People Who Actually Got Their "Dream Job" Share Why It Actually Sucked (30 Stories)

Wanted to be an actress. Got a place at drama school and the thing was that from day one you learned that every basic thing you always did your whole life was wrong. Talking, going, standing, speaking, breathing.... Everything was wrong. But I guess that's okay, as this was to be expected. It's a hard job.
Problem was that I had an accident while rehearsing and the school gaslight me that this was my wrong doing and that I was not meant to do that job if a light push would break my jaw..while actually someone fell full force with their knee straight in my face, while I layed - as instructed - with closed eyes on the floor.

Long story short. That experience was very traumatic and I really couldn't do that job anymore.

When I was younger, I desperately wanted to work on the railway as the money was great, and I really loved railways and everything in that world. I eventually managed to get a job as a welder with a local firm.

It was f*****g wank. Permanent nights, working every weekend in all weather, with equipment that weighed an absolute tonne that had to be loaded up dark embankments. I was working with thermite and explosive gases, usually after pushing all the gear about 3 or 4 miles down the track. One Christmas, I worked a shift on a site where a guy was killed the previous weekend after getting his arm chopped off by an excavator. They had a collection box in the site cabin with a picture of him and his young kid on it. F*****g heartbreaking. And to top it off, everyone I worked with was a complete and utter c**t.

F*****g s**t job.

Yeah. I always wanted to be a part of the music industry but didn't want to be a performer. I went to college for audio engineering, and was a live sound engineer/stage tech/guitar tech for about seven years. I did love the job and I'm glad I did it, but it was pretty clear after I started touring that it wasn't feasible for me as a lifestyle.

In order to do the job consistently you have to basically be homeless and miss everything that happens at home. It wasn't like I was miserable and being held hostage, but after missing enough birthdays and holidays with family and instead spending them with other random stage techs that you aren't super close to, it gets hard to rationalize.

The days are long but the pay doesn't reflect that. If it was a show day, I'd usually work like 16 hours straight. I was working with pretty big-name acts but my day rate was still about $175 a day and if I asked for a raise they'd call someone else. Everything I did was also as an independent contractor, so my taxes were f****d to begin with. That was actually what forced me out of doing it full-time, the change to the tax code in 2017 pretty much ruined my career. I went from paying in $600 per year to paying in $4,000 in one year.

When I quit, I still kept doing it on the side for a few years with some of the local audio companies I worked with coming up, but it paid way less than touring which already didn't pay a lot. After about two years and the beginning of COVID, I walked away entirely to focus on my career as an electrician which is a much better fit.

I miss the experiences but I don't miss the lifestyle. Again, I'm glad I did it, but I'm glad I don't do it.

I got my dream job as a designer of skiing magazines, but then my workload doubled with no raise, the raises I was promised never came, all of the people I liked working with left, and things just got gradually worse. I left three months ago, and they still haven't been able to fill the position because they're offering a wage that was low nine years ago for half of the work.

I actually have my “dream job.” Growing up I would watch ASPCA cops and loved the idea of being a dog trainer or behavior person to help the damaged dogs get better and be adopted by loving families.

I condemn a lot more dogs to death and see broken dogs unable to be saved that ASPCA cops did not show lol

all through college I wanted to be a software engineer. I got the job and hated everything. the work was tedious, the impact I was making was miniscule, and my team was constantly s**t on and under appreciated. I also realized I could definitely do more than code for the rest of my life

My dream job for a long time was being a paid writer and/or screenwriter. I’ve more or less reached that point where I’m making a living writing, but boy is it different than what I expected. I could be cut/let go at anytime. Years on a temp contract with no benefits. I get the weirdest notes on scripts by someone who has no idea what story telling is. It’s a lot of keeping your head down, producing content and hoping it doesn’t get noted to the point you have to restart. My freelance writing work is similar where no one has what I dreamed of being an “artistic vision”. It’s more “we can’t shoot this in Los Angeles, so change it to Seattle” and then I have to go through the script and make the changes. A lot of it is just textual grunt work. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to make a living like this, and when I say “I’m a writer” as my living, people get all starry-eyed, but the life of a working writer is really just implementing notes and trying to make it seem like no one else can do what you do.

I thought I wanted to be a manager but ended up only having to deal with my employees personal lives and feelings and not having any time left to do the fun stuff so I left. It clearly wasn’t my thing.

Worked at IBM. Dream job! Especially as an OS/2 user.

The work itself was excellent. Truly excellent. Building out huge nation-spanning WANs. Deploying 1000s of workstations and the associated servers at each site. Really fun stuff.

But... the bureaucracy, OMG. The endless soul crushing pointless bureaucracy. I literally attended meetings about a meeting next month that was about a meeting a few months out that was a pre-meeting for a meeting to talk about a few hours of work. 100s of hours of time to talk about a few hours of work for 1-2 techs.

Because the work was so good I lasted 6 years, but eventually I told my boss to go f**k himself (after, for the 4th time, he tried to sneak a "promotion" past me in a review that would have made me a "manager" and also exempt from the ~$30k of overtime I was making each year.)

I am a teacher and when I first graduated college, I couldn't decide what age range I wanted to teach. My first job was 4-12 orchestra. At first this was amazing, because I could guide the same students from beginners to graduating, but I quickly learned that the 4-12 position was supposed to be a three person job and not a one person job. I unfortunately had to quit because I was so overwhelmed and my school wouldn't hire anybody else. I lasted 6 years and I don't regret it, but I also don't miss it...