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?

Great thread! I'm a photographer - the media assumes I am male, shooting fashion or weddings, and very well paid. Also an arsehole.

I'm female, I shoot businesses, products and art portraits, never go near weddings. I do swear like a sailor but I'm not an arse

Siobhan Sharpe, Perfect Curve

Genius character as I hate to say it but there are many people (both male and female) as inept bullshitty as her in my industry (PR) but many people who aren't!

I’m a brand consultant, like Julia in Motherland and a whole bunch of mum bloggers looking for a job title on Instagram.

I do live very close to where the programme is set, and do stay in my pyjamas when working from home, but that’s where the similarities end.

It’s actually a very academic/cerebral profession - nearly all my colleagues are ex-Oxbridge and several have written well-known non-fiction books. You have to be highly numerate (because a significant part of the job is quantitative research and data analysis of various kinds) and highly literate (lots of reading and report/presentation writing). You also have to be very organised (Julia wouldn’t last five minutes) because there’s a very fast workflow.

I remember when Julia named her day rate and I laughed out loud. It’s actually quite lucrative work, although you have to hustle hard if you want to work for yourself rather than a creative agency or a private client. It might sound good working for ‘luxury brands’ but actually to us the market/industry in which a brand operates is irrelevant - and jobs for quotidian brands of, say, catfood, are the most reliable and lucrative in the long run.

HGV driver. Lean steely eyed folk, who drive imported Macks across continents. In reality, elderly fat blokes driving Volvos to supermarket depots. There are the first kind, but they're lean because they don't earn enough to eat, steely eyed from fatigue, and it's not a Mack but a 16 year old Renault.

Teacher.

Workshy, leftie whingebag who hates kids, couldn’t think of anything else to do after leaving university and enjoys spending their days unfairly punishing children in whole-class detentions.

I work in finance in The City. Apparently we're all stockbrokers earning millions, who vote Tory, go skiing, live in North London, get driven to work, shag everything, on coke, burnt out at 40.

Truth is most people are just doing boring office work, living in average houses, doing average hours, commute a long way in, eat Pret for lunch. But i guess Repo Settlements wouldn't make an exciting movie

Lawyer.

I'm not loaded.

I don't go to the police station, rarely go to court and never see a jury.

I haven't wrapped a brief in red (pink) tape in over a decade.

I also don't have a desk covered in papers, a fountain pen and shelves full of books. I work entirely paperless and electronically.

We don't just deal with crime, conveyancing and wills either.

And we very definitely don't dance to barry white in gender neutral toilets!

I’ve mostly worked as a local newspaper reporter. I love watching portrayals of ruthless journalists who have editors sending them out on stories for weeks on end and they never write anything up.

And the reporter is only ever working on one story at a time, not about 25 per day as in RL.

And they never take any notes.

Also any journalist portrayed is obsessed with getting a scoop and works 24 hour days and always wants to be first to answer the office phone so they get the great story. Ha ha. It’s not like that in RL.

“I’m not answering, got too much on.”
“I’m not.”
“Your turn.”
“I’m off out.”

Academic. What kills me is the offices academic have on TV/in films. Huge! With sofas, side tables and even open fires on occasion. Real life is a shared cupboard with no window and erratic heating.

I have never had an office with a sofa, but I did have a chaise longue, a variety of tables and some very fancy original Morris wallpaper, for one very nice year. However, it was an enormous fluke, and I very quickly filled it up with baby toys and spare muslins. The main upshot was DD, then aged 6 months, constantly had to be pulled away from the [unused] fire tongs and poker.

Legal secretary. We don't exist at all.

Shame, as IRL we're the ones who are most entertaining at the Christmas party.

Oh hang on, there might have been one in Keeping Faith?

Registered Childminder. Apparently I sit the kids in front of the TV all day while I drink coffee....
I bloody wish!

I was a holiday rep and unfortunately all that you ever read was true

I am a journalist; the perception of us in basically covered by the phrase “media scum”.

The vast majority of us are decent people doing worthwhile jobs - covering everything from world wars to your granny’s golden wedding, and doing it well.

I'm a woman physicist....we don't exist at all, unless we're Leslie Winkle from Big Bang Theory. But I don't work in academia!

Teacher.

Lazy whinging arsehole who hates kids and has been sunbathing for the last 3 months on full pay, doing no work, and is about to break up for the (far too long) 6 week summer holiday - again on full pay.

I (helped by my hugely influential Marxist union) am apparently in control of government policy and it is down to me that the schools closed and down to me that they are not IMMEDIATE re-opening without a 2m rule. Apparently I am also refusing to return in September.

In addition I am a racist twat who only teaches pro-Empire History and doesn't cover anything that people who once went to school and haven't read the National Curriculum think I should do.

Health Visitor. We weigh babies.

@Doingtheboxerbeat

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.

My job is very boring I'm an office clerk (admin).

I also look after reception and field all incoming calls. Your post reminded me I once had a very pushy sales call come through. He eventually lost his temper and said "Are you the gatekeeper?" I replied "Are you the keymaster?".He was not impressed

Lawyer in The City.

TV inaccurately shows lots of trials - civil cases almost never end up in trials with live witnesses.

OTOH, my clients are just as entertaining as pop culture would suggest. I regularly talk to larger than life characters in mad situations made for a film script.

If I ever get struck off, I'll apply to be plot writer for The Good Fight

One of two types:

Extremely high strung workaholic perfectionists who spend ages loving hand crafting perfect looking Instagram worthy plates of food. They have an enormous army of subordinates who all run around the kitchen frantically while obscenities are screamed at them and if they dare put a foot wrong they get a plate launched at their heads.

Sweaty, gross, disgusting slobs who cannot be arsed and just fry everything in mountains of grease. They spit, drop or otherwise defile food without a care in the world if someone dares to piss them off.

They are almost always men. Any extremely rare female versions are either hard nosed joyless bitches or emotional wrecks who are crap at their jobs.

Unfortunately the bits about very long hours and high levels of alcoholism are true!

Investment banker. I’m a greedy, dishonest wanker, who single handedly caused the financial crisis and deserves to be strung up by my nipples and flogged to death. I spend 12 hours a day swearing loudly into 2 phones whilst looking at over sized screens. Then spend my evenings drinking champagne and snorting coke in lap dancing clubs. I drive a red Ferrari.

I actually spend 12 hours a day playing with excel and formatting PowerPoint presentations, it’s absolutely crucial I use the compliance approved colours and font. If I change the font size on the disclaimer, I WILL get fired and never work in the City again. I drive and old X reg SLK which is now 12 months over due a service.

Apparently all I do is play with puppies and kittens all day.
I wish.

Civil engineer. Only have a role in the set up of some sort of bridge collapse disaster. A bit dim compared to real scientists (Howard) and rather too close to geologists (Bert). The only TV drama I've seen remotely like my job is Hell on Wheels.

Another Structural Engineer here.

I am apparently a crusty old man who over-designs everything.

My job is rarely in the media but I did see someone on a TV show doing something similar and she was portrayed as a patronising hippie with boundary issues.