In college, I worked as a hostess and server at my favorite restaurant. I thought it would be fun to be a waitress, and doing it at a place where I would see my friends (since they ate there all the time), seemed like an extra perk.
Would I recommend everyone work in the service industry to build character and learn respect? Yes. Would I recommend anyone work in the service industry if they want to continue liking life? Absolutely not!
Working as a server made me realize how entitled people can be. Some people asked to sit at tables that were clearly reserved and then tried to seat themselves when we told them ‘no.’
Others decided to tip less when their bill was too high, and servers ended up losing money.
During football games, people even walked right past us to go into the bar area even when the area was full, and we tried to tell them we were at capacity. Half the time, I felt like screaming at customers, “Why are you coming in here? I don’t want you to!” And I wasn’t the only one.
One of my co-workers kept trying to win the lottery, so she could split her winnings with all the employees, and we could all quit. I had to recite pop culture lists in my head just to keep sane (like listing the first 151 Pokemon in order -- I actually shared this talent with my co-workers, which lead to the first and only fun night I had at the restaurant).
This isn’t the only job people should steer clear of. Redditors are ready to share which professions they wouldn’t recommend people go into.
It all started when Redditor HalosOpulence asked:
“Why would you not recommend your career?”
It's All Your Fault
“Call center tech support. Need I really say anything?”
“The whole job is trying to help people who treat me like I'm the person who broke their sh*t.”
– Korrin
“I work in an incoming call center as a tier 2 person, and holy sh*t have you noticed that people are way more mean the last few months? We're literally there to help them, but due to the nature of our work, sometimes we have to tell them no and omg you'd think we were killing them.”
– stellaluna92
“But have you tried turning it off and on again?”
– FrostyBallBag
Emotions Run High
"Pediatric cancer scientist. A lot of the kids that end up on our research protocol are going to die. Fewer of them are going to die than if they were not on our research protocol, but the prognosis for the "we've tried everything else" cases that get to us is not great."
– DrSuviel
Never Did Expect
"Librarian. The pay is sh*t, especially with the fact that you need a master's to have any meaningful advancement. Master's degree, to make $40-50k."
"Also, depending on where are, libraries are just where homeless people go during the day. And a lot of homeless people are perfectly nice and respectful! But enough of them are not."
"I normally work in a fairly nice suburban branch where the worst I get is old men coming on to me. I'm pretty lucky. Coworkers at the downtown branch have been grabbed, punched, screamed at, spit at. They find bodily fluids all over the place. They find people overdosed in the bathroom."
"I'm sure any customer service position is like this. People think librarians sit and read in a nice, quiet library all day. We do not. We are expected to act as untrained social workers as much as we're expected to recommend books."
– baby_yaga
Not As Rewarding As You Would Think
"If you want to live in Japan and don't care about not earning very much money, come "teach" English. Literally the only real requirements are 1) be alive and 2) at least kind of speak English. If you can read this comment you're probably overqualified."
"Reasons not to do it:"
- "Pay is sh*t."
- "No benefits."
- "You will either spend your days sitting around doing f*ck all but waiting to or being worked to exhaustion."
- "No advancement, this is it."
- "Feels utterly pointless. The curriculum is garbage. Most students don't give a f*ck and won't learn much of anything. The few who do give a f*ck and have some degree of aptitude will be f*cked over by a combination of the sh*t curriculum, their classmates weighing them down like an anchor, and the Japanese English teachers may not even actually speak English themselves and/or teach weird and wrong sh*t as a result."
- "You'll probably get shunted off to some random mountain town that's been hemorrhaging population steadily for decades with an average age of 48 and absolutely f*ck all to do there unless you like hanging out in smokey old people "snack bars" or smokey pachinko parlors."
– Ryoukugan
Ruined Reading
"Book Editor."
"Well, I used to love reading. I joined a book club while in college and even voted as one of the committee. Now I see books as work and never touch them outside my work hours. sigh"
– pangcukaipang
Good Advice
"This is a perfect example of what I tell every high-schooler during career week."
"Do a job you are good at, not a hobby you like. Save the things you enjoy for a hobby and use the thing you are good at to pay for the things you enjoy. Turing your hobby into a job will make you hate your hobby."
– Diabolo_Advocato
My Poor Nose
"Zookeeper."
"Have you smelled lion spray? Otter crap, oily and fishy and laced with territory-marking musk?"
"Yeah, you don't want to. You probably can't even imagine how badly you don't want to. Certainly not for close to minimum wage. You have to be a little crazy to get into this line of work."
"My nostrils have never forgiven me."
– okicho32
Elle Woods Was Wrong
"Lawyer"
"The field can be thankless and the stress is unrelenting. There can be days that make it worth it, but you can have all the work caught up to be blown up and have several days in a row ruined by something dumb. Law school was insanely clicky and people are hyper-competitive, a sense of community can be hard to find while superiors take no hesitation in reminding you that you work for them"
– Wide_right_
Ageism
"Advertising"
"Most people in advertising get aged out of the profession between the ages of 35 and 40."
– copyboy1
If Only I Could Be Permanently Invisible
"Working in IT means most of the time people barely know you exist, until something goes wrong then you become everyone's worst enemy. Then, the moment you fix it you get months of complaints that "it no longer works right because of whatever you did" even though you didn't actually change anything. You need to grow a really thick skin, especially if you work in technical support, which everyone in the IT industry does at some point."
– zerbey
Eureka!
"I'm a scientist. That means you don't make much money, and no-one listens to anything you say."
– EmotionalTruth3477
How Depressing
"After reading this thread, not being born is the best way to go apparently."
– unexpectedomelette
"No no no. Being born to a billionaire and becoming a trust fund baby still looks high up there."
– LuckyMacAndCheese
I Hate Humans
“I'm a retail store manager. Pay is good. Hours are sh*t and I suspect it may have something to do with me hating people.”
“If you want to see the worst of people, work a face position with the public. They have absolutely no consideration for you, your life, your job, whatever.”
– GaryBuseyWithRabies
Yeah. Retail gave me a, “Ew, People” outlook on life too!
