Working in a creative industry like publishing or film. It's sold as a world of art, passion, and constant excitement, but the reality for most is years of brutal, low paying administrative grunt work, constant networking anxiety, and the soul crushing corporate bureaucracy behind the shiny final product. The "glamour" is a tiny iceberg tip.
So much politics involved too. You realise the people who reach the upper echelons of the industry may not be the most talented, they just know how to play the game best.
1,000%. Avenues for moving up are constantly being blocked off for my team because the company keeps hiring new people into senior positions instead of bumping up anyone that's already been here busting their ass for 10+ years.
And the people that get hired have a pre-existing relationship with the head of the department. If you didn't know the dept head before they took the reins 3 years ago, then fuck you.
Went to school for a few months to get into publishing. One of the teachers there who used to be an editor straight up told us, while laughing, "we'd never hire you guys, if we have to hire someone, we're hiring someone's niece who already has an in". I mean, thanks for being honest? But she was so cruel about it at the same time.
So true. I flopped out of entertainment after 15+ years of grinding away because I finally realized it was MBA idiots running the show. It’s why there’s so much crap out there. No artists behind the artists. Just bean counters and brown nosers.
I made it 3 years in vfx. Lovely people, I made some amazing friends (some of whom I’m still close with 30 years later) and I have the sort of blunt but kind energy that went over well with the dept heads I worked with but my god the uncertainty and hustle and unbelievable studio business bullshit. Now I’m happily perched as an animator and illustrator at a marketing agency. Only deal with my colleagues who I adore, insulated from clients completely by our killer account managers. Bean counters sure, but we’re really good and most creative/brand executives we work with get it and understand the success of the brand is contingent on how good the strategy and creative around the brand is - some egos sure, but again: insulated. And our biggest most corporate accounts are, shockingly, fully aligned with the idea that consumers take a dim view toward ai generated content. And it doesn’t actually save time or money yet. So I still have some security!
This concept applies to a lot of other industries as well. I work in trades under a corporate structure and it works exactly like you described. I’ve watched people start in the lowest positions the company has, and end up in high corporate level positions. People who just know how to schmooze and talk better than the rest of us climbing the ranks into upper corporate structure roles. One man I trained for shipping and receiving is now my boss’s boss, and he’s the type of guy who could sell sawdust to a lumber mill.
As a video editor of 20 years, I knew my industry was going to be mentioned here, haha.
My advice for young people i meet getting into it is this: treat it like a trades career rather than an artistic one and you'll have a fighting chance of making it.
This is low key great advice for musicians, too. I’m a songwriter with a band. But I also know how to run a board, roadie for guitar or just load, carry and stage gear. Guess which one of those roles gets the most reliable work!
Yeah my son who is now 28 decided early on to pursue a career in music even though I told him when he was a teenager to learn web design or something because I could get him work doing that. He is actually really good at mixing, using the software, and setting up equipment and should be able to get a job as a sound engineer pretty easily but for whatever reason he has not pursued that either.
A lot of the exploitation in these fields has to do with "but you're passionate, so you won't mind, right ?! you're not in it for the money, right ?!". It's been relatively well discussed in game development that passion is a huge factor in crunch culture, but it's true of other industries too.
Big in zookeeping. We have real issues fighting for livable wages, job security and safe working environments because it's a passion-based industry (and therefore there is a loooong line of people who'll take your role happily if you rock the boat too much).
I’m a physician assistant who is now a high school teacher. I think you’re right about both but I will say when I was working in outpatient neuro it was a dream but then the company culture changed, blah blah not the point.
I currently teach health science at the high school level and two things I tell my kids are:
1. Don’t romanticize it “it’s not like grey’s anatomy” (they all think they’re going to be like Meredith gray) BUT
2. I do think there’s a place for everyone in medicine, like you really have to know yourself and what kind of setting is right for you, (fast-paced vs more laid back, clinic vs hospital, people-oriented vs more isolated)
Of course sometimes there are things you can’t control like shitty bosses, etc.
As for teaching, yeah this shit is for the birds. I stay because I have formed rewarding rapport with my kids but the job is ass for next to no pay and shitty “benefits.”
How did you get into teaching from being a PA and how do you like it? Do you still practice medicine? I'm a PA looking into alternative jobs, just curious what made you switch.
Haha yeah it’s a very long story but since y’all asked:
I did end up going into interventional pain management working long hours inpatient and outpatient. I ended up working myself into the ground, unmasked what I assume was a latent autoimmune condition and if that wasn’t enough got pregnant and had a miscarriage. It took the miscarriage to recognize I was burning the candle at both ends for a boss who didn’t give a fuck about me or my health.
I ended up getting pregnant again not long after I quit and then decided to take time off to be a stay at home mom. That drove me bananas by the way. So I decided to work a job that I had always dreamed of doing (though I never thought I’d end up at the secondary level, figured it’d be at a community college or university level) and went into teaching. For now teaching works for me because it satisfied my curiosity of “what if” I’d followed my first dream of being a teacher and the summers and holidays off are great for having a toddler. And the reason I stay year after year, even after I’ve sworn I wouldn’t is because the kids are fucking awesome and as much as all of the bureaucratic red tape sucks - I truly love guiding kids in a way I never got at their age. 😮💨… Hope that explains the very weird trajectory my life has taken.
Yeah that is not a career trajectory you hear about very often. I had to re-read the first sentence a couple times to confirm that it was PA -> teacher and not teacher -> PA.
Almost every article about this path completely overstates the income. That movie “Chef” is all lies. A food truck is NOT a restaurant on wheels.
To run a food truck and break anywhere close to even (and good luck making a profit), you have to streamline and limit your menu, with food costs at the lowest possible and menu prices as high as the market will stand. It has to be fast food - very fast.
And you have to sell an incredible amount in each outing to pay for staff, insurance, inspection and licensing fees, huge event fees, fuel, supplies, and so many more hidden costs.
If you don’t start your business with a massive start-up purse, YOU will be the primary overtime employee for every single element of the business. Your body will be broken and your dreams will evaporate in a stinky cloud of disillusionment.
If you start a food truck business, may god have mercy on your soul.
Also, I’m selling my food truck. Hit me up if you think none of the above applies to you. LOL
Yeah. The logistics are nightmarish. And yes, almost every state requires you to have a licensed commissary kitchen as a home base to store and prep food.
Seattle is like this. And then you must be within 500 ft of a bathroom. Essentially all food trucks are just in gas station parking lots. It’s very odd
I'm in the process of starting a small food business with a cottage license with the end goal to have a brick and mortar store. I've been doing g cost breakdowns the last week or so and.....holy fuck.
The worst part about it is I grew up in food service (Dad was a chef and Mom was a CPA that handled a lot of restaurants) and I've been a chef for 20+ years, so I know exactly what I'm getting into. Somehow I'm still getting sticker shock lol
My wife and I are both very solid cooks, way better than any of the people we know but nowhere near professional. We both also have very good jobs with great benefits and insurance.
Everyone always tells us we should open a restaurant or food truck, and we're both like "fuck no, idiot".
We also live in a culinary wasteland part of the country, so even if we absolutely crushed it, the ceiling is only so high.
Being a scientist in academia. Most people are miserable with low self esteem and an unthinkably bad work/life balance. It's like being a model where you're never thin or pretty enough, but instead you're never smart or successful enough.
My wife is a biochemist at a university. She loves her students but is totally burned out, working way over her paid hours year after year. Like most scientists, her research work is in the tiny details of various processes, nothing that will ever be earth-shattering or even remotely interesting to other people. She has a PhD and makes just over minimum wage - less if you count her real hours. Glamorous it ain't.
Working in a high-end, Michelin-star restaurant kitchen.
The glamour is all on the plate and in the dining room. Behind the scenes, it’s 16-hour shifts, being constantly screamed at, and a non-stop pressure cooker environment that burns people out in months.
Agree. My ex wife worked in mitchelin star kitchens until it made her too ill to work. Brutal line of work and rubbish being married to some one doing those hours for nothing.
A friend of mine has worked as one for a number of restaurants at this point and as he's explained to me, it's always the same no matter where he goes. Long irregular working hours, being in a hot steamy windowless kitchen for most of those hours, constantly being yelled at, shaky employment contracts , etc.
He went in with great passion for culinary arts but nowadays he finds that passion quickly wavering with each passing year.
I know some folks who used to travel here regularly for work, and they really disliked it for this reason. They would always over tip the taxi drivers and give them all of the toiletries from their hotel room, plus anything else they could spare. The conditions for the working class are obscene.
The conditions which the workers are living in are horrendous. At least more people are becoming more aware. It's just unfortunate that it gets glossed over in favor of latest marketing gimmicks like the Dubai chocolate.
What's so fucked up is this has been going for over 30 gawddamn years, it's just now the wealth discrepancy and consolidated power means it can be flaunted.
The more you learn about each incident, the more you realize how bad it's gotten.
Basically a bunch of rich guys from Dubai were shitting on SWers they hired, and this is all search engine optimization to make it where you can’t find it when you Google “Dubai chocolate”
I had a friend escape his indentured servetude (aka his slavery) from there and you're just not able to explain how much your comment rings true. Servicing the most obscenely wealthy and then basically being locked away until his next shift....the stories he told were equally horrifying and typical, except that he got out.
Anybody with curiosity and 10 minutes on a search engine could find out how they‘re using slavery for nearly everything.
But they still get sooo many western tourists.
A lot of people don't really care what others are experiencing so they can have a good time.
And others have a case of willful blindness in terms of they'd rather not know.
But I guess many of us are guilty of this to some degree in that we like inexpensive clothing and other goods which often comes from third world countries where conditions are not great.
It’s EVERYWHERE all of a sudden. I thought it had to do with the scarcity of real chocolate but if it’s SEO to cover human rights abuses, it’s even worse than I imagined.
It's like Vegas very artificial. I've been twice wouldn't recommend it. I didn't feel comfortable knowing the workers are making $2\hr while the Emeratis drive around in million dollar cars with do nothing jobs
It’s cool at first, but it gets old super quick. Plus the points/rewards schemes have lost so much value that you really need to be doing international travel in business class to see any significant benefit.
International travel for business sounds great until you realize you have no time to adjust to the jet lag. Either land and go straight to a meeting or land, stagger into your hotel, wake up early next morning and straight into a meeting. Your body clock doesn't care if you flew first class.
The body clock one is ugly. I've messed it up so much that I only poop at around midnight. Like, wtf? My body went on strike and just reverted to some timezone eight hours away from where I am now.
One time my dad had to go to Puerto Rico for work. When he came home he gave my mum the brochure for his hotel and she said "oh it was right on the beach" and my dad said "it was?"
100% this. I travel for work all the time. People think it's glamorous, free holidays. In reality, you're away from home stuck in airports, hotels and offices. Maybe it's fine in your 20s but you get over it fast
I am in my late 20s and travel a lot for work. My boyfriend is used to my “post team dinner mental breakdown call” from the hotel. I HATE business travel.
Friend of mine travels extensively for his work and last time he booked a hotel he was told he had to pay a fee in order to use his points. I was baffled.
All that is definitely still there. I remember after a national win, getting an email offering me a trip to a very nice tropical resort to do pictures and was informed that there could be some more expected of me. I passed on that offer. I didn't need the money nor was I interested in doing gay shit for some rich guy.
While injuries are common in Pro Bodybuilding, Ronnie's injuries and disabilities happened because:
He worked out way too hard way too fast. Other bodybuilders would workout for 2-3 hours a day with relatively light weights, Ronnie would workout with crazy heavy weights in 45 mins because of his job
Ignoring his injuries. He would ignore injuries and keep on working out crazy hard, thus making his injuries worse. The worst example of this is when he popped a disc in his spine, ignored it, and kept working out for weeks afterwards. And to make it even worse, when the pain was too much, he went to a chiropractor instead of seeing an actual doctor
All the other bodybuilders that came up with Ronnie are doing fine now injury wise
I cook pretty well. Well enough that someone invariably asks me "why don't you open a restaurant?"
I've had a restaurant. Between the long work hours, cranky staff, customer complaints and super volatile revenue, you won't catch me dead as restaurant owner again.
Leave me be, Margareth. I just want to stay home and make some stir-fry for my friends and I.
Also the time and effort needed to get the "good" money. The trades involve a lot of slowly moving up the ranks, impressing the right people, busting your ass, and taking shit from a lot of people, in addition to sacrificing your body. A lot of people can't do it, or won't do it. I always think it's weird when going into the trades is suggested to anyone and everyone who doesn't have a job or struggles academically. It's not an easy Plan B.
Being a lawyer. That seems to be the go to glamor career on TV. I’m not one myself but I’ve seen enough to know it’s a lot more about filling out dull paperwork, doing research and arguing minutia than it is making stirring courtroom speeches.
The job is inherently crappy
That's why you've never met a lawyer who's happy
It's a guaranteed soul destroyer
Don't be a lawyer!
Law school debt, daily regret
Is that what you dreamed of as a kid?
Or did you hope one day
That you'd find a way to spend four years
Working on a pharmaceutical company's
Merger with another pharmaceutical company?
I’m a solo general practitioner. One day I got up to defend a deposition, took my lunch to negotiate with a prosecutor on a low level felony and schedule a time to visit a different client in jail, got home and finished drafting a will.
I worked about 21 hours that day and I was exhausted.
In the world of Suits, I should’ve also blackmailed opposing counsel, successfully defended a DUI and attended a charity function in my rented Aston Martin
I laser focused on that career, and it turned out to be a nightmare. The pay is NOT good unless you are in the top 10% of your class and sell out to Big Law. But then you are working 24/7. Otherwise, it is filling out forms, paperwork (that honestly most lay-people could do), waiting in court to put something on the record (with surly court workers), and dealing with assholes. Rarely do you actually get to argue anything in court; it is mostly pre-determined and you just go in to put it on the record. Trials are even rarer.
If you end up in a small or mid-sized firm or you work for yourself, you will also have to worry about collecting the money from your clients. That is a whole other business in and of itself.
Graphic design. It was viewed as a prestigious career when I was in college for it (1999-2002) full of polished, hip creative people. We did field trips to firms that presented themselves as having super cool, laid back outside-the-box operations. Foosball table in the break room! A napping room where you can catch 10 minutes when you’re tired! Fully staffed coffee bar right in the office! A “play room” with games and puzzles and clay for when you need a break from the monotony of life! An office dog who comes in on Wednesdays and Fridays! Working from home whenever you feel like it! Setting your own schedule! Who wouldn’t want that, right?
The truth is the design industry is full of assholes and bullies. It’s downright abusive,Ike sociopathic levels of workplace abuse. Merciless directors who don’t care if you’re extremely sick or a family member has died, it’s the end of the fucking world if a client’s deadline is an hour late. Redoing work that looked absolutely fine to begin with over and over. The “napping room” turns out to be a necessity as you’re required to pull all-nighters on some projects. Having a project you spent over 40 hours on physically ripped to pieces by the director because a fold mark was a pica off. Catty bitches who single out and ostracize other women coworkers who show any sign of individuality away from being carbon copy blonde Lululemon wearing hot yoga Lexus drivers. Anyway I decided to freelance very early on and it was the best possible decision. No senior designer’s paycheque was worth trying to survive in a firm.
I have a certificate in graphic design and a long history of visual art experience, I've ended up doing a lot of graphic design work for the office jobs I've had, but never a straight graphic design job. And I always felt like I was missing out, not having that actual degree, until I worked in an office with an open floor plan and a design team, I was adjacent to them and we worked on a lot of project together. Omfg that cured me of any lingering regret I had for not seriously pursuing that career goal. Just brutal hours, low pay, constant stress, grueling work. The kind of job that turns something you love into drudgery. I think it's even worse now because there is so much competition. I think what a lot of people don't get about any kind of art production work - including video editing, etc, is that it's so time intensive, and that you can't go any faster than the program allows. I think a lot of people who so office work would be totally humbled by the sheer amount of actual "work" being done by these professionals, and the amount of patience and dedication it takes.
Car modifying/car culture stuff. Always depicted with hot babes around but the only people you'll be impressing for the most part are middle aged men lmao.
Me + all the women I know find obnoxiously loud cars to be a turn off. I don’t mind a guy who is a bit nerdy about his car an makes a few tasteful mods (in fact I find men with hobbies to be attractive) but it gets to a point where you’re doing too much real fast.
As someone who grew up as an entertainment “industry kid” this… all the way. Lots of these folks get massive mental health and anxiety issues, lots of suicide etc. it’s pretty bad for most famous people unless they have good support from people that aren’t trying to milk anything from them.
And being perceived in general. Even with a tiny audience you have to be so careful about what you say.
I can post a dumb thought I had one afternoon and now 20k people have seen it, most agree but some are mad at me for having a different opinion than them, some are hurling random insults. It's just not as much fun as most people would assume.
Canal boating or living in a van, these nomad substitutes instead of having an affordable home. You're living in a steel bucket floating above a septic tank full of your own shit. Bugs everywhere and it makes you smell. It's just lousy life.
Workplaces in general!!
Job ads where the company describes it's 'amazing' perks, get you all excited about your new job. But then it turns out to be shit.
I can't tell you how many times I've been told that being a librarian is their "dream job." You would be shocked at the number of people who think it's just sitting around quietly while sipping coffee and reading books. Honestly, I've worked in libraries for a long time now - both public and academic - and the amount of workplace drama and horrible people I have encountered in them has far exceeded any other job I've worked.
I do love a lot of things about my job, but it always makes me laugh when I hear people talk about how calm it must be.
Yep. I used to think I wanted to work in a library. Turns out I actually want my own library (especially a la Beauty and the Beast!). That’s very different.
Same industry and yes. Libraries are also touted as the best place to work for people with disabilities. Like what. I did a library professional development retreat and we played library never have I ever and it was wild. I won / lost with an escaped federal inmate making it to my library and was caught at the computers trying to message someone to pick him up.
Libraries have also been at the forefront of the opiate crisis because we are the last public space anyone can use without an expectation of payment.
We aren’t trained or paid to be everything we often end up doing
All work sucks. If it didn't people would do it for free. I'm a musician, I love phorography, and I love TV. But I've worked in all those industries and they all suck. Work is obligation. Whatever it is you love doing, you don't love being made to do it when you really don't feel like it.
Screens in cars that control everything. They’re basically just a way to cut costs during production and are more difficult and less safe to use than buttons.
The new Bugatti Tourbillon for example is $4.3 million, but has analog gauges made by a Swiss watchmaker and no center screen.
and are more difficult and less safe to use than buttons.
They also make repairing your car yourself more complicated on purpose. It's getting harder and harder to do your repairs yourself, let alone customize your vehicle. I mean you still can but that takes a lot more than it used to.
Business travel. My job requires a lot of air travel. My friends think it's really cool to fly around the country all the time. But you are treated like cattle and don't get me started on airport bathrooms. It's brutal.
Hustle culture. All the “rise and grind, sleep when you’re dead” stuff looks glamorous when you’re 20, then you realize it’s just burnout, shitty boundaries, and your whole personality revolving around work while the people who really benefit are the ones cashing your overtime.
I love cocaine, and I hate people who think it's classy or high status. Those are the people who act like massive arseholes after a couple of bumps. Coke doesn't make them act like arseholes, it just gives them the confidence to be themselves.
People don’t seem to understand it’s not going to magically create some fantastic night out, it’s just going to fuel some extra drinking at a dive bar with your friends, and then continue to fuel drunken video games after the bars close or get boring.
Wholeheartedly agree. It’s really just an unbearably hot sandpit that swallows up natural resources and takes advantage of people. I was also blown away by how many homeless people are there. The whole place is depressing.
Childbirth and motherhood. People forget that women die during labour and the life of the babies are often prioritised over that of the women if there are any complications. Pregnancy itself comes with a host of problems and biological changes some of which don’t disappear even after the child is over, not to talk of the mental and psychological ones that society disregards or waters down as nothing to worry about / failings on the mother’s part(postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, etc) Worse still, a lot of parents go decide to have children just because they see it as the next step in life and don’t take into account the fact that they’re raising an entire person who has to be taught to be a functioning member of the society and not just a kid learning how to ride a bike. Although I will admit that in the past few years parents and women have become more transparent about their struggles online.
I look at my mum and while I’m in awe of her strength and perseverance, I don’t ever want to be a mother myself. Mothers are always second if not last. Last to eat, last to sleep, last for everything. And I’m shocked (but not all that surprised) to hear that the baby’s life is prioritised in labour. Just like abortion: the woman’s life is always deemed inferior to the unborn foetus. Society may pretend otherwise, but mothers are so poorly regarded. They give over their bodies, fluids, organs, time and sanity to their children (and other children) and the entire economy and functionality of society depends on their sacrifices, and they get little if anything in return. Yes, they have their children, and they’re told they should be grateful and fulfilled just by being mothers to kids. It’s exploitation wrapped up in a cheap Mother’s Day ribbon.
It's sold as some kind of crime fighting detective job, when it really entails spending the entire day at a computer redlining documents for a corporation.
Hollywood. when you see famous actors and directors on late night shows they always talk about how it’s a family and everything so great. it sounds kind of like summer camp for adults. And of course, that is very rarely the case
Recruiters and the parents of military folks and/or older military folks. My parents were in and apparently forgot about how shit it was.
That I didn’t at least get more of a “here’s how it’s gonna go, kid” from my mother kinda pissed me off (I was homeschooled and pretty sheltered). Either she somehow didn’t experience anything terrible, when there were even fewer protections at the time, or she completely nope’d out mentally and decided I didn’t need a warning.
Stayed with my parents for a time after getting out and she was all “omgosh, you should totally talk to Neighbour’s teenage daughter! She’s considering joining too 🤩🇺🇸🎆🥳!” So I did talk to her, quietly off to the side, with an unflinching gaze about being sexually assaulted and having to work with the asshole who did it because the military’s claims of legal and work protection are bullshit. That you either out yourself publicly as being a victim in a very small community of gossipy, cruel af, emotionally underdeveloped children or you likely get pushed to another command/base/role which can severely fuck up your advancement in multiple ways. That claims of “but anonymous reporting!” are also bullshit because of course people can connect the dots when there’s 30 to 100 people in your command and especially if it happens between coworkers (say, 3 to 20 people). Supposedly the daughter decided not to join and I considered that my “pay it forward” karmic good deed of that year.
Good on you for talking to her honestly about it. A lot of people get caught up in the patriotism and forget that it's very awful for most people, especially women.
I have listened to EDM since I was in the single digit ages, and couldn't wait to be old enough to go to clubs. I thought they were all like something you'd find in Miami or Ibiza, just at a smaller scale; every single club I have been to, even the high-end ones, has fallen short of this standard. Most places are very dumpy and look "slapped together", even under minimal lighting.
It wasn't until I went to a festival that I experienced what I thought clubs would be like when I was a kid. Even seeing club scenes today in the media make me wonder if I just haven't been to the right ones, and maybe I'm missing out.
I also worried about being too ugly or fat to be let in when I finally got old enough, only to find out clubs don't really care as long as you pay your money; the Studio 54 days were dead and gone long before I was born.
I’ve watched a lot of mlm content and man it’s crazy from the outside how people don’t realize what a trap it is.
Every point of contact between you and the company is designed to separate you from your money, and the entire premise is completely unsustainable.
And for the one in 10,000 that end up making decent money, the vast majority would have made a lot more money just having a normal job. In fact, most mlm workers end up with a net loss month over month.
The propaganda is so perfected, though, they can rope people in like crazy.
Dude yes I agree with every point you made. Watching my sister try to shill mlm crap and acting like she's an influencer out of nowhere is terrifying. Idk how smart people get lured in by this clearly disproven garbage. Drives me insane. Just get another job or pick up more shifts, no mlm will ever be profitable enough to justify starting it in the first place.
First thing I thought of. All the glossy photos and cruise trips and bonuses while you ~work from home~. I went to a "jewelry party" and the poor girl almost cried because none of us wanted to buy her overpriced goods (we weren't mean, just not interested). I felt so bad for her but what a scam.
Oof. That hits hard.
I never thought it would be 'glamorous' but it well and truly is not!
Side thought- the amount of social media involving children in the content of influencer mums is horrific.
Yo right - fuck those weird influencer moms - that stuff drives me nuts especially because pregnant and or planning parents just have no idea what the realities are and get completely blind sided, and parents just want to do their best for their children and can get caught up in all of it.
The worst specifically are the MAHA moms that stay at home with 4 liftle Jaydens/caydens/ etc - their entire fake life is just bullshit and they are nothing but deceptive freak grifters and frauds that upset normal parents when real life is totally different.
And who knows what gets edited out?! Like not even the kids' behaviour, but the mum who uses her own child/ren to inflate their sense of self by having a 'perfect' life. How are those kids being treated when they're not behaving perfectly and mama needs to post something? And they are too young and can't consent to whatever is being shared of their LIVES to complete strangers, on the internet that they have no means to control!
There are so many videos on YouTube of these same people getting arrested, and the horrible conditions that their kids are in. I watched a few, but it upsets me so it’s hard to watch
My mom straight up said she had us out of peer pressure, and that she totally regretted it and doesn't care about my sister and I. So I basically had to step into the mother roll, and she's basically my autistic older sister, too immature and selfish to ever be a real mom. Fucked us up and is still fucking us up but it is what it is.
In my experience it’s not the new parents glamourising it - it’s the potential grandparents, and other older folks, that glamourise it to the next generation. Like a social pressure designed to get the next generation to procreate.
Political parties. They convince you that together we will change the world with truth and solidarity. Then you realize the party couldn't care less about truth and only values you for your blind loyalty.
Military service. I joined up with dreams of Gi Joe and Rambo. In reality…. Suck sandwich. Cold, exhausted and sleep deprived a majority of the time. All that high speed shit looks super cool on tv. Real life, not so much. Thanks.
Working backstage at concerts. It's long hours, heavy work, and extremely boring during the show itself (unless you're into that band, then you can always go catch the show if you're not working show call). Been doing it 11 years: even when the talent walks by you on the way to / from the stage, that wears off pretty quick because, well, they're just human beings walking past you, and we're all currently at work (including them). It's like watching a coworker walk past at that point.
Just for one concert, a crew has to come in overnight and convert the arena from ice hockey config to a concert config by laying down floor boards and removing the plexiglass, then you gotta offload the (usually MANY) trucks, then riggers (my normal job) come in and climb up into the roof and hang the rigging points for all the gear, then you gotta build the stage itself, assemble the line arrays and lighting and video trusses, run a metric fuckton of giant cables to everything, set up any set pieces or risers on the stage, set up the backline and mic it all, test EVERYTHING, go and fix the fuck ups.. All in the morning / afternoon of show day. If you're "lucky," you get picked to work show call which is either backline (moving instruments during a changeover) or spot / camera operator. Then you get to do everything in reverse: disassemble everything, riggers go up and lower the rigging points from the roof, pack all that shit up, get it in the trucks so they can go to the next stop on the tour, and the conversion crew reinstalls plexiglass and lifts the floor boards. All of that for a 3 hour show, and in a regular sized venue. Giant acts like Taylor Swift had around 45 semis and took a week to set up.
But the act of acting is often very unglamorous, even if the person gets an Oscar or Emmy out of it.
Probably the most unglamorous is horror films. You're not being filmed in a dark room.
It's daylight and all the lights and cameras you'd expect.
Wonder why children are not psychologically terrorized for life when acting in a horror flick?
From a human perspective, the only thing horrific is trying to not forget your lines and hoping everything you do looks natural.
Then it goes to post editing, where the real magic happens. They can make noon on a sunny day look like midnight if needed, and that room in the basement shot with harsh, bright lights, gets turned into a dark, barely lit room with an evil spirit, and two terrified children.
Farming/trad life. If you're not loaded enough to have an entire staff to do the work for you, it's impossibly hard work for basically no money. Society broadly abandoned it for a reason
The idea is to unpeg from society… which a lot of people don’t understand that it means doing all the hard work yourself.
Yes fresh veggies are great in the summer, but eating the same batch of bottled beans all winter long with half starved chicken isn’t great. Then there is the aspect of having to work all the time, especially if you’re sick. You still need to take care of your animals, haul wood, and cook/clean. If you don’t, you will accidentally injure or kill your livestock, freeze to death, and get sicker from starvation.
Life is fucking rough as it is, why intentionally choose to go back in time a 150 years?
The St. Augustine Distillery: it's a low wage paying shill factory for sad, overpriced mediocre liquor, some of it 4x more than what it is actually worth based on what the employees pay with their discount. It's a literal tourist trap in a crumbling building sitting on top of an actual arsenic dump that was only opened after paying extensive bribes to the EPA for the "cleanup".
Working in a creative industry like publishing or film. It's sold as a world of art, passion, and constant excitement, but the reality for most is years of brutal, low paying administrative grunt work, constant networking anxiety, and the soul crushing corporate bureaucracy behind the shiny final product. The "glamour" is a tiny iceberg tip.
An old friend of mine worked fast food through college. He got a degree in programming and immediately went into video game design.
To this day, if you ask him the most soulcrushing job he's ever had, he is hard-pressed to decide between fast food and video game design.
Yeah, game development has been horrible for decades.
So much politics involved too. You realise the people who reach the upper echelons of the industry may not be the most talented, they just know how to play the game best.
1,000%. Avenues for moving up are constantly being blocked off for my team because the company keeps hiring new people into senior positions instead of bumping up anyone that's already been here busting their ass for 10+ years.
And the people that get hired have a pre-existing relationship with the head of the department. If you didn't know the dept head before they took the reins 3 years ago, then fuck you.
It's super cool.
(edited for clarity)
That’s the most demoralizing part, loyalty and hard work mean nothing when the ladder only works for people who already know someone at the top.
Went to school for a few months to get into publishing. One of the teachers there who used to be an editor straight up told us, while laughing, "we'd never hire you guys, if we have to hire someone, we're hiring someone's niece who already has an in". I mean, thanks for being honest? But she was so cruel about it at the same time.
Yeah, it’s one thing to be real with people, it’s another thing to take delight in crushing people’s dreams.
In some ways, I wish my instructors from my creative degree were 1/2 this honest.
Photography BTW
So true. I flopped out of entertainment after 15+ years of grinding away because I finally realized it was MBA idiots running the show. It’s why there’s so much crap out there. No artists behind the artists. Just bean counters and brown nosers.
I made it 3 years in vfx. Lovely people, I made some amazing friends (some of whom I’m still close with 30 years later) and I have the sort of blunt but kind energy that went over well with the dept heads I worked with but my god the uncertainty and hustle and unbelievable studio business bullshit. Now I’m happily perched as an animator and illustrator at a marketing agency. Only deal with my colleagues who I adore, insulated from clients completely by our killer account managers. Bean counters sure, but we’re really good and most creative/brand executives we work with get it and understand the success of the brand is contingent on how good the strategy and creative around the brand is - some egos sure, but again: insulated. And our biggest most corporate accounts are, shockingly, fully aligned with the idea that consumers take a dim view toward ai generated content. And it doesn’t actually save time or money yet. So I still have some security!
Yep, they market art like it's a niche industry. It's like any other corporate slog.
At the end of the day, it's all down to who you know, who you impress, and how you market yourself.
This concept applies to a lot of other industries as well. I work in trades under a corporate structure and it works exactly like you described. I’ve watched people start in the lowest positions the company has, and end up in high corporate level positions. People who just know how to schmooze and talk better than the rest of us climbing the ranks into upper corporate structure roles. One man I trained for shipping and receiving is now my boss’s boss, and he’s the type of guy who could sell sawdust to a lumber mill.
As a video editor of 20 years, I knew my industry was going to be mentioned here, haha.
My advice for young people i meet getting into it is this: treat it like a trades career rather than an artistic one and you'll have a fighting chance of making it.
This is low key great advice for musicians, too. I’m a songwriter with a band. But I also know how to run a board, roadie for guitar or just load, carry and stage gear. Guess which one of those roles gets the most reliable work!
Yeah my son who is now 28 decided early on to pursue a career in music even though I told him when he was a teenager to learn web design or something because I could get him work doing that. He is actually really good at mixing, using the software, and setting up equipment and should be able to get a job as a sound engineer pretty easily but for whatever reason he has not pursued that either.
"Dream job" fields almost always wind up having horrible pay and brutal working hours because employers know it's a dream job and take advantage.
A lot of the exploitation in these fields has to do with "but you're passionate, so you won't mind, right ?! you're not in it for the money, right ?!". It's been relatively well discussed in game development that passion is a huge factor in crunch culture, but it's true of other industries too.
Big in zookeeping. We have real issues fighting for livable wages, job security and safe working environments because it's a passion-based industry (and therefore there is a loooong line of people who'll take your role happily if you rock the boat too much).
"Can you make the text more...I dunno, make it pop?!"
Healthcare and teaching professions. It's supposed to be this noble endeavor, but most of the time, it's just poor working conditions
I’m a physician assistant who is now a high school teacher. I think you’re right about both but I will say when I was working in outpatient neuro it was a dream but then the company culture changed, blah blah not the point.
I currently teach health science at the high school level and two things I tell my kids are: 1. Don’t romanticize it “it’s not like grey’s anatomy” (they all think they’re going to be like Meredith gray) BUT 2. I do think there’s a place for everyone in medicine, like you really have to know yourself and what kind of setting is right for you, (fast-paced vs more laid back, clinic vs hospital, people-oriented vs more isolated) Of course sometimes there are things you can’t control like shitty bosses, etc.
As for teaching, yeah this shit is for the birds. I stay because I have formed rewarding rapport with my kids but the job is ass for next to no pay and shitty “benefits.”
How did you get into teaching from being a PA and how do you like it? Do you still practice medicine? I'm a PA looking into alternative jobs, just curious what made you switch.
Haha yeah it’s a very long story but since y’all asked:
I did end up going into interventional pain management working long hours inpatient and outpatient. I ended up working myself into the ground, unmasked what I assume was a latent autoimmune condition and if that wasn’t enough got pregnant and had a miscarriage. It took the miscarriage to recognize I was burning the candle at both ends for a boss who didn’t give a fuck about me or my health.
I ended up getting pregnant again not long after I quit and then decided to take time off to be a stay at home mom. That drove me bananas by the way. So I decided to work a job that I had always dreamed of doing (though I never thought I’d end up at the secondary level, figured it’d be at a community college or university level) and went into teaching. For now teaching works for me because it satisfied my curiosity of “what if” I’d followed my first dream of being a teacher and the summers and holidays off are great for having a toddler. And the reason I stay year after year, even after I’ve sworn I wouldn’t is because the kids are fucking awesome and as much as all of the bureaucratic red tape sucks - I truly love guiding kids in a way I never got at their age. 😮💨… Hope that explains the very weird trajectory my life has taken.
Yeah that is not a career trajectory you hear about very often. I had to re-read the first sentence a couple times to confirm that it was PA -> teacher and not teacher -> PA.
Owning/operating a food truck.
Almost every article about this path completely overstates the income. That movie “Chef” is all lies. A food truck is NOT a restaurant on wheels.
To run a food truck and break anywhere close to even (and good luck making a profit), you have to streamline and limit your menu, with food costs at the lowest possible and menu prices as high as the market will stand. It has to be fast food - very fast.
And you have to sell an incredible amount in each outing to pay for staff, insurance, inspection and licensing fees, huge event fees, fuel, supplies, and so many more hidden costs.
If you don’t start your business with a massive start-up purse, YOU will be the primary overtime employee for every single element of the business. Your body will be broken and your dreams will evaporate in a stinky cloud of disillusionment.
If you start a food truck business, may god have mercy on your soul.
Also, I’m selling my food truck. Hit me up if you think none of the above applies to you. LOL
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Yeah. The logistics are nightmarish. And yes, almost every state requires you to have a licensed commissary kitchen as a home base to store and prep food.
Seattle is like this. And then you must be within 500 ft of a bathroom. Essentially all food trucks are just in gas station parking lots. It’s very odd
The ending KILLED ME 🤣 Im a restaurant owner, i can feel your pain
I'm in the process of starting a small food business with a cottage license with the end goal to have a brick and mortar store. I've been doing g cost breakdowns the last week or so and.....holy fuck.
The worst part about it is I grew up in food service (Dad was a chef and Mom was a CPA that handled a lot of restaurants) and I've been a chef for 20+ years, so I know exactly what I'm getting into. Somehow I'm still getting sticker shock lol
My wife and I are both very solid cooks, way better than any of the people we know but nowhere near professional. We both also have very good jobs with great benefits and insurance.
Everyone always tells us we should open a restaurant or food truck, and we're both like "fuck no, idiot".
We also live in a culinary wasteland part of the country, so even if we absolutely crushed it, the ceiling is only so high.
I feel your pain.
Food prices have absolutely soared. I can’t understand how restaurants are staying open.
Added pressure is the increased costs of everything else. Energy, staff, and materials are all insanely expensive.
Meanwhile consumers (myself included) are not ready to pay $25 for a turkey club. So how can you even manage to make money?
I’d love to be like a partner of a restaurant but I just don’t see how it makes any sense.
You know the struggle is too real. Wishing you success!
Isn't also a thing about food trucks is that you have to pay an insane amount to stand anywhere, especially at festivals?
Yup! It’s unsustainable for a small, independent operator.
I like the idea of food trucks but dang it’s a pain to buy food from them.
On tv you see someone walk up and order and the item is almost immediately placed in their hand. Like a hotdog vendor.
But in reality you have to stand there waiting and unless it’s set up where they have tables it’s awkward standing there.
True. Try cooking in one!
I do like them for small parties. My cousin hired one for her daughter’s bridal shower. It was hotdogs but there were lots of choices
And another friend hired one for her boyfriend’s 50th bday.
But my daughter went to graduation party and she said the line was super long so she didn’t bother eating.
Just want to add, one of my friends from high school survived a food truck explosion while working in one.
I think I'll stay away lol
But besides all that, it's cool, right?
Not gonna lie, there are days that feel like triumph, there’s pride, and there’s camaraderie.
And then there’s the rest of the brutal reality of it - does not balance out whatsoever.
Being a scientist in academia. Most people are miserable with low self esteem and an unthinkably bad work/life balance. It's like being a model where you're never thin or pretty enough, but instead you're never smart or successful enough.
I left though! I'm free!
My wife is a biochemist at a university. She loves her students but is totally burned out, working way over her paid hours year after year. Like most scientists, her research work is in the tiny details of various processes, nothing that will ever be earth-shattering or even remotely interesting to other people. She has a PhD and makes just over minimum wage - less if you count her real hours. Glamorous it ain't.
Working in a high-end, Michelin-star restaurant kitchen.
The glamour is all on the plate and in the dining room. Behind the scenes, it’s 16-hour shifts, being constantly screamed at, and a non-stop pressure cooker environment that burns people out in months.
Agree. My ex wife worked in mitchelin star kitchens until it made her too ill to work. Brutal line of work and rubbish being married to some one doing those hours for nothing.
Does anyone really think working in a Michelin starred restaurant is any different than any other restaurant?
Many restaurantiers don't even want to be Michelin starred anymore because of the need to maintain the unrelenting requirements.
I think that's just being a chef in general.
A friend of mine has worked as one for a number of restaurants at this point and as he's explained to me, it's always the same no matter where he goes. Long irregular working hours, being in a hot steamy windowless kitchen for most of those hours, constantly being yelled at, shaky employment contracts , etc.
He went in with great passion for culinary arts but nowadays he finds that passion quickly wavering with each passing year.
Dubai.
I know some folks who used to travel here regularly for work, and they really disliked it for this reason. They would always over tip the taxi drivers and give them all of the toiletries from their hotel room, plus anything else they could spare. The conditions for the working class are obscene.
*for the slave class
Its glamorous if you have no concience.
Or taste
Habibi, don't look behind the shiny malls into the labor camp ghetto's.
The conditions which the workers are living in are horrendous. At least more people are becoming more aware. It's just unfortunate that it gets glossed over in favor of latest marketing gimmicks like the Dubai chocolate.
And the backstory on that is WILD
I want to hear the backstory
What's so fucked up is this has been going for over 30 gawddamn years, it's just now the wealth discrepancy and consolidated power means it can be flaunted.
The more you learn about each incident, the more you realize how bad it's gotten.
Don't go to places that don't value Human Life.
Basically a bunch of rich guys from Dubai were shitting on SWers they hired, and this is all search engine optimization to make it where you can’t find it when you Google “Dubai chocolate”
I learned recently it's called copraphilia.
That sounds like Disney and Frozen.
I think you’re confusing “Dubai chocolate” with “Dubai port-a-potty”
I had a friend escape his indentured servetude (aka his slavery) from there and you're just not able to explain how much your comment rings true. Servicing the most obscenely wealthy and then basically being locked away until his next shift....the stories he told were equally horrifying and typical, except that he got out.
Not to mention their funding of the RSF, which is currently committing genocide in Sudan
One of my coworkers worked there for a couple years and hes got major ptsd from it. Im glad he made it out.
What kind of work was he doing there?
Millwright.
My fiancé went there not too long ago for business and he hated it. Said it was “an instagram city”
Their propaganda is scarily effective even though it‘s such blatant bullshit.
Anybody with curiosity and 10 minutes on a search engine could find out how they‘re using slavery for nearly everything.
But they still get sooo many western tourists.
A lot of people don't really care what others are experiencing so they can have a good time.
And others have a case of willful blindness in terms of they'd rather not know.
But I guess many of us are guilty of this to some degree in that we like inexpensive clothing and other goods which often comes from third world countries where conditions are not great.
Why is the chocolate seemingly so ubiquitous in grocery stores now?
A media blitz and a conscious social media campaign to try to get it going.
I read it’s a deliberate campaign to change the SEO so when you google Dubai you get candy and not horrific human rights abuses.
It’s EVERYWHERE all of a sudden. I thought it had to do with the scarcity of real chocolate but if it’s SEO to cover human rights abuses, it’s even worse than I imagined.
I refuse to buy anything that has Dubai on it.
Definitely DON'T google "Dubai porta potty"
Dubai looks glamorous if you’re visiting. Living there is a very different experience..
It doesn’t even look glamorous to me.
Shiny for sure.
But it’s all just malls and shops. Pools few people swim in, beaches nobody uses.
It’s honestly eerie to me. Just a huge glittery husk of a city that ostensibly should have character but doesn’t. A metropolis with no history.
Just a bleached white smile with dead eyes.
Damn. That last line is poetry.
It looks so tacky
It's like Vegas very artificial. I've been twice wouldn't recommend it. I didn't feel comfortable knowing the workers are making $2\hr while the Emeratis drive around in million dollar cars with do nothing jobs
I knew a guy in high school who lived there for a few years because of his dad’s job. He didn’t have kind things to say about it
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Avon/Mary Kay 😰 might as well be a mob racket
MLM "businesses" in general qualify here
Business travel.
It’s cool at first, but it gets old super quick. Plus the points/rewards schemes have lost so much value that you really need to be doing international travel in business class to see any significant benefit.
This. Seen one Hampton Inn, seen them all.
International travel for business sounds great until you realize you have no time to adjust to the jet lag. Either land and go straight to a meeting or land, stagger into your hotel, wake up early next morning and straight into a meeting. Your body clock doesn't care if you flew first class.
The body clock one is ugly. I've messed it up so much that I only poop at around midnight. Like, wtf? My body went on strike and just reverted to some timezone eight hours away from where I am now.
One time my dad had to go to Puerto Rico for work. When he came home he gave my mum the brochure for his hotel and she said "oh it was right on the beach" and my dad said "it was?"
100% this. I travel for work all the time. People think it's glamorous, free holidays. In reality, you're away from home stuck in airports, hotels and offices. Maybe it's fine in your 20s but you get over it fast
I am in my late 20s and travel a lot for work. My boyfriend is used to my “post team dinner mental breakdown call” from the hotel. I HATE business travel.
Friend of mine travels extensively for his work and last time he booked a hotel he was told he had to pay a fee in order to use his points. I was baffled.
Professional bodybuilding.
Drug abuse, debt, injuries, sex work side hustles (gay4pay,) corruption in the judging, fatal health conditions from said drug abuse.
All that is definitely still there. I remember after a national win, getting an email offering me a trip to a very nice tropical resort to do pictures and was informed that there could be some more expected of me. I passed on that offer. I didn't need the money nor was I interested in doing gay shit for some rich guy.
20 buck is 20 bucks ...
Even for the guys that make it to the very top. Ronnie Coleman can’t even walk without assistance any more
While injuries are common in Pro Bodybuilding, Ronnie's injuries and disabilities happened because:
He worked out way too hard way too fast. Other bodybuilders would workout for 2-3 hours a day with relatively light weights, Ronnie would workout with crazy heavy weights in 45 mins because of his job
Ignoring his injuries. He would ignore injuries and keep on working out crazy hard, thus making his injuries worse. The worst example of this is when he popped a disc in his spine, ignored it, and kept working out for weeks afterwards. And to make it even worse, when the pain was too much, he went to a chiropractor instead of seeing an actual doctor
All the other bodybuilders that came up with Ronnie are doing fine now injury wise
I have a buddy whose dad was big into it when he was younger and, yeah, the drug abuse stuff is all true.
In order to get to the higher levels you need to be on the gas unless you have the genetics of a Greek god.
You need the gear anyways, because the folks blessed with godly genetics are on it as well. You simply cannot be competitive natty.
Owning a small restaurant.
I cook pretty well. Well enough that someone invariably asks me "why don't you open a restaurant?"
I've had a restaurant. Between the long work hours, cranky staff, customer complaints and super volatile revenue, you won't catch me dead as restaurant owner again.
Leave me be, Margareth. I just want to stay home and make some stir-fry for my friends and I.
DO NOT OPEN A RESTAURANT JUST BECAUSE YOU COOK WELL.
people will talk about how good the money can be working in the trades and the freedom running your own business provides.
Money is okay, but not worth being 50 years old and having the back and knees of a 90 year old.
You will NOT enjoy your retirement
Also the time and effort needed to get the "good" money. The trades involve a lot of slowly moving up the ranks, impressing the right people, busting your ass, and taking shit from a lot of people, in addition to sacrificing your body. A lot of people can't do it, or won't do it. I always think it's weird when going into the trades is suggested to anyone and everyone who doesn't have a job or struggles academically. It's not an easy Plan B.
Being a lawyer. That seems to be the go to glamor career on TV. I’m not one myself but I’ve seen enough to know it’s a lot more about filling out dull paperwork, doing research and arguing minutia than it is making stirring courtroom speeches.
I have to shout out “Don’t Be a Lawyer” from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I’ve sent it to every lawyer friend I have and they all say it’s sadly too accurate
it'd be great to be on the Supreme Court!
but you'll never be on the Supreme Court.
there's truly no chance of that happening...
edit: legitimately such a great song, outside of being funny. too. RIP Adam Schlesinger.
No money, even less money
No money, plus it’s a bummer
The job is inherently crappy That's why you've never met a lawyer who's happy It's a guaranteed soul destroyer Don't be a lawyer!
Law school debt, daily regret Is that what you dreamed of as a kid? Or did you hope one day That you'd find a way to spend four years Working on a pharmaceutical company's Merger with another pharmaceutical company?
My sister says she wishes she would’ve listened to that song
I’m a solo general practitioner. One day I got up to defend a deposition, took my lunch to negotiate with a prosecutor on a low level felony and schedule a time to visit a different client in jail, got home and finished drafting a will.
I worked about 21 hours that day and I was exhausted.
In the world of Suits, I should’ve also blackmailed opposing counsel, successfully defended a DUI and attended a charity function in my rented Aston Martin
I laser focused on that career, and it turned out to be a nightmare. The pay is NOT good unless you are in the top 10% of your class and sell out to Big Law. But then you are working 24/7. Otherwise, it is filling out forms, paperwork (that honestly most lay-people could do), waiting in court to put something on the record (with surly court workers), and dealing with assholes. Rarely do you actually get to argue anything in court; it is mostly pre-determined and you just go in to put it on the record. Trials are even rarer.
If you end up in a small or mid-sized firm or you work for yourself, you will also have to worry about collecting the money from your clients. That is a whole other business in and of itself.
Sex on the beach.
Sand in the butthole
It's coarse and rough and it gets in the butthole.
Being a “ street pharmacist “ , it’s not as fun as the rappers make it seem
What about Macking?
Yes, making and eating Mac and cheese is very enjoyable indeed
That book Freakonomics broke down that crack dealers average less than minimum wage. A lot of hours just standing around, waiting
Gambling.
Graphic design. It was viewed as a prestigious career when I was in college for it (1999-2002) full of polished, hip creative people. We did field trips to firms that presented themselves as having super cool, laid back outside-the-box operations. Foosball table in the break room! A napping room where you can catch 10 minutes when you’re tired! Fully staffed coffee bar right in the office! A “play room” with games and puzzles and clay for when you need a break from the monotony of life! An office dog who comes in on Wednesdays and Fridays! Working from home whenever you feel like it! Setting your own schedule! Who wouldn’t want that, right?
The truth is the design industry is full of assholes and bullies. It’s downright abusive,Ike sociopathic levels of workplace abuse. Merciless directors who don’t care if you’re extremely sick or a family member has died, it’s the end of the fucking world if a client’s deadline is an hour late. Redoing work that looked absolutely fine to begin with over and over. The “napping room” turns out to be a necessity as you’re required to pull all-nighters on some projects. Having a project you spent over 40 hours on physically ripped to pieces by the director because a fold mark was a pica off. Catty bitches who single out and ostracize other women coworkers who show any sign of individuality away from being carbon copy blonde Lululemon wearing hot yoga Lexus drivers. Anyway I decided to freelance very early on and it was the best possible decision. No senior designer’s paycheque was worth trying to survive in a firm.
I have a certificate in graphic design and a long history of visual art experience, I've ended up doing a lot of graphic design work for the office jobs I've had, but never a straight graphic design job. And I always felt like I was missing out, not having that actual degree, until I worked in an office with an open floor plan and a design team, I was adjacent to them and we worked on a lot of project together. Omfg that cured me of any lingering regret I had for not seriously pursuing that career goal. Just brutal hours, low pay, constant stress, grueling work. The kind of job that turns something you love into drudgery. I think it's even worse now because there is so much competition. I think what a lot of people don't get about any kind of art production work - including video editing, etc, is that it's so time intensive, and that you can't go any faster than the program allows. I think a lot of people who so office work would be totally humbled by the sheer amount of actual "work" being done by these professionals, and the amount of patience and dedication it takes.
Car modifying/car culture stuff. Always depicted with hot babes around but the only people you'll be impressing for the most part are middle aged men lmao.
Me + all the women I know find obnoxiously loud cars to be a turn off. I don’t mind a guy who is a bit nerdy about his car an makes a few tasteful mods (in fact I find men with hobbies to be attractive) but it gets to a point where you’re doing too much real fast.
Fame.
As someone who grew up as an entertainment “industry kid” this… all the way. Lots of these folks get massive mental health and anxiety issues, lots of suicide etc. it’s pretty bad for most famous people unless they have good support from people that aren’t trying to milk anything from them.
And being perceived in general. Even with a tiny audience you have to be so careful about what you say.
I can post a dumb thought I had one afternoon and now 20k people have seen it, most agree but some are mad at me for having a different opinion than them, some are hurling random insults. It's just not as much fun as most people would assume.
But I like that movie
Canal boating or living in a van, these nomad substitutes instead of having an affordable home. You're living in a steel bucket floating above a septic tank full of your own shit. Bugs everywhere and it makes you smell. It's just lousy life.
Drinking.
Drinking in Dubai.
Drinking in Dubai in a creative industry.
Drinking in Dubai in a creative industry while owning/operating a food truck
Drunk driving your own creative food truck in Dubai
As a Scientologist
Drinking in Dubai in a creative industry while owning/operating a food truck in the labour camp ghettos behind the malls
Drinking in Dubai in a creative industry while owning/operating a food truck in the labour camp ghettos behind the malls and doing cocaine
Workplaces in general!! Job ads where the company describes it's 'amazing' perks, get you all excited about your new job. But then it turns out to be shit.
I can't tell you how many times I've been told that being a librarian is their "dream job." You would be shocked at the number of people who think it's just sitting around quietly while sipping coffee and reading books. Honestly, I've worked in libraries for a long time now - both public and academic - and the amount of workplace drama and horrible people I have encountered in them has far exceeded any other job I've worked.
I do love a lot of things about my job, but it always makes me laugh when I hear people talk about how calm it must be.
Yep. I used to think I wanted to work in a library. Turns out I actually want my own library (especially a la Beauty and the Beast!). That’s very different.
Same industry and yes. Libraries are also touted as the best place to work for people with disabilities. Like what. I did a library professional development retreat and we played library never have I ever and it was wild. I won / lost with an escaped federal inmate making it to my library and was caught at the computers trying to message someone to pick him up.
Libraries have also been at the forefront of the opiate crisis because we are the last public space anyone can use without an expectation of payment.
We aren’t trained or paid to be everything we often end up doing
All work sucks. If it didn't people would do it for free. I'm a musician, I love phorography, and I love TV. But I've worked in all those industries and they all suck. Work is obligation. Whatever it is you love doing, you don't love being made to do it when you really don't feel like it.
Screens in cars that control everything. They’re basically just a way to cut costs during production and are more difficult and less safe to use than buttons.
The new Bugatti Tourbillon for example is $4.3 million, but has analog gauges made by a Swiss watchmaker and no center screen.
They also make repairing your car yourself more complicated on purpose. It's getting harder and harder to do your repairs yourself, let alone customize your vehicle. I mean you still can but that takes a lot more than it used to.
Modeling. Modeling Schools
Years ago - smoking
Cruise ships
Working on them, definitely. As a passenger, it ain't that bad if it's just you and your spouse. Any more than 2 people in a room is nightmare.
Also, choose your cruise lines wisely
I can’t believe this is not on here, Beauty Pageants
Business travel. My job requires a lot of air travel. My friends think it's really cool to fly around the country all the time. But you are treated like cattle and don't get me started on airport bathrooms. It's brutal.
Hustle culture looks shiny online but burns you out quietly stealing health time and joy while calling it success somehow
Hustle culture. All the “rise and grind, sleep when you’re dead” stuff looks glamorous when you’re 20, then you realize it’s just burnout, shitty boundaries, and your whole personality revolving around work while the people who really benefit are the ones cashing your overtime.
Cocaine
I love cocaine, and I hate people who think it's classy or high status. Those are the people who act like massive arseholes after a couple of bumps. Coke doesn't make them act like arseholes, it just gives them the confidence to be themselves.
People don’t seem to understand it’s not going to magically create some fantastic night out, it’s just going to fuel some extra drinking at a dive bar with your friends, and then continue to fuel drunken video games after the bars close or get boring.
It's not the 80s any more, nothing high status about it when its one of the most common drugs used.
AI
The music industry..
Vegas
I feel the city is trying to sell that rich glamor vibe but it just feels sad.
Wholeheartedly agree. It’s really just an unbearably hot sandpit that swallows up natural resources and takes advantage of people. I was also blown away by how many homeless people are there. The whole place is depressing.
Childbirth and motherhood. People forget that women die during labour and the life of the babies are often prioritised over that of the women if there are any complications. Pregnancy itself comes with a host of problems and biological changes some of which don’t disappear even after the child is over, not to talk of the mental and psychological ones that society disregards or waters down as nothing to worry about / failings on the mother’s part(postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, etc) Worse still, a lot of parents go decide to have children just because they see it as the next step in life and don’t take into account the fact that they’re raising an entire person who has to be taught to be a functioning member of the society and not just a kid learning how to ride a bike. Although I will admit that in the past few years parents and women have become more transparent about their struggles online.
I look at my mum and while I’m in awe of her strength and perseverance, I don’t ever want to be a mother myself. Mothers are always second if not last. Last to eat, last to sleep, last for everything. And I’m shocked (but not all that surprised) to hear that the baby’s life is prioritised in labour. Just like abortion: the woman’s life is always deemed inferior to the unborn foetus. Society may pretend otherwise, but mothers are so poorly regarded. They give over their bodies, fluids, organs, time and sanity to their children (and other children) and the entire economy and functionality of society depends on their sacrifices, and they get little if anything in return. Yes, they have their children, and they’re told they should be grateful and fulfilled just by being mothers to kids. It’s exploitation wrapped up in a cheap Mother’s Day ribbon.
Wearing high heels
Pretty much everything that tells you it’s glamourous. If it was actually glamorous it wouldn’t have to tell you.
Being a lawyer.
It's sold as some kind of crime fighting detective job, when it really entails spending the entire day at a computer redlining documents for a corporation.
Hollywood. when you see famous actors and directors on late night shows they always talk about how it’s a family and everything so great. it sounds kind of like summer camp for adults. And of course, that is very rarely the case
The Military
Only if you talk to a recruiter. You ask any servicemember and they'll tell you how glamorous it really is.
Recruiters and the parents of military folks and/or older military folks. My parents were in and apparently forgot about how shit it was.
That I didn’t at least get more of a “here’s how it’s gonna go, kid” from my mother kinda pissed me off (I was homeschooled and pretty sheltered). Either she somehow didn’t experience anything terrible, when there were even fewer protections at the time, or she completely nope’d out mentally and decided I didn’t need a warning.
Stayed with my parents for a time after getting out and she was all “omgosh, you should totally talk to Neighbour’s teenage daughter! She’s considering joining too 🤩🇺🇸🎆🥳!” So I did talk to her, quietly off to the side, with an unflinching gaze about being sexually assaulted and having to work with the asshole who did it because the military’s claims of legal and work protection are bullshit. That you either out yourself publicly as being a victim in a very small community of gossipy, cruel af, emotionally underdeveloped children or you likely get pushed to another command/base/role which can severely fuck up your advancement in multiple ways. That claims of “but anonymous reporting!” are also bullshit because of course people can connect the dots when there’s 30 to 100 people in your command and especially if it happens between coworkers (say, 3 to 20 people). Supposedly the daughter decided not to join and I considered that my “pay it forward” karmic good deed of that year.
Good on you for talking to her honestly about it. A lot of people get caught up in the patriotism and forget that it's very awful for most people, especially women.
Night clubs
I have listened to EDM since I was in the single digit ages, and couldn't wait to be old enough to go to clubs. I thought they were all like something you'd find in Miami or Ibiza, just at a smaller scale; every single club I have been to, even the high-end ones, has fallen short of this standard. Most places are very dumpy and look "slapped together", even under minimal lighting.
It wasn't until I went to a festival that I experienced what I thought clubs would be like when I was a kid. Even seeing club scenes today in the media make me wonder if I just haven't been to the right ones, and maybe I'm missing out.
I also worried about being too ugly or fat to be let in when I finally got old enough, only to find out clubs don't really care as long as you pay your money; the Studio 54 days were dead and gone long before I was born.
Multilevel marketing schemes
I’ve watched a lot of mlm content and man it’s crazy from the outside how people don’t realize what a trap it is.
Every point of contact between you and the company is designed to separate you from your money, and the entire premise is completely unsustainable.
And for the one in 10,000 that end up making decent money, the vast majority would have made a lot more money just having a normal job. In fact, most mlm workers end up with a net loss month over month.
The propaganda is so perfected, though, they can rope people in like crazy.
Dude yes I agree with every point you made. Watching my sister try to shill mlm crap and acting like she's an influencer out of nowhere is terrifying. Idk how smart people get lured in by this clearly disproven garbage. Drives me insane. Just get another job or pick up more shifts, no mlm will ever be profitable enough to justify starting it in the first place.
First thing I thought of. All the glossy photos and cruise trips and bonuses while you ~work from home~. I went to a "jewelry party" and the poor girl almost cried because none of us wanted to buy her overpriced goods (we weren't mean, just not interested). I felt so bad for her but what a scam.
Babies/motherhood
Oof. That hits hard. I never thought it would be 'glamorous' but it well and truly is not! Side thought- the amount of social media involving children in the content of influencer mums is horrific.
Yo right - fuck those weird influencer moms - that stuff drives me nuts especially because pregnant and or planning parents just have no idea what the realities are and get completely blind sided, and parents just want to do their best for their children and can get caught up in all of it.
The worst specifically are the MAHA moms that stay at home with 4 liftle Jaydens/caydens/ etc - their entire fake life is just bullshit and they are nothing but deceptive freak grifters and frauds that upset normal parents when real life is totally different.
And who knows what gets edited out?! Like not even the kids' behaviour, but the mum who uses her own child/ren to inflate their sense of self by having a 'perfect' life. How are those kids being treated when they're not behaving perfectly and mama needs to post something? And they are too young and can't consent to whatever is being shared of their LIVES to complete strangers, on the internet that they have no means to control!
There are so many videos on YouTube of these same people getting arrested, and the horrible conditions that their kids are in. I watched a few, but it upsets me so it’s hard to watch
My mom straight up said she had us out of peer pressure, and that she totally regretted it and doesn't care about my sister and I. So I basically had to step into the mother roll, and she's basically my autistic older sister, too immature and selfish to ever be a real mom. Fucked us up and is still fucking us up but it is what it is.
Should be higher on the list.
I'm amazed anyone thinks it's remotely nice. In my experience, people go on and on about how difficult and exhausting having a new baby is!
In my experience it’s not the new parents glamourising it - it’s the potential grandparents, and other older folks, that glamourise it to the next generation. Like a social pressure designed to get the next generation to procreate.
sex work, drugs, gambling, anything high risk financial, ballet, eating disorders
Owing and running your own business
Scientology
Political parties. They convince you that together we will change the world with truth and solidarity. Then you realize the party couldn't care less about truth and only values you for your blind loyalty.
Military service. I joined up with dreams of Gi Joe and Rambo. In reality…. Suck sandwich. Cold, exhausted and sleep deprived a majority of the time. All that high speed shit looks super cool on tv. Real life, not so much. Thanks.
Working backstage at concerts. It's long hours, heavy work, and extremely boring during the show itself (unless you're into that band, then you can always go catch the show if you're not working show call). Been doing it 11 years: even when the talent walks by you on the way to / from the stage, that wears off pretty quick because, well, they're just human beings walking past you, and we're all currently at work (including them). It's like watching a coworker walk past at that point.
Just for one concert, a crew has to come in overnight and convert the arena from ice hockey config to a concert config by laying down floor boards and removing the plexiglass, then you gotta offload the (usually MANY) trucks, then riggers (my normal job) come in and climb up into the roof and hang the rigging points for all the gear, then you gotta build the stage itself, assemble the line arrays and lighting and video trusses, run a metric fuckton of giant cables to everything, set up any set pieces or risers on the stage, set up the backline and mic it all, test EVERYTHING, go and fix the fuck ups.. All in the morning / afternoon of show day. If you're "lucky," you get picked to work show call which is either backline (moving instruments during a changeover) or spot / camera operator. Then you get to do everything in reverse: disassemble everything, riggers go up and lower the rigging points from the roof, pack all that shit up, get it in the trucks so they can go to the next stop on the tour, and the conversion crew reinstalls plexiglass and lifts the floor boards. All of that for a 3 hour show, and in a regular sized venue. Giant acts like Taylor Swift had around 45 semis and took a week to set up.
The pay's good, though!
Acting.
Sure, some make it big.
But the act of acting is often very unglamorous, even if the person gets an Oscar or Emmy out of it.
Probably the most unglamorous is horror films. You're not being filmed in a dark room.
It's daylight and all the lights and cameras you'd expect.
Wonder why children are not psychologically terrorized for life when acting in a horror flick?
From a human perspective, the only thing horrific is trying to not forget your lines and hoping everything you do looks natural.
Then it goes to post editing, where the real magic happens. They can make noon on a sunny day look like midnight if needed, and that room in the basement shot with harsh, bright lights, gets turned into a dark, barely lit room with an evil spirit, and two terrified children.
Bottle service in a club
Diamonds.
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Farming/trad life. If you're not loaded enough to have an entire staff to do the work for you, it's impossibly hard work for basically no money. Society broadly abandoned it for a reason
The idea is to unpeg from society… which a lot of people don’t understand that it means doing all the hard work yourself.
Yes fresh veggies are great in the summer, but eating the same batch of bottled beans all winter long with half starved chicken isn’t great. Then there is the aspect of having to work all the time, especially if you’re sick. You still need to take care of your animals, haul wood, and cook/clean. If you don’t, you will accidentally injure or kill your livestock, freeze to death, and get sicker from starvation.
Life is fucking rough as it is, why intentionally choose to go back in time a 150 years?
Timeshares 100%
The St. Augustine Distillery: it's a low wage paying shill factory for sad, overpriced mediocre liquor, some of it 4x more than what it is actually worth based on what the employees pay with their discount. It's a literal tourist trap in a crumbling building sitting on top of an actual arsenic dump that was only opened after paying extensive bribes to the EPA for the "cleanup".
They should just call it Florida Man Distillery