How is your career portrayed in the media? The biggest misconceptions

[StillCoughingandLaughing]

Does the TV version of your career match up to the reality? Or do you cringe every time you hear a reference?

I work in marketing and, on TV (particularly soaps and dramas) it seems to be shorthand for ‘very well paid with very little real work’. I can assure you this is most definitely not the case for most of us! In fact I find marketing tends to be a dumping ground for extra work most of the time - not to mention blame. When a product sells well, it’s a good product; when it doesn’t, it was poorly marketed.

Another one that springs to mind is duty solicitor. On TV they’re bumbling, disorganised and only mildly more articulate than your average village idiot. The character in trouble will be begging their partner/friend to get them ‘a proper solicitor’. One of the smartest people I know is a duty/legal aid solicitor who’s brilliant at what she does!

What really annoys you about how your job is portrayed?

I'm an academic in English Lit/History.

In TV fiction (Morse! Lewis!), I spend my entire day wearing an academic gown and asking questions like 'but how does Keats' genius teach us the eternal beauty of truth'. In current 'factual media': I am a massive racist who literally never steps foot outside the manicured lawns of my university, and who hates the idea of black people/women/poor people getting anywhere near my classes. In both I am clearly well-to-do and get paid to write learned books about dead white men, while sipping sherry and calling my students snowflakes.

About 51% of academics are on temp contracts, most of us aren't paid especially well and quite a few earn minimum wage; we mostly like our students (duh! cos why do it otherwise) and we mostly would prefer it we could get on with teaching a more diverse curriculum rather than having to politely listen to some utter berk pretending statues are history.

I also wonder what real GPs think of TV doctors who, despite the protests of the officious receptionist, always manage to find five minutes for the patient who’s run in in a panic. It’s not even ‘my last appointment before lunch is 12, but if it’s a real emergency I’ll squeeze you in before I go’ - it’s always right that minute.

I'm an author. Apparently we're all drunks, who sit at home all day banging out chapter after chapter, smoking too much and being depressed. Oh, and we are always very well-off too.

I earn a pittance, despite 16 traditionally published books and a few awards, and have to work in the Co Op to make ends meet. I don't smoke, rarely drink and don't always write very day. Apart from my tendency to mutter to myself you would never even know what I did.

Teacher.

One look at the MN boards tells you everything you need to know about how we are portrayed

Civil Servant - that we're all sat around drinking tea waiting for our gold plated pensions!
In reality we are run ragged after years of job cuts, trying to do our very best, haven't had more than a 1.5% pay rise since 2008 and blamed for every crap decision the Govt of the day has made!

I work in a university library but I'm not a librarian which is automatically assumed. When we've had work experience kids in and asked them why they chose to come to a library they say cos they love reading books. We don't sit around reading all day. Anyway traditionally people who work in libraries are seen as geeky glasses wearers. We're not like that and there's also a lot more to working in a library than just books.

Crinkle77 - I hear you!
I'm also a university librarian and still can't believe how many people assume that a love of books is a benefit!
I work in a science library and hate every book in there!
They've never heard of metadata, digital repositories, open access, teaching correct citation, plagiarism and copyright to students.

Ha ha yeah @Puddleglum I wouldn't want to read most of the books in our library.

I used to work for a retailer known for selling books, but who also sold many other things. I can’t tell you the number of interviewees who thought they’d spent all day reading and reviewing books, when actually they were more likely to be selling kitchen knives or pet food.

This is a great thread!
I'm a receptionist (not medical) and a brit and I'm very helpful and approachable but I love the US portrays us as having a seriously bad attitude and extreme gatekeepers with unlimited amounts of power - I wish.

I’m an actuary, lots of people don’t know what that actually is, I’m also in corporate rather than insurance products for the general public. I used to work for a health insurance company, I used to tell people I predict when you’re going to die and use that to set a cost .

I'm a florist -we aren't portrayed on TV much as such but if talking to customers is anything to go by, people think we have a charmed life and spend all day gambolling around in a lavender field with a trug over one arm. There's a lot of "oh I'd LOVE to be a florist!"

A lot of days for me start with getting up at 3.30 to be at the market at 4.30 am. Buy the flowers, drive to the shop. Spend 3 hours conditioning them before the shop even opens. On feet all day with customers and deliveries. Shut shop at 7 pm. Often have evening consultations with Brides so often don't get done till 9. Home for 10 pm. Set alarm for 3.30. Repeat.

There's A LOT of foul stinking buckets that need to be scrubbed out on the regular as well.

I do love my job, but it really isn't for the faint hearted. It's probably 50% mucky boring jobs, 30% admin and 20% anything to do with actually touching flowers.

@LadyOfTheCanyon my uni boyfriend's Mum owned a flower shop and I would never have realised what long hours and hard physical work floristry was if I hadn't known them so well. Anyone who thinks it's a cushy job is really mistaken!

Police Officer...
*Superintendents/Chief Inspector/Inspectors don't investigate crimes! The Detective Inspector may well lead briefings on major incidents, but there is no way they are going out to speak to witness and doing enquiries.
*We can't get forensic evidence from all the things they do on CSI programs. No one's CCTV is ever good enough to zoom-in to a reflective surface, flip it and get a car index! Or it is physically possible to extract DNA from something, but the specialist testing costs tens of thousands of pounds, so isn't going to be carried out for something minor!
*Paperwork...no one ever realises quite how much they is until they've joined!

For mine, in my experience in the UK there are two strongly prevailing views:

1. we're money-grabbing bastards who are in cahoots with the insurance companies to screw pet owners out of every last penny. Plus we may as well not have spent 5+ years slogging our guts out studying and training because we don't know what we're talking about anyway as we didn't effect a miracle cure first time around and needed to perform more than one set of diagnostic tests. Or 2) it's like an episode of All Creatures Great and Small or Yorkshire Vet and we drive around the countryside all day getting up to all sorts of jolly japes with sheep and Shetland ponies and then we return to the practice to find that one of our loveably eccentric clients has brought in an iguana or a kestrel or their pet raccoon or something.

In Canada where I now live and work, vets get treated like highly trained and highly skilled professionals. We get referred to as 'Doctor X' as a matter of course. Tbh I'm not too bothered about that, but it is indicative of the difference in views.

Nurse. Angel or demon.

I'm a receptionist too, in offices. Someone on another thread actually said she didn't see the point of my job because she didn't see what it is that receptionists actually do. I couldn't work out if she was being serious or if she was just being nasty for the sake of it.

I deal with visitors all day long, sign for parcels, take bookings for meeting rooms and set them up. I do a load of diary juggling for people who always want a meeting room at the last minute because they didn't book in advance. I deal with a load of incoming emails and phone enquiries. Open, sort and distribute the post. Act as a gatekeeper for people who never return calls. Take messages for you while you're in meetings, or pretending to be in meetings because you're avoiding that person's calls. Occasionally have to deal with dodgy people coming in, had to call the police once or twice. I don't sit down all day either. I often have to rush over to another part of the building or get something from a cupboard on another floor. And someone was nasty enough to say they didn't see what I actually do.

I'm an epidemiologist. We don't all work on COVID

And having to be polite to everyone no matter how rude and condescending they are to me.

I was a carer (currently sick)
We seem to be either viewed as underpaid overworked heroes.
Or unskilled, anyone can do it.

I work in financial services. In the media everyone is either

1. bank manager/cashier who says NO when you really need a mortgage/the ATM swallowed your card
2. loaded, evil, smooth, betting on the stock market and being murderes by their colleague/mistress/secretary.

In reality most work in desk jobs on decent but not significant salaries shuffling from powerpoint to excel and back again.

Another academic here. Apparently we all get three months off every summer. I must have missed that memo.

Airline pilot. We are overpaid and underworked for someone who just presses a button and lets the computer do it all. Unless there is a catastrophe and then it’s all our fault. Pilot error. We are all sex-crazed shaggers who are joining the mile high club with hosties the second we are off the ground and you couldn’t trust us as far as you could spit so only marry us if you want a sleazy spouse you never see.

In reality I am a highly trained professional who has trained hard to get here, constantly working on keeping my knowledge of airspace, aircraft systems, and all manner of stuff up to date. I manually fly every landing I do (not the autopilot unless it is foggy, which is rare.) I’ve been married for nearly 25 years to the same person and in that time the only person I’ve shagged at work is him, when I take him on a trip with me, but not that often because I often have our kids with us too. Juggling work and home life is exhausting enough without trying to have an affair!

Therapist. We are usually either well dodgy and exploiting the clients or making gnomic remarks whilst stroking our chins.... and we are all loaded and live in North London.

I used to be a secretary: dim and girlie or a prim old lady!