Films and television can distort our view of certain things. Professions are no exception. I watched my fair share of Grey's Anatomy and saw how they're constantly shocking flat-lining patients. Turns out, it's not actually true. Asystole (the technical term for 'flat-lining') is not a 'shockable rhythm,' according to the Cleveland Clinic. So, the whole thing is a hoax.
Well, every day is an opportunity to learn something new, so let's do that, shall we? Let's see what other people have to say about their professions and the misconceptions that people have about them. The Redditor MajesticWin8708 was curious and asked other netizens: "What's one myth about your profession you would like to debunk?" Check out people’s answers below!
#1
ive worked in psych/mental health for almost a decade. i can confidently say 99.9% of homeless people are not homeless because they want to. many of the alternatives, like shelters, are in abysmal/dangerous conditions, usually have extremely strict rules (ex: closing the doors at 6pm, but your job ends at 530pm and the bus was late), and are run by churches (problem for lgbt, atheists, etc). often these places are worse than living on the streets in terms of safety and stability.
not everyone on the street is a drug addict, and for those that are many are either self-medicating because they cant afford meds they need (or cant keep appts due to transportation, not having a phone, etc), or because being homeless is boring and brutal and unkind so what else do you do? forced rehab objectively doesnt work and is often more dangerous than letting them use drugs. most homeless folks have nowhere to store their belongings, nowhere to go to the bathroom, nowhere to shower or bathe or clean their clothes, nor do they have a physical mailing address required by virtually all jobs for tax reasons.
you want to stop the "homeless epidemic"? treat them like people, pay people more, control rent prices to keep them affordable, demand universal healthcare, and demand funding this s**t.
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280points
#2
Not everyone who works in fast food is:
- A teenager trying to make some fun money, or trying to save up for school or a car.
- "So stupid they couldn't get a real job"
- A felon who couldn't get hired anywhere else
- Lazy and entitled and "wants $15 an hour to play on their phone all day"
- A teenager trying to make some fun money, or trying to save up for school or a car.
- "So stupid they couldn't get a real job"
- A felon who couldn't get hired anywhere else
- Lazy and entitled and "wants $15 an hour to play on their phone all day"
Most people who work in fast food are:
- Hard working, honest folks who want to be able to pay their bills and take care of their family.
- Fed up with you assuming they're too lazy or dumb to get a "real job"
- Hard working, honest folks who want to be able to pay their bills and take care of their family.
- Fed up with you assuming they're too lazy or dumb to get a "real job"
Edit: Lmaooo this one really got some people riled up, huh?
169points
#3
Janitor here. We aren't lazy people who just sit around and drink coffee.
All buildings require a hefty amount of maintenance and most commercial buildings would be unusable in less than a month without a team of janitors and sanitisers.
We are constantly on our feet and there's always something that needs fixing, so even on a quiet day, I walk around 30k steps.
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152points
Television and film portray some professions in a more positive light, and others are portrayed more negatively. Sales-related professions usually have it the worst. Think Wolf of Wall Street, where the characters are money-grabbing, coked-out, and ruthless anti-heroes. On the other side of the spectrum, there's The Office, where salespeople are often incompetent and spend their workday pranking each other.
Architects and engineers are the most positively portrayed professions in film and television. A member of the profession, Andrew Hawkins, writes that the media usually portrays them as "mentally unstable to comical to starving artists." He takes Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother as a good example of an architect in the starting stages of their career.
"I think that some of Ted's personality traits are similar to architects in the real [world]; sometimes pretentious, a stickler for semantics, full of random information, and small amounts of obsessiveness; all character traits I see all the time in myself and my colleagues."
#4
I’m a librarian, and no I don’t shelve books all day. Those are pages (actual name) and I am so grateful to them for all the work they do. No I do not read books all day. I actually don’t get to read very often at all. If you apply to work at a library, a phrase like “I love to read books” is a red flag because you’ve not given any thought to actual library operations. I also rarely check books in and out, those are circulation clerks and they are badasses. Librarians do handle book purchasing, programming, and outreach; and what they do in those areas varies a lot based on their local situation. I’m an academic librarian. I work in a university and publish research, teach classes, program software, among other things.
92points
#5
That Geology is just sbout rocks. Its also about Paleontology, Paleoclimatology, Earth history, how life began, how our planet became what it is today, volcanoes, earthquakes, Geophysics, mining, engineering and more, its a great career sector and generally well paid.
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87points
#6
Computer programmer (software engineer). Just because I write software doesn't mean I can necessarily troubleshoot your hardware when it doesn't work.
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81points
Researchers at the Southern University of California analyzed data from 70 years of media subtitles and film in the UK and the US. They found that manual labor and military occupations were mentioned a lot less over the years.
The professions that get the most attention nowadays are STEM, arts, sports, and careers in entertainment. This correlates directly with what professions are popular at the moment.
They also found that there were more negative sentiments in the media towards lawyers, police, and doctors as the years went by. At the same time, TV shows and movies stopped lumping doctors and nurses into a monolith.
There are increasingly more mentions of specialized medical professions: cardiologists, gynecologists, and neurologists. On the other hand, attitudes towards astronauts, detectives, therapists, musicians, singers, and engineers became more positive.
#7
Bass players are failed guitarists.
Most of us can play guitar too. We just prefer bass.
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80points
#8
a few for airline pilots
We probably don’t have a “route” per se. We fly a type of plane and we bid for “trips” each month which depending on the plane you’re currently flying could vary enormously.
If you’re senior enough you could bid a “route” let’s say weekday Miami to New York and back 10 times a month and that’s all you choose to do.
If you’re senior enough you could bid a “route” let’s say weekday Miami to New York and back 10 times a month and that’s all you choose to do.
The Plane flies itself. This one isn’t really true. The autopilot is a tool to reduce workload but we still have to “tell” the plane what to do and understand the rules around when, why, and how to do it.
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79points
#9
That all teachers are unhappy and underpaid. I am underpaid, but I am not unhappy. I love my job.
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71points
#10
I am a phlebotomist (I draw blood) surprisingly I do have feelings so when you get mad at me for doing my job and hit/kick/spit/scream at me I get upset. Now if you cry during a blood draw I'm not going to judge you needles are freaky. Just don't take your bad hospital breakfast out on me.
71points
#11
Firefighter/paramedic of 24 years. The vast, vast majority of calls aren't for emergencies. Far from it. It's almost all low acuity medical calls to nursing homes, people who don't want to wait to visit their primary physician, people who absolutely *refuse* to take care of themselves, people who want/demand for us to help them but won't lift a finger to help themselves.
Don't get me wrong, we respond to plenty of true emergencies and there are definitely people out there who are appreciative and doing the right thing when it comes to taking care of themselves.
However, for every one, actual, emergency there is *at least* one 400lb type 2 diabetic on the third floor apartment who hurt their knee two weeks ago and now suddenly during a snowstorm they want us to take them to the hospital because they ran out of hydrocodone and never followed up with Ortho like they were supposed to.
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70points
#12
Work travel is not glamourous. It's oftentimes stressful with airport b******t, delays, etc. In most cases, work travel means doing your same job (or perhaps a more stressful part of your job) while jetlagged and exhausted in a new environment.
Can it be fun? Yes.
Is it a touristy, sightseeing trip? No.
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67points
#13
As a person that used to work in retail I can say we do not have that popular must have out of stock item squirrelled away in the back storage and hidden to sell to our friends or ourselves at a later time.
Inventory is all controlled and monitored via computer systems these days. Management would have a mental fit if our inventory system showed that we had stock of an item and can't account for it.
Edit
When you ask us to check in the back. I used to take a small break because I know how our inventory system works and there's no sense for me to make an effort to look for something that I know we don't have instock.
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64points
#14
I don’t know why customers continue to think the manager is going to side with them. All they are going to do is say the same thing I’ve been saying for the past 10 minutes.
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62points
#15
If you send your food back to a kitchen, nobody spits on it. We may laugh because we made it exactly the way it appeared on the ticket, but we'll fix it because that's our job.
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60points
#16
Agriculture: we aren’t destroying the planet with pesticides, we are trying to make more food on the same amount of land to keep up with the global population ever increasing
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60points
#17
Medical lab/research techs don’t hold erlenmeyer flasks filled with brightly colored liquids up above their heads to gaze at them with light filtering through. Even in the fields where your role requires you to inspect the opacity of a sample or reagent, that is an idiot move. But it’s like the standard for stock photos and tv/movie extras
58points
#18
Fine artists are not troubled, antisocial, weird, angry, and can actually be pleasant to be around. Most of us just like to paint.
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54points
#19
Mail carrier. We don't decide whether or not we're going to deliver your check that day, we just deliver whatever the machines and clerks give to us.
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51points
#20
Most lawyers spend a tiny fraction of their work time in court and many lawyers never go to court.
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47points