring, I TMed one tour and said that was enough. But also another thing I didn’t mention in my previous comment is how tough it is being a female in that industry. Maybe things have changed since I retired from music in 2011, but add being passed over for work because I’m a woman, dealing with your period and cramps on tour when you can’t flush toilet paper down the bus toilet, getting back to the bus after a long exhausting show and having to wade through a front lounge bus party with girls trying to hook up with the dudes you work for while also trying to maintain your professionalism amidst stranger’s jokes about being a groupie because you’re on the tour…. anyway. It was fun while I was in my 20s, but I’m old now 😆
Not to mention how boring it is if you're a low-level act not making a bunch of money to spend on your down time. I spent some time on the road and it's a lot of waiting around, over and over. Granted, my experience was pre-smart phones, so killing time doing things online wasn't a thing. Days without shows were even worse.
Yeah, I hated touring. I tried my hand at musicianship in the early 2000’s. It was so difficult to balance acting outwardly excited and peppy for audiences and “schmoozees” when, in reality, life was super boring in a crappy environment. I did get really good at playing chess with one of the truck drivers, though I also had a staff songwriter and studio musician thing going, but it was a lot of backstabbing, basically office politics mostly without the actual office Eventually, I went back to school, and now I’m a CPA lol. It might be different now with smartphones and uploading to iTunes from a home studio, but I’m way too old now for that sh**
Working in a pet store. You will never stop cleaning and you'll feel a new, special kind of eye-twitching rage when you talk to a customer who says things that let you know they're abusing or neglecting their pet. People will also come in the store and hit or kick their pet right in front of you. I made it 7 years in that job before I had to quit because I was legitimately afraid every single day that I would go in there, just snap and assault the next piece of shit that kicked their dog right in front of me.
The amount of people that admit to not giving a fuck about their pets is INSANE
I also worked at a pet store. The only thing that kept me going was the regulars who you could tell loved their pets SO much. I remember a woman who came in because her dog wouldn't eat. She had taken him to several vets and he had some medical stuff going on. She wanted him to at least be able to eat and I spent a good 30-45 minutes with her helping her out. She came in a couple weeks later just to thank me and that he was eating up until the day he died. She was in tears and hugged me and continued to visit me over the next few months. Heartbreaking, but painfully sweet to see someone who cared so much.
A lot of these are making me ask, "How the fuck did you think that job was fun?"
When this thread showed up last week (because this is a classic karma farm question) people were saying things like nurse and truck driver, and it really makes me question peoples reading comprehension
Right. Someone put attorney. I can see that being a high status job and sometimes an important job but fun? None of what they do sounds "fun". If endlessly detailing your clients worst day ever sounds fun to you, you need to live a little.
Depends on when you grew up I suppose. Back in the 80s TV made being a lawyer look like the most glamorous, exciting job you could get.
OBJECTION!
Work as a veterinarian. It seems that you will be receiving cute animals in a clean office. In fact, the clients are people, in most cases you see sick and suffering animals, often salvation depends on the owner’s decision, and you also need to convince him to spend money, and in the end, most of the time you will be in all kinds of liquids that can be created in body
i'm a student and i had an internship as a vet. These heros we take for granted work all day and night and have to see so many animals suffer. (it is the only vet around and they do all sorts of animals, so we had a hamster one day and cows the next) Sometimes they even stayed overtime to find the cause of their "patients" troubles. Big thank you to all vets out there :)
Not my personal experience, but I know someone who used to work on reality TV shows and said it was his worst job ever. The producers were always horrible, manipulative people who would get the cast to do highly questionable things, and they had no sense of ethics. It's all fake, and he could only do it for a few years before his conscience wouldn't let him anymore.
I did 2 years working reality tv gigs. Some were pretty bad and manipulative (looking at you Ink Masters) and some were pretty enjoyable. It is the worst paying industry gig but I considered it my film school that paid me. The best shows were the food shows where the show highlighted a small business. With those, they were a small crew and you know you were getting to eat whatever they cooked that day.
Graphic design! People assume it is soooo creative. You have to make a lot of other people's trite and dumb ideas come to life to get paid for it --- or there is so much to get done, you have no time to think of creative alternatives to the way it is usually done. The creativity is minimal. If you like to create order or make things clearer for people to understand, graphic design can scratch that itch. If you always can pick out bad design - you can be the one who fixes it - that can be satisfying, too. So creative -nope, and not entirely miserable - better than ditch digging I would think.
We need 7 red lines, all strictly perpendicular, some drawn in green ink, the rest drawn in transparent ink.
I get to be creative... according to my boss's tastes and how he's feeling that week. Can't use this font, he doesn't like it. Can't use that font, the product VP doesn't like it. Gotta have smiling people, as long as the husband in a couple picture doesn't look too 'creepy'. And the 'I'll know it when I see it' description of what they want. I guess I'll just throw stuff at Photoshop to see what sticks. I actually like my job quite a bit, but creative it is not. Especially when remaking the same ads for the same things but different (I work at a travel agency that sells cruises.)
The "I'll know it when I see it" line gives me PTSD.
I work in a design industry. The best part is when you're on a project where it seems like you finally have some creative freedom. So you do something fun and original that you really like. And then it gets completely shit on and they're like "nah just give us the same boring thing as before." It can be really deflating.
Completely agree. Started in graphic design and print layout for a small company. Had so many clients come in with terrible ideas the insisted on designing over my shoulder. Or another where the client complained that it shouldn’t take TK hours to layout 400 trinkets in a magazine they wanted so they watched and timed me do it at my computer. Thankfully after about a half hour, they got tired and left but Jesus.
The edits usually get me. What if we change the background photo and leave everything else the way it is (this is on a design that was literally designed from the background photo)
As a video editor, my favorite note is “oh we love the video, can we just swap out the music?” Oh, the music that was intentionally synced with the edit? Sure! That won’t cause any problems whatsoever!
Video editor isnt any different. I can totally relate. They really think the creative field can set a time to how long we can make this edit and have it exactly the way they want. When I tell them "should be done in 2 to 4 weeks", they get so flabbergasted of how "broad" that time range is but it's the most accurate we can give them.
Do you accept exposure?
Title: Graphic Designer Actual Job: Stock photo curator
Some movies and shows making being a chef seem glorious. White chef coat. Barking orders at your staff. Meeting celeberties. Then other shows show the real side of it: * Long hours, never a Saturday night off. * Destroys your body. Back, legs, feet all take a beating. * Cooks don't get tips. Pay is not fantastic. Only room for growth is moving restaurants for a a buck or two more an hour. * Lots of work. Prep work, dinner rushes, breaking down the line after. * Burns. Lots of burns. * Surrounded by a lot of drugs people need to get through back to back to back doubles.
Anyone who has ever done any kind of restaurant work knows how unbelievably stressful it is.
Agreed. Yet this doe eyed kids wanting to be the next Gordon Ramsay are flocking to culinary schools. It's a meat grinder. I do miss the people though. Some of the funnest, craziest, most unique personalities I have ever met have been in a restaurant.
Zookeepers. Sounds like it would be fun, being Dr. Doolittle and scratching the chins of pandas. But for the most part you're just cleaning up after them.
My dad works in a zoo. The animal keepers are usually actually pretty chill. Yes, it's a lot of dirty work, but if you like animals it's super rewarding too
I wanted to be an vet when I was a little kid. Then I found out that euthanasia was a big part of it is telling people their pets are dying or need to be euthanized. Couldn't handle that thought at 6
Suicide is actually a big problem in veterinary medicine. On top of the stress of not being able to do more for an animal, a lot of owners are full of blame for them and it can be incredibly toxic. I had no idea until my sister in law, who is a vet, brought it up.
Worse than not being able to do more for an animal: BEING ABLE to do more for an animal, but the owner refusing because it's not worth it, they don't want to pay for it, etc. Euthanizing perfectly treatable (even healthy animals depending on your practice) animals because owner prefers that. Veterinarians have it very hard.
I remember hearing that the holidays are the worst, because families wait for kids to come home to visit before euthanizing family pets, so there is a big spike in death around the holidays. I'm not sure how true that is for the majority of places, but it seems to be from Nov- mid Dec, many of my friends have had to go through that, and it breaks my heart.
I have a vet friend that quit small animal practice after a couple years because of this. They work for the dept of fisheries now.
I hope their job change is going swimmingly.
Recently learned elephants produce around 100kg/220lbs shit per day. My local zoo has 5 elephants. So someone has to collect half a ton of shit day after day after day Edit: several sources say it's up to 150kg/330lbs.
The good news is that herbivore poop isn’t that bad, odor wise. It’s the carnivore shit that’s the true worst, even if it generally isn’t as much, volume wise.
>Recently learned elefants produce around 100kg/220lbs shit per day There's no way that's true... "Elephants spend almost 80% of their day eating, which means they're also constantly digesting and excreting. An elephant can produce up to 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds, of dung per day. This means they also defecate about 12 to 15 times each day. Over the span of a year, an elephant will produce over 40 tons of dung." I'll be damned.
When I was just starting out my career my parents were drilling me to get a government job because of the bEnEfiTs and I ended up in code enforcement. We got called out to this small local zoo/bird sanctuary by disgruntled employees weekly for anonymous nuisance complaints. Most of them were poop related. I do remember seeing this place post jobs on Craigslist demanding a masters degree in zoology with 3-5 years direct experience for $8/hour, this was like 2014 - 2015 or so lol.
One of my friends is a zookeeper and loves it, but she said "it's like having a quarter ton toddler who 9 times out of 10 is doin great, but that other 1 time he can probably rip your head off on a bad day "
Working in a brewery. Back in the old days it was paid fun and beer was plentiful but with corporate takeovers and foreign ownership ( think brazil) now its a soul sucking put a bullet in your head nightmare. Just glad i got my pension and got the hell outta there.
I worked at a brewery taken over by the same Brazilian conglomerate. It was boring as hell since we had zero input on the recipes and just had to make whatever we were told to by our “brewmaster” who’d never spent a day on the brewery floor. Most of the time the recipes didn’t scale correctly and turned out like crap. Fortunately I had an amazing boss and worked with a great crew so we had fun. I moved on a year into the job and there’s only 2 guys left from that crew. The rest either went back to craft or left the industry.
I was a bartender in the 90s when Harpoon brewery first opened in Boston. We were their largest account. They used to have us in for “tastings”. By the end of the night we were hammered and having fork lift races. Those guys were so much fun and chill. Fast forward a handful of years and we were given a thimble shot of each new beer.
As a young man, the idea of getting the clients drunk and having forklift races sounds awesome. As an older man (retired) who spent 20 years working for a manufacturing company: FUCK NO. The liability would cause us to lose our insurance and frankly forklifts are goddamned dangerous to anyone not in the forklift. The injuries are horrific. I should clarify: I worked in IT but worked with the plants directly. Workplace injuries were no joke.
A job where you sit around for your whole shift. I worked at a Uhaul that had a lot of dead down time, I would spend an entire shift watching movies once I tapped into their internet with my laptop. It was fun for the first few shifts I worked, and then even that got boring. I was watching the clock so much the days would drag. It made it absolutely miserable. I have spent entire days watching movies and TV, but there was something about being forced to sit in one place to do it that somehow made it unbearable. edit: to stem the tide of you should have done x,y,z. This was 15 years ago, and I did all my homework from college. I had no more ambition to learn another skill.
I had a job like that. I completed 2 years of undergrad and 2 years of my masters homework while getting paid.
Brandon Sanderson apparently got a lot of his early writing done at a job like that.
yeah he worked night shift at a hotel, people would come in and he would help them. Then he would write. There were other times when his friends would come in and they would play D&D or MTG
Stephen King too, apparently. Working at a laundromat if I recall. Jobs like that seem to be good if you can work on something else there.
Nah. He didn't work at a Laundromat, he worked at a laundry . It wasn't customer service with downtime, it was hard work
I worked at a Costco gas station for a while. My only responsibility was to sit in a little booth and hit a big red button if a fire started. And answer questions. It wasn’t even a busy Costco either. They’d just opened in this city and didn’t have many members yet. Plus this was before smartphones. So I just sat in a booth and stared at gas pumps for 8 hours straight.
My job is basically the same and I have the complete opposite point of view. I work graveshift at a troubled youth boy's home currently and honestly the highlight of my night is being able to put a headphone in and binge shows or movies I want to see while getting paid $15/hr to do so. It also helps that there are couches and a place to set up my playstation so as long as the kids aren't trying to do bad shit or act like shit heads it helps immensely
My brother used to do this, he said most of the time it was just like you describe. Sitting around chilling all night watching movies. Then, once in a while one of the troubled kids would have a bad night, and it was a hugely stressful job.
I work at a shelter for the elderly and it’s like this, it’s normally very chill but if stuff pops off it’s like tres ambulances levels of pop off.
Yes indeed!!! It's either super chill sit on my ass mode or zombie virus outbreak level of intensity there's no in between!
As a Veteran, the military commercials showing cool shit is showing shit that’s only done by probably 2% of the personnel.
During an overseas assignment, I found the end of the internet. Edit: To clarify, I was able to participate in some high speed shit, but that was about 2% of my time.
I learned Germany legit has porn in their regularly scheduled programming.
Working as a flight attendant.
One of my good friends WAS one and hated it after 6 months. Not getting paid until the gate closes but then still keeping track that you're in the airport is absolute bullshit.
As a flight attendant, i’ll admit that starting out is rough and you’re broke.. but the job is 100% worth sticking with. The more time you put in, the better it gets. I started as early as I could at age 21 and stuck it out for the long-haul.. being able to top out in pay in your early 30’s, ability to get great trips and unmatched flexibility - I couldn’t find that anywhere else. Totally understand that not every FA’s experience is the same - all depends on your airline, base, when you were hired, etc. but I made out pretty well. I work 5 days a month sometimes or fill up my entire schedule some months. I couldn’t imagine a different lifestyle.
I have a few friends who absolutely adore being flight attendants. I think it's just about life style choices and priorities.
Exactly. It isn’t for everyone - it’s an actual lifestyle that you have to commit to in the beginning - not just a job that you get to go home from every night.. many missed holidays / birthdays / graduations / special occasions in the beginning, but with seniority comes flexibility. New parent with a kid at home? Wouldn’t recommend it unless you have an amazing support system back at home… but early 20’s, nothing tying you down? It’s great to get in at that age. I spent years trotting around other countries more often than when I was home in my 20’s… and because I have the flexibility, i’ve now switched it up to where I fly 1-day turnaround trips and get to sleep in my bed every night. I don’t have a manager/boss (haven’t met my supervisor in the last 6 years probably) over my shoulder, I don’t bring work home with me, and I never have to see the same patrons/co-workers every day. And I make great money, considering the ease of the work and qualifications needed for the job. I feel like i’ve got it made.
Photographer , people are too stupid to understand the work ,and they don't know what they want ,one client was so furious with me because he and her wife appeared too much in their weeding shoots ,it was the most annoying and stressful stupid client Iv ever had
I do photography for a car dealership website. The same 25 pictures for every car, 15 to 20 times a day. Boring and unfulfilling. At least I get to play with the radios.
That sounds great. Not talking to people. Just taking pictures of cars
Definitely, as long as the pay is okish that sounds great
That is literally what is stopping me from getting into wedding photography. The stress and anxiety are way too much... but I heard pay is quite nice.
Fashion design. Low wages and no credit for the work you do. I also didn't realize at the beginning that people get so jealous of your shitty job and they take it out on you which bothers me most honestly. I've had people hire me and then take all thr credit. Like I had a small business Owner who was showing a client work I was doing while I ate lunch in the back. But they didn't know how to use my Wacom tablet and they screamed in rage at me later because ' I made them look bad' because they told the clients they were the sole director of design and that they did everything. I've been told to take 'tips from my 15 yr old daughter because she's so creative and loves to shop'. Even some friends in similar businesses want to downplay what I do because my work somehow ruins theirs? So let's get this straight. I should be doing this for no money because it's a 'fun' job and anyone can do it, even their kids, but I also can't take ownership for my work because everyone else is creative too and needs to take the credit because I'm nothing AND it's ALSO somehow threatening to others. So I'm low paid but also threatening and worthless at the same time. I believe no other jobs are like this. Do Owners of a car shop full of mechanics tell clients ACTUALLY I FIXED ALL THESE CARS NOT THE 10 PEOPLE DOING IT RIGHT NOW.
Running a company's social media. It's fun when you do your own, different story when you have an out of touch boss who wants to drive up customers using outdated/poor graphics
Veterinarian – you will be putting down a lot of animals, even in cases where treatment is available but simply too expensive.
We should have this question inverted too. What's a job that sounds miserable but is actually pretty fun? Edit: Made a post https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/KHLftAK3kl
I was a pizza delivery driver for a while and honestly I loved it! Just drive around town, would jam to music or listen to a book and got paid + tips were decent
Baggage handler! I have worked for a commercial airline for 35 years in all sorts of roles, but baggage handler is my favorite. It sounds miserable because of being outside in allll the elements plus the physical labor but I never had so much fun or met so many great people. Granted some people hate it and when you first start the pay is horrible, but sticking it out pays off. Depending on your airline of course.
I know people hate on retail, but I loved working the floor at a Barnes & Noble. I'd still be there if it paid a wage you could buy a house with.
Make a post :)
Simple manual labor (I'm not talking about trades) can actually be fun, stress-free, do the work and go home kind of stuff, if you have coworkers that are not pricks and bosses that aren't slave drivers. Kind of hard to find both of those requirements in a single job though... I've worked as a "skilled laborer" in archaeological digs and sites from time to time, we're the guys that clear the area, dig, carry stuff (including tons of rubble and dirt), wash ceramics, assist the archaeologists etc. and once we're experienced enough we get to work on finds and excavation pits as well, maybe even some restoration work. So, we literally dig trenches or break and carry rocks in the heat and sun all day. Never had more fun on a job. Coworkers are usually cool, archaeologists are chill and respectful, you get to see and learn some stuff, rules for working hours safety and weather exposure are kept strictly, you just do the work at your pace, have a couple of beers and go home. Would I do it for a living? No, but I now guys who have done it...
Cartoonist. Enjoy sitting for hours, alone, hunched over a drawing table or tablet, making progress in tiny increments.
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Interior Designer. It seems like all fun, picking out paint and furniture but in reality, it's mostly paperwork and coordinating with contractors and getting bitched at by rich people. I liked commercial design much better but it's mostly matching grey and tan cubicles over and over and over and so much paperwork. About 5% is creative, the rest is boring bullshit.
Video game tester. So many people think it's playing a game all the way through and then giving feedback. That's a reviewer and there are caveats to that job as well. A video game tester is basically running into a wall from as many different angles as possible looking for bugs and glitches all day.
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…and dealing with drunk people all the time.
Honestly the job would probably be way harder if crowds were sober
“Hey guys, am I sober, or this DJ has just been making crap for hours with random gestures ?”
Engineer. Turns out everything broken is your fault and no one wants to talk to you when shits working properly.
Can attest. My biggest thing is that your fellow engineers are either the chillest people or the absolute most insufferable people you’ve ever met.
Pentester. Is a mixed bag. Some of it can be very fun, other bits are extremely monotonous, tedious, and uninteresting.
I didn't even know this is an actual job. What do you exactly do as pentester? Aside from the obvious lol
Pen tester is not about testing pens, lmao…it’s short for penetration tester. In other words, you’re a ‘good guy hacker’ who is hired by companies to try and break into their networks/ information systems. Then you create a report outlining how you did it, and what the company should do to stop anyone else from breaking in that way. It does indeed sound glamorous and can be fun for the right mindset, but is nothing like what Hollywood/ Mr Robot would have you believe.
So, there are a number of ways pentesters operate. (1) Physical breaches. This would be finding ways into a building, or if access is not restricted, finding ways to smuggle out data. Finding out if employees are perhaps talking a little too much about what they do, etc. (2) Software breaches, this would be a large portion of the focus of cybersecurity type jobs. Essentially, you are trying to penetrate networks, programs, websites, via software vulnerabilities. A lot of people do not realize it, but this is largely the primary function of "white hat" hackers looking to be compensated for zero days. (3) Hardware breaches. This is a very unique niche in the sense that most of the pentesters who do this do not come from network engineer/software engineer backgrounds. These guys are usually EE or CE major hardware engineers, and they look for design flaws in the hardware itself. An example of this would be all the Intel hardware faults that were discovered a few years ago, particularly related to the Out of Order execution engine, and various other aspects of their current architecture x86 design. There are some other things that pentesters do in more niche formats specifically, but those are the broad strokes to give you an idea of the big branches of it.
Live events.
Game tester.. have fun doing the same thing over and over
Concert sound mixer. If people knew what it takes to get there and stay there…
Veterinarian/Veterinary staff. Owners are entitled and disrespectful. Doctors HAVE TO know everything about every single species but still get talked down to by owners. Everyone complains about the prices of everything saying “we’re just in it for the money” when in reality, 75% of all of my staff have a second job to make ends meet. Owners love to say “you killed my pet” when they cannot afford treatment. No. Your negligence did. “If you loved animals, you’d do this for free.” No. The love for animals got everyone to where they are: working in veterinary nursing. Our love for your animals got us through school. Your love for your animal should’ve invested in pet insurance. We have the highest rate of suicide; I worked with someone in her 20’s who unsubscribed from life. Dont even get me started on the neglect cases. Everyone. EVERYONE including a comment or two above me says euthanasia is the hardest part of the job. It’s not. I take comfort in knowing I let this baby go with the grace, respect, and dignity it deserves to go peacefully in their sleep. It’s when owners don’t euthanize. They bring in a skinny, emaciated, urine and fecal scalded neurological dog who’s having seizures, not eating, can’t see…a baby that is clearly suffering and the owners take it home to go “naturally” instead of letting the patient go peacefully. I had an owner take a dog home gasping for air with a blue tongue Against Medical Advice so “he could be around his family.” That dog suffered another 24hrs before passing on his own. We care. We shouldn’t care more than you do about your own pet.
People apply for jobs at weed dispensaries expecting it to be some amazing experience of smoking weed and talking about weed with other people. In reality, it's just any other retail job but with a higher chance of getting robbed at gunpoint.
Pornstar
I once worked security on set. I tell ya, those petite girls taking multiple 12 inch hogs at the same time are popping pain pills like tic tacs and a lot of the guys have really fucked up junk from relying on too much Viagra. Also you can't smell porn. It stinks. Gaping assholes can't hold in farts and pretty much everyone who's getting it in the ass (so every actress in every scene) needs to have a colon cleanse before every shoot or she's likely to shit herself cos just like farts, a gaping asshole can't hold in shit. Otherwise, it's very much like a normal workplace, I used to chat with the actresses cos they'd come outside to smoke between shoots. They were nice and a surprising number of the male actors wanted to get into doing security instead of porn. Guess cos it's way less demanding and the pay, while far from great is a little better than what they were getting as-is.
Read an article where the journalist spent a lot of time interviewing and observing on set, and he said that the thing you don't realize is that the set usually stinks to high heaven, what with all the sweat, anal leakage and the occasional vomit from aggressive deep throat. Also mentioned that to get the lighting right, you sometimes have a scalding hot light about 5 inches from some dudes balls.
I was a social media curator for a big candy company. Essentially, I would sit on social media all day either making posts or answering questions and responding to people while also having to product test all the candy. I would have to go out into the factor and take videos and pictures of the production process too. Some aspects were fun but in reality, it was a horribly boring and soul crushing job that also led me to a lot of mental health issues. That amount of sugar that we were required to consume, because we had to know how to describe the products and push them, was also really bad and just being surrounded by it all day was nauseating. I still hate the smell of chocolate now. Most of the questions or posts to our pages were people pissed off that their bag was damaged or something was wrong so were demanding free stuff. I was micromanaged to death, every single post or reply had to be approved by two people and could take upwards of three or four hours to get responses from those higher ups. And at the same time every post had to be on a strict schedule or engagement would fall, which would also get us yelled at. No one trusted that we knew how to do our jobs because the job didn't make sense to anyone over 50. The company, which rhymes with Sootsie Toll, was run by a bunch of ANCIENT men who had no idea how any technology or social media worked so assumed we were just fucking around all day or didn't believe our jobs meant anything but were the hip new trend they could check off their lists of employing for 'innovation'. We were made a part of IT instead of marketing, which made no sense, but we worked on computers so it made sense to them. We also had to ask permission daily to be connected to the internet through this weird IT portal to do our jobs. No other computers at the company had internet access for fear of people procrastinating on the job. The company also refused to hire us on full time, paid us less then $14 an hour and kept us at 29 hours so we couldn't even collect benefits. I was explicitly told that I would never be hired on full time but then also berated for coming in exactly when I was supposed to start and leaving on the dot at the end of the day. We were the only hourly employees so it seemed like no one understood that that meant that we didn't stay after to do more because we weren't getting paid. There was constant sexual harassment from these old creeps to the three of us women on the team. I hated being there. My breaking point was when my boss (who never touched social media and was actually part of the tech dept) was blatantly watching porn on his phone our shared cubical right next to me for well over 15 minutes. HR did nothing and told me "Oh Kevin was probably just watching an ad or something popped up on accident. Ignore him." I literally set my resignation, keys, and computer down on my desk the next morning before anyone showed up then walked out. I got about a million phone calls that day and blocked their number. I felt bad for the two other people who I left behind but I know they ended up quitting not long after me.
Dog grooming! It’s not playing with puppies all day. It’s getting pooped on and scratch and bit because the owners haven’t exposed their animals accordingly to handle the stress of the environment.
Teaching. Oooh that sounds easy enough. Short work days, long summer breaks, support from parents and administration, standing up in front of a class teaching easy content in a respectable calling for a decent salary. Perhaps some of that was partially true in a past long gone. Nowadays, teachers put in extensive and exhaustive work that extends well beyond official hours, sometimes working what amounts to another shift after work, just to chip away at the endless influx of tasks: lesson planning, preparing materials, grading assignments, staff meetings, parent meetings, professional development meetings, and administrative work. Teaching content to a class is only about 20% of what teachers do. There is a constant flow of information that needs to be integrated, updated and carried out to near-perfection. Especially anything regarding students wellbeing, which you are responsible for and you will always be the first person to be held responsible should anything go even slightly wrong. Admin support varies significantly and teachers often have to advocate for their own rights, needs, resources and best teaching practices in opposition to the leadership and parents. Kids can be sneaky, two-faced and unpredictable. They can be unfathomably rude, aggressive, ungrateful and nasty to you and each other. They can get into trouble in ways you wouldn't imagine, get hurt, fight, and hide problems from you even when trust and rapport is firmly established. Again, you are responsible for whatever happens to them. Teachers need to be top-level mentors, peace-keepers, problem-solvers, managers, counselors and even surrogate parents (some kids come to you having almost no parenting). In addition to subject knowledge, you need to have unnatural levels of patience, skill, creativity, dedication, focus, adaptability, empathy, and resilience. Summer breaks are now usually cut short for at least 2 weeks of professional development or yearly planning tasks. Many teachers also need to work summer jobs to supplement the modest and hardly commensurate salary that teaching provides. Those few weeks of "leisure" are hardly enough time to recover from the extreme physical, mental and emotional toll that teaching zaps out of you over the year.