People Are Exposing How Awful Their Jobs People Think Are Fun Really Are

Expectations were not met.

When Reddit user u/bwee21 posed the question "Which job is a LOT less fun than most people expect?" the people answered.

From long shifts to unruly customers, these jobs were not as fun as advertised.

1. Park Ranger

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"Don't get me wrong, I loved it, but a lot of days it was less "talk about cool animals while wearing your ranger hat" and more "the toilets are overflowing again, go clean the septic tank filter and stir the tank with a shovel." With a little bit of "hey there's a methed out guy down by the bridge, can you convince him to leave without killing anyone." All for the low price of $26k/year with a college degree!" —u/RangerRudbeckia

2. Video Game Testing

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I've been working in the game industry for six years now, and teaching for two. Testing video games is thought to be just 'oh you just play games all day? LOLOLOLOL' but it's actually very specific and arduous.

First of all, there a bunch of testing metholodogies such as load/soak testing, white room testing, version testing to name a few, but the most common one is functionality testing. Functionality testing is 'so if I walk into that corner with the shotgun in my inventory, I can clip through the wall, but if I have my M16 in my inventory, I don't clip through.' —u/shanster925

3. Flower Shop

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"It's just like any other retail job, but people constantly tell you how fun your job must be. Also helping grieving families chose funeral flowers is not fun." —u/ZakkiraJuneAiko94

4. Closed Captioning

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"I do closed captioning. While I joke that yes, I get paid to watch TV, it’s actually very tedious. And if you don’t actually enjoy the programming you’re being forced to watch something you don’t care for. Or worse, if it’s something I do enjoy like a long form drama, we usually chop those up into 15 minute increments and split between everyone so I only see chunks and not always even in order it actually ruins the show for me." —u/jessjess87

5. Scientist

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"Well, I’m a scientist. I don’t know if people usually think of that career as fun, but I think people think it’s a lot more 'Eureka!' and a lot less 'this data’s has to be manually processed for 600 hours before I can analyze it.'" —u/JeremyTheRhino

6. Marine Biologist

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"I'm a marine biologist. I spent the last week measuring defrosted fish heads." —u/smileedude

7. Flight Attendant

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"You are on call (on reserve) forever, have a terrible schedule, have no life, and make no money for 5-10 years. While you work for peanuts, you can’t afford to use your flight “benefits” in any substantial way. Then, when you finally get a chance to use your benefits for a trip, you have to fly standby which means you aren’t guaranteed to get on the flight you want. Then, if you do make it out of town you better have like a week off so you can make damn sure you’re back in your base city in time for your next work shift. Did I mention there is an act of US legislation (Railway Labor Act) that allows airlines to exploit so you don’t get paid for certain work hours that you actually need to be working? For example, FAs don’t get paid for boarding, or any time the plane is at the gate. WORST JOB EVER." —u/y0r0bin

8. Professional Photographer

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"Not like, hobbyist, but business-owning photographer. Sucks the love right out of your work. Because you started the business to take pictures.

Then Karen doesn't like the way she looks in one of them so she wants the whole set for free plus a reshoot for free plus those images for free. Then the two high school kids getting into a very ill-advised marriage at EXACTLY 18 years old wants to book you for their wedding but their budget is only $50. Then Karen calls back because she loves your work and wants to pay for another shoot, but only if you agree to do her friend's daughter's destination wedding for free.  Then you get a call from your last bride. It's been two weeks since their wedding. WHERE THE FUCK ARE HER PICTURES? Then you get no leads from a bridal expo. Then a client finds out you don't support their candidate and tries to take you to court to get her money back. Then some insta thot who thinks she's influencing people offers a "collab" where you take pro photos of her and she adds shitty insta filters to it and claims her friend took them. And she's not gonna pay. And then you get some entitled mom who wants you to photograph every day of her newborn's first year of life for $100.

I went back to being a hobbyist." — [deleted]

9. Animal Shelter

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"For sure, it’s probably less intense than zookeeping, but the amount of people who apply or volunteer expecting to come in and play with cute puppies all day is absurd. We’re basically animal maids. You deal with animals of all sorts of behavioral and developmental stages shitting and pissing every fucking where and then you look over and this fucking dog named Chumbawumba swimming in his water bowl so you gotta fill that up six times and dry his kennel out and then you go and mop up the cat room around 10 kittens who want to eat your mop and also four children who are all yelling that there’s puke in the floor and I MUST clean it, NOW. 

Not to mention all the extra behind-the-scenes work that the public never sees. How in the summer, during kitten and puppy season, the shelter built to house 500 max has 750 and I didn’t take a lunch or sit at all for any of my shifts for the past six days. How the courts force us to put down animals that we know can be rehabilitated, but we don’t get enough funding to fight it. How animal control just showed up with the fourth pregnant stray of the week but intake is full and even double stacked in some cases, so your coworker fosters the cats on her own. Not even to mention the shitty fucking people who do dumb shit and end up getting bit or scratched and the animal is the one who bears those consequences. I am the proudest shelter worker in the world. 

I adore my job, even at its hardest. I didn’t sit for nine and a half hours today and I found a cat turd in the cuff of my jeans but it doesn’t matter because a bonded pair of adult cats got adopted today. I took six applications this morning and the cat in bank 4 with the goopy eye is already looking better, and we sent a mama out to foster. The hard work is always worth it for these babies." —u/highschoolvevo

10. TV/Film Production

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"I think most people dream of being the actor, the director, the people making the creative decisions, or the big shot producer calling the shots, but most of the people working in tv and film production are part of a machine, the grind, working in a system, trying to climb up to wherever they want to be. Many don’t get to actualize their creative vision. Also, the industry can be project based (job security concerns) and location limited (NY/LA, maybe other cities). Pay can be low starting out too, though it can be good if you work way up. But I did enjoy the type of people that work these jobs, a little more fun than the business folk I work with now." —u/KazaamFan

11. Pediatric Nurse

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"A pediatric nurse, being a nurse for children and adolescents. Everyone in nursing school talks about how much they want to work with kids. The reality is that a pediatric nurse sees more cases of abuse and neglect than any other specialty. Doesn't matter where you are in a pediatric hospital, it's the thing you see most.

I've seen so many DCS (Department of Child Services) caseworkers that I've gotten to know some of them and became acquaintances with them. Sure working with children and adolescents is great, but people don't think about the most essential piece of that puzzle which is their families. It doesn't matter how good of care you give to those kids, if you don't loop the parents into that care you may as well just not be doing anything for them." —u/ZacktheWolf

12. Demolition Work

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"Everyone wants to break shit with a sledgehammer. Everyone is tired of lifting that sledgehammer by five swings. Nobody wants to load the broken stuff into bags or a wheelbarrow and take it to the dumpster." —u/Bill_S_Preson_Esq

13. Actor

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"All the ones we see on TV and movies are the 0.0001% of incredibly lucky and talented people who managed to thrive in a hostile and overcrowded industry. And even when you are working, the actual job itself is 99% sitting on apple crate in hot makeup waiting for some grips to move a lighting fixture. Then you say three lines over and over again for an hour, and then you wrap." —u/Wazula42

14. Beekeeper

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"Get used to the constant sound of buzzing during hive inspections/swarm removals plus wearing the protective suit in hot ass weather for hours on end (give or take the situation). Also, there appears to be a large number of beekeepers allergic to bees so EpiPens are a must." —u/Cheetodude625

15. Paleontologist

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"You don’t get to work with full dinosaur skeletons and do all kinds of awesome expeditions. You’re mostly sitting at a desk looking at some pictures and logging stuff on your computer, maybe examining a fossil occasionally. If you’re lucky you can go on a real dig, and OMG SPEND HOURS IN THE HOT SUN DUSTING OFF ROCKS!!!" —u/MidwesternMonkey

16. Cafe Worker

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"My younger sister worked in the cafe for a long time. She said it was really frustrating — especially since they sold Starbucks coffee but weren’t an actual Starbucks store so people would complain about not taking their gift/loyalty cards or minor variations in the drink or pastry menu. That and making espresso drinks for people’s five-year-olds just felt really slimy." —u/satsugene

17. Movie Extra

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"Now, it can be super fun, but a typical day on set wasn't what I thought it'd be when I started doing it. Often we have to get up at 3 or 4 in the morning to get to holding, and if you're a minute late to check in sometimes they'll kick you out. Then we sit around in holding with sometimes hundreds of other extras, and we're usually sitting there for a good three or four hours before they start telling us to get ready to film. During this time we go through long wardrobe, hair and makeup lines where they reuse clothes (unless you bring them yourself), brushes and makeup without washing them.

When we finally get to film, it's often the same mundane motions over and over (exceptions of course, and those are always fun) Then we either get shuffled around or go back to holding. Several more hours pass, we go film again. Hungry? You get lunch six hours after your call time, and a usually meager supply of snacks. In between takes it's more standing around, often in heat or rain or we all get shuffled into cramped spaces to wait.

Days on set are often more than 12 hours, and I know someone who had to be on set for 26 hours straight. They can legally hold you there until they declared filming is done, so don't make plans for the next day. Not to mention that you rarely see yourself in the final cut. I'm not trying to bash other background actors or the film industry because I've met lots of awesome people and gotten to do some pretty cool things. For example, interacting with main actors in scenes, running around in the woods with fake guns or being a zombie. But when I did my first job as a teen, I definitely thought it would be a lot different." —u/clcliff

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.

Have you had a sucky job you thought would be so cool? Share below!