A little while back, we posted a list of ways that movies misrepresent different job industries. Readers flooded the comments with frustrating stereotypes they've seen in both film and TV about their own occupations. Here are 26 more examples:
1. "When authors get drunk in order to write. Seriously, if you’re a professional author, you have to make sure your work is free of plot holes, succinct in execution, and devoid of embarrassing mistakes. You're downing coffee, not alcohol. 😂"
2. "I’m a research analyst in the medical field. We don’t happen upon large breakthroughs by accident or quickly. Usually, an experiment that yields amazing results was planned and then we have to do it multiple times again before bringing it to the higher-ups. Science can be very slow in the beginning."
3. "A lot of movies have teachers doing ridiculous stuff like yelling at kids, slacking off, or being extremely strict and dorky. Probably 95% of my colleagues are genuinely nice, creative, smart, and extremely hard-working professionals who love their students like they’re their own."
4. "I manage a social media department at an ad agency. I am not super hip, young, or fresh out of college. It’s not a sexy position. It involves a master's degree, 15 years of post-college experience, a lot of time researching and crunching numbers. I don’t own a single trendy outfit and most of us in social are actually very introverted."
5. "99.9% percent of banks do not have gold bars. Most banks only keep enough to run the branch. No branch is just gonna have millions of dollars chilling in the vault."
6. "Veterinarians: We go through just as much schooling as medical doctors and it’s one of the hardest types of higher schooling to get accepted into that takes years of prep work. We also rarely play with or even see kittens and puppies, and no animals sit still without one or two people holding them."
7. "Pizza delivery drivers — not many sexual propositions, but I was offered a whole lot of weed — which was unfortunate because I’ve never really been into it. It seemed like such a waste to turn down."
8. "I work in pharma and pretty much any movie that shows drug development happening overnight — or going from animal trials to human trials in a matter of days — is ridiculous (I'm looking at you, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Old). The amount of rigor and regulation for clinical trial research makes these plot points laughable."
9. "I’m a teenager working in a fast-food burger shop. We are not lazy and we are extremely underpaid (as in one burger at my shop costs more than what I make in an hour). Morning crew has to get there at 7 a.m. to prep each and every item of food we make, and night crew stays until about midnight or 1 a.m. cleaning up and preparing for the morning shift."
10. "Social workers! We don’t want to take your kids, but maybe stop abusing and neglecting them? Maybe?"
11. "I work in printing. The show Good Girls got so much wrong about printing money! You wouldn’t be able to recreate the paper by hand-pouring it, you wouldn’t print on a teensy sheet, and you definitely wouldn’t be cutting it by hand. Nor can you recreate those inks with nail polish and they didn’t even address the watermarks! Still a great show but their money-making techniques really bugged me."
12. "As a female executive manager, I can confirm that we are not all ball-breaking, man-hating rottweilers who use our femininity and sexuality to get what we want."
13. "I work in cannabis production. I work long days and the work never ends. We can get fired for smoking/vaping (weed or tobacco) on property and no, our break room is not a bunch of beanbag chairs."
14. "Hotel manager here. If any of my staff said room numbers out loud, they'd be written up so fast. Also, none of my housekeepers have ever found a dead body."
15. "Not 👏 all 👏 psychologists 👏 are 👏 Freudian! In fact, very few of us are. Most of us think Freud sucked and his 'theories' and methods were unscientific, untestable, and unethical. Yet it seems like every psychologist in TV/film goes on rants about repression, the id, Oedipus complex, etc."
16. "Bartender here. It bothers me when movies constantly show us wiping down the bar. We only wipe down the bar after someone leaves and at the end of the night... And it takes like five seconds."
17. "My job involves a lot of filing. Every day, I have to kneel, stand up, and kneel again, so I always wear pants and flat shoes. If I wore short skirts and very high heels like the girls in movies, I wouldn't be able to work."
18. "Teachers are never shown doing all the planning that goes into each week’s lessons. If they do any work at home, which is not often, it’s usually just grading papers. And you would hardly ever find a teacher just sitting at their desk doing nothing while the kids aren’t in the classroom. They’re usually in a meeting or doing more planning/preparing for when the kids come back."
19. "The copilot is not useless. They're just as qualified as the captain when it comes to handling emergencies. We operate more like the left/right brain from Pacific Rim — we talk and coordinate so that we move as one. The only movie that got it right is Sully."
20. "I am a janitor. I’m not down on my luck. I own my own company and make good money. I don’t walk around 100% of the time with a mop and bucket. I am a skilled laborer. Movies and shows would have you think I’m just trying to get back on my feet and work my way up. Also, I don’t wear work overalls with my name on them."
21. "How about in TV/movies when doctors take direct care of their patients and the nursing staff is virtually nonexistent (or only there for a main doctor to sleep with)? Yeah right."
22. "Graphic designers. We aren’t all 'cool.' We don’t necessarily have wild hair colors or wear quirky or vintage clothing. We are not all doing this to pay the bills until we’re discovered as the next Picasso. We are visual communicators who have to deal with clients and all of the headaches that happen from working any office job."
23. "Factory worker here. We don't stand around laughing and joking. It's really freaking loud so we all have earplugs. Plus, I have to watch a computer screen for 10 hours for proper numbers as the machines run and a screen that shows me 9 video feeds of the material as it's being processed. So no, I don't have time to listen to you brag about your kids or the deer you saw on your trail camera."
24. "Admin assistants/secretaries/receptionists. They generally get shown as just answering phones, filing their nails (sometimes papers), and being smart-asses to coworkers. We touch damn near every facet of the organization’s daily operations and, I guarantee, have a larger workload than most of the others — especially if we’re in a combined admin assistant/reception role. It’s a lot of fun most of the time but not quite like it gets portrayed."
25. "Tattoo artists. We aren’t all huge, angry biker men. Also, it isn't only men. The industry has a lot of female artists these days. The movies/shows only show men tattooing."
26. And finally, "I'm a librarian. If I had a literal penny for every time someone came to the desk and said, 'I'd love to work here and read books all day,' I could quit and *actually* read books all day. We process materials, plan programs, weed through old things, shelve, help with technology. The list goes on and on. If I get five minutes to read on the desk at work, it's a great day."
Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.