It's easy to assume things about someone's job that you might not know much about. Redditor u/MajesticWin8708 asked: "What's one myth about your profession you would like to debunk?" the responses were really interesting to read and learn from. Here is what some people had to say.
1. "Most lawyers spend a tiny fraction of their work time in court, and many lawyers never go to court."
2. "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 sanitizers. 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."
3. "That geology is just about rocks. It's also about paleontology, paleoclimatology, Earth's history, how life began, how our planet became what it is today, volcanoes, earthquakes, geophysics, mining, engineering, and more. It's a great career sector and generally well paid."
4. "Most American opera singers aren’t really that fancy. Most grew up middle class. 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."
5. "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."
6. "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. Another myth is that 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."
7. "That office people just chat and drink coffee all day. Whereas for some office jobs it might be true, it's definitely not true for mine."
8. "If you send your food back to a kitchen, nobody spits on it. We may laugh because we made it exactly how it appeared on the ticket, but we'll fix it because that's our job."
9. "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, or 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."
10. "That all teachers are unhappy and underpaid. I am underpaid, but I am not unhappy. I love my job."
11. "Not every person working in IT is a socially awkward asshole. A lot of us are fun to be around and have had sex many times. Also, we don't have the answer for everything in our brain — we Google a lot of shit."
12. "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."
13. "As a person who used to work in retail, I can say we do not have that popular must-have out-of-stock item squirreled 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 a stock of an item and couldn't account for it when you asked us to check in the back. I used to take a small break because I knew how our inventory system worked, and there's no sense for me to make an effort to look for something that I knew we don't have in stock."
14. "I've been a firefighter and paramedic for 24 years. The 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, and people who want or demand 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."