Jobs That People Romanticize Too Much Until They Actually Do Them

As children, most of us try on different future identities and occupations. As a 5-year-old, I thought being either a firefighter or a nun would be ideal.

My plans changed as I got older.

There are some jobs that it seems like people almost universally believe will be great fun to have, but reality doesn't always match our fantasies.

Reddit user ShyButNastyyy asked:

"What is a job people romanticize a bit too much until they actually do it?"

Travel Required

"Any job that requires a lot of travel. You think traveling will be cool, but then you realize you’re just working or stuck in a hotel, eating unhealthy and running back and forth from the airport."

~ EndPractical653

"Gave up a 6 figure job for half the salary because of this."

"You’re staying in yet the same beautifully soulless hotel room away from the people you love, and making 12 hour flights 4x times a month."

"You also think you’ll have energy to explore whatever sh*t city you’re in at night after a high pressure pitch with clients during the day. You’re wrong."

~ tiankai

Spy

"I strongly suspect being a spy doesn't involve half as many high tech gadgets and spontaneous sexual intercourse as I've been lead to believe."

~ VillageLate8993

"I had a professor of the Russian language who was a late Cold War era spy. His job involved on-the-spot translation and analysis through shoddy telephone systems."

"He also had to go undercover in sketchy places throughout Eastern Europe. The best thing about it (in his words) was how much it gave him an appreciation of vodka."

~ Fangsong_37

"My friend’s dad was stationed in western Germany in the 80s mostly just listening in on stuff (he’s super cagey with any details)."

"He still to this day has super high privacy hedges around his house and keeps the blinds closed all day, and is generally just paranoid about stuff."

"My friend comments on how weird his childhood was with a dad like that."

~ trexmoflex

Animal Rescue

"Animal Rescue. The job is rewarding AF, but also soul sucking and the saddest thing you will ever do."

"The things some people will say to you will make you loose faith in all humanity, then someone will show up and restore it, it is a wild rollercoaster, and in the end it is more sad then happy."

~ BunnyGirlSD

"Been there and done that. It can be intense, depressing, sad, dirty and dangerous as well. It takes a lot of energy out ya."

"And the pay isn't great. I ended up leaving because of this. But I do miss it."

~ canadachris44

Resort Staff

"Working as front desk agent in one of the most expensive and luxurious resorts in the world."

"You love traveling and sometimes you meet celebrities you dig, but when your average guest is from the top 1%, nothing drains your soul more than serving people who feel like they own you."

~ Striking-Ad8317

Art Restorer

"I interned as an art restorer. It was incredibly tedious and lonely."

"Were there cool things about it? Absolutely."

"Is it worth the competition and level of schooling required to do it professionally? Not in my opinion."

~ sane-ish

Homesteader

"Homesteading. You don't want to work for the man from 9:00 to 5:00, 5 days a week, for 40 years, and then retire?

"Congratulations, now you're working 6:00AM to 10:00 p.m. every day for the rest of your life."

~ joepierson123

Musician

"Musician. Went to school for music. Played live. Taught lessons...I'm now a data analyst."

~ OkaySureBye

"I work as a stagehand and an A/V tech. As a teen and young adult I thought the music industry was hard work, but very rewarding—I'm a music junkie."

"I work in Nashville, and the stories I could tell are insane. It's nowhere near as glamorous as TV and the studios made it seem. Still, getting to work for and sometimes meet your musical idols is pretty rewarding!"

~ DairyKing28

Marine Biologist

"Marine biologist. The reefs are degrading and dying more every year, and it’s basically your job to be clinically depressed about it."

~ themint

"Not to mention, from what I know, it's not very well-paying. Like, I had a friend who initially planned on getting her PhD in it, but after she saw pay differences, she decided to go for a different focus."

~ UnNumbFool

Teacher

"Teaching. You think you're molding young minds and get to enjoy being with children all day."

"Til the system works you so hard you don't have the capacity to help the kids you want to help and you're so burnt out you don't even care."

~ Significant-Taro1653

"My mom just retired from teaching after 52 years. She said one of the worst parts was policy and curriculum guidelines being set at the state/federal level by people who hadn't set foot in a classroom since their student teaching days and how politicized it's become."

"And having to constantly benchmark everything for the state and teaching how to take standardized tests so your school doesn't lose funding due to low scores."

"She taught first grade, and it was important to her for her kids to have a really solid foundation so they weren't playing catch-up their entire school career. The last few decades were really frustrating because they were simultaneously trying to make kids 'smarter' by teaching things earlier, but also discouraging critical thinking."

"We're concrete thinkers when we start school, and the average kid is going to struggle with abstract concepts until their brain matures more."

"I also think my mom didn't realize that she would have to testify in child abuse cases or the number of times she would need to report things to CPS when she started her teaching degree. Or that she would lose a couple of students to domestic violence over the years."

~ Elenakalis

Veterinarian

"Veterinarian. From the outside it looks like puppy cuddles."

"In reality it’s crushing student debt, long shifts, angry owners, frequent euthanasia, and compassion fatigue."

~ Ok_Article_3863

"It’s the constantly being told we are the worst people on earth by clients day in and day out because people don’t like our answers."

"It’s seeing patients be taken home AMA and sometimes die or suffer horribly because people own animals they cannot afford the vet bills for. I’m not talking about a 10k surgery, I’m talking about the people who cannot afford the $500 spay that their pet need for a massive uterine infection that will turn fatal, or a $100 checkup."

"It’s extremely long shifts, working nights, weekends and holidays, corporate clinics who turn you into a salesperson and don’t let you practice good medicine while offering better benefits, or better pay at a private clinic who has such razor thin margins they can’t even afford to offer a basic healthcare package."

"It’s burnout, compassion fatigue, a lack of jobs, and no protection for nurse level titles."

~ IronDominion

Video Game Development

"Video Game development. Turns out its actually work."

~ ProofByVerbosity

"My father has been a developer since the 90s. Mostly low-level embedded programming where, like, datasheets are involved and it’s all in assembly."

"So his friend convinces him to go do game development with him at some little company you’ve never heard of that's only hit was some game you never heard of on a gaming system you never heard of (CD-I)."

"Anyways, after a year or two of that, he went back to being embedded at a big company. They have some middle schoolers come in for career day, and of course, half of the boys want to be programmers because of video games."

"He mentioned it’s just like any other job, programming them and not like playing video games all day. They refused to believe that it wouldn’t be the best job in the world."

"The more appeal a job has, the more they can treat you like sh*t because there is 100 people wanting to take the job."

~ wat_happened_here

Community/Social Services

"Community and social services. You go in with a big heart and it just keeps getting trampled on."

~ kangalbabe2

"This was my career for nearly 30 years. (I never worked in Child Welfare though.) The truly alienating part is not the work itself, and it sure as hell isn't the clientele."

"The part that gets you down and drives you nuts is the middle and upper management of the agency or organization that you work for. The work atmosphere created by management in which the workers have to operate resembles the 'Hunger Games' or maybe a prison movie."

"You cannot trust anyone within your own organization and have to keep your back to the wall at all times."

"And, oh yeah, the pay is abysmal. That too."

~ Particular-Move-3860

"Yeah, I did this for a year and some change. About 6 kids I worked with still keep in touch, and they're crushing it and they constantly thank me for the things I did for them."

"It means the world."

"But for those 5 to 6 kids, there was 50 that I just absolutely got nowhere with and it absolutely destroyed me internally watching them ruin their lives."

~ Khower

Chef

"Chef. Absolutely nothing like TV would have you believe. Maybe 10% of the job is actually innovating and cooking dishes."

"The rest is a ton of paperwork, scheduling, managing people, managing inventory, working with sales reps and you also have to be prepared to jump in and fill/help every and all stations in the kitchen at a moment's notice."

"You often work 60+ hour weeks 10+ hour days and you're on your feet a majority of the time."

~ ThePhoenixus

Architect

"Architect. Spend a lot of time dealing with city bureaucracy rather than actually designing."

~ Rebote78

"It's not the worst job in the world, but its not what people expect it to be. Very, very, very few people design entire building."

"The reality is spending days reviewing drawings from an electrical engineer who's installing a new security system for the doors. The drawings are poorly marked and don't reflect the current structure."

"You then need to cross reference this against the HVAC drawings, which are incomplete and 20 years out of date. Both the electrical people and the HVAC people don't want to dig into the details with you."

"Eventually you build a set of drawings you can hand off to an engineer (who will also nitpick the way you've done your drawings) and then need to babysit the contractor through construction because they way the electrical engineer, HVAC, structural engineer and you have put the drawings together aren't always immediately intuitive, and/or the security parts are labeled weird."

"Not a sh*tty job, but it is very much a JOB."

~ Ganglebot

Journalist

"Journalist. Ended up being nothing like I'd imagined."

~ HonkeyPong

"I swear, the number of people who come to the journalism subReddit asking how to break into the industry, because they saw a documentary or saw a journalist on a TV show, is just constant."

"And we tell them constantly about how it's such low pay for work that, while important, is going to be ignored for the most part."

"Like people watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and think that they're just one heroin injection and acid trip away from being a journalist."

~ shinbreaker

What profession would you add?