30 Of The Most Entertaining ‘It Doesn’t Work Like That’ Stories, Told By Professionals

Counselling. We can’t fix everyone. You can’t force someone into counselling. It doesn’t matter how much relatives want someone to do it (eg a wife forces a husband or mother forces a child to go) unless they want to, there is nothing we can do. They need to be willing to engage. Even then it’s not a fix all, for example with bereavement you won’t stop being sad, we just give you tools to learn to carry on with your new normal.

I'm in mental healthcare...so...*gestures to everything*

Scientist who does animal testing. We can’t just do experiments that we want to. We have to get ethical approval for it first and then report back to the ethics committee every year. Violating animal ethics will get you placed in prison.

Journals that we publish in (because we MUST publish) will reject your paper if they suspect ethics violations.

People doing the experiments don’t enjoy hurting animals and there are no meta-studies assessing the impact of conducting animal studies on mental well-being.

Most of the studies I’ve seen in the lab I’m at and others I’ve worked in are very necessary research. Addiction studies, sleep studies, pain studies, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s studies. You’re not going to get better drugs and surgeries without it being successfully performed in animals first. And no, cell studies and computer models are nowhere good enough to replace all animal studies.

That office people just chat and drink coffee all day, whereas for some office jobs it might be true its definitely not true for mine.

As an automotive mechanic I'd really like it if people didn't try to lowball me on literally everything and accuse me of being a swindler with zero proof. In my experience most actual scumbag mechanics are actually very charismatic and friendly and lull people into a false sense of trust. Mechanics get all sorts of accusations hurled their way and there is rarely any actual basis for it since the average customer can't tell good work from bad.

I worked at a dealership where the parts markup was less than 10% and we undercharged customers constantly. We were still accused of being scalpers, or at least too expensive for no reason, with the usual reasoning being that our officially licensed dealership was not as cheap as a private shop ran by a 27 year old guy who opened it after apprenticing for 3 years and dealt in stolen parts.

Design engineers don't engineer things to fail. They engineer things to last a minimum lifespan for a minimum cost. Sometimes we do that job well enough to convince you that it failed on purpose, but the reality is that a failed product will *never* make us look successful at our job.

Also, yes. We could have given you a much better product. It just would have cost more than you would be willing to pay.

All water whether it be toilet water, dishwater, shower water etc. goes to the same place. Doesn’t matter what it’s used for, it all goes to the sewer.

Most American opera singers aren’t really that fancy. Most grew up middle class. The biggest fakes in our industry are Joyce di Donato and Thomas Hampson. They grew up in the Midwest. They use fake accents and are horrible at trying to give masterclasses. It’s incredibly common in American voice from the collegiate level to the big leagues. You’ll be talking to a professor with a chic British accent, then discover they were born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey and have never gone to the UK. Tons of fakes and scammers.

Already, I’ll bite. I’m former Air Force Intel, 14NX. Laser guided bombs and bombs of any type are not pinpoint accurate. There will always be some sort of deviation whether it be 200 feet or 1500. Even dumb bombs are not accurate with the on-board bomb calculator that most bombers have. 

Pilots are f*****g tiny. I could have qualified to be a fighter pilot because I’m 5’ 9”. Pilots are also some of the biggest nerds out there since you need to be an officer to fly and all officers have some sort of college degree; even those going into OTC. 

Military grade quality advertisements are not what you think. Military grade means made by the cheapest bidder and low quality. The quality is only good enough to be picked up by a 18 year old kid and not break. 

Humvees suuuuuuuuuck. The AC barely works, it leaks more than a geriatric alcoholic with a badder infection, and the armor is non-existant. 

Most of us don’t fly. My line of work was talking to English speaking locals and drawing up maps for soldiers in the field to use. (Lots of villages that have “disappeared.”) 

The Middle East isn’t all deserts. There’s actually a lot of farms and a number of (somewhat) friendly people. One of our translators was actually a guy from north Lebanon who played a lot of video games. He was a big fan of Fallout. 

T-55 is a better tank than the M60’s we still had in service. Not because of their features or gun or armor; M60 is superior there, but the T-55 was most likely to start up and work first try every try. 

I'm an electrician and it's not only a pliers and a screwdriver we use all day.