Jobs you thought would be fabulous but actually weren't?

[GardenDreams]

I was a full time fine artist for 30 years (traditional painting, mixed media and pattern design) worked with book publishing, freelance, galleries, online print sales, various large companies and a few partnerships with celebs. Not as exciting as it sounds though, lol.

Throughout this period, many people looked at me with awe after asking what I did, mostly in surprise that I could earn enough to live on (it came close, at times). I do get the impression that many people think that this is a very thrilling and freeing way to live, but the reality was quite stressful and scary, at least financially, at times. It was a good long slog, with some tricky customers and another full time job dealing with social media. And the work never, ever stopped - there was no clocking off or guilt free holidays. Aside from the online glamour of how it looks, it eventually becomes less about self expression and more like a production line. At times I was completely, visually exhausted.

There are tons of newly proclaimed artists of a certain age on insta, and now more than ever before are offering art courses (after only 6 months in to being self taught), so it's very much a competitive kind of 'grind' culture which has multiplied in the past 6 years.. It is 'sold' as an alternative, lucrative side hustle, but is actually far from the oh so relaxing vibe these insta accounts make out in their posts.

I am still creating but have moved over into a new field that I love, and only now can I see how utterly draining and hard it was when I look back on it. But I am sure so many people still think the idea is quite romantic and liberating.

Anyone else with a similar story? I am cure there are tons of careers that sound wonderful to me, that might be really soul destroying or at least stressful in reality. My fantasy job would have been an archivist, but I took such a different path at ui that I dare say that boat sailed a long time ago!

Heavens above, retired midwife here literally driven to a nervous breakdown after 4 years of slogging at studying with a family to bring up to get my dream job. Awful shift patterns, short staffed (looking after at least 10 women and at least the same ammount of babies), no breaks, endless paperwork, no management support, some really dreadful members of the public ( not just the visitors), dealing with maternal and fetal loss, I could go on but u get the idea. The relief when I retired!

My first ever job: a waitress working in a pub that served food. Started in the November prior to turning 16 (January birthday) and had quit by the time February arrived!

This was back in the late 90’s before minimum wage. I worked a 6 hour shift on a Sunday (busiest day of the week for meals) and used to come away with just over £10 per week.

The chefs were all pervy, sexist arseholes, who I caught, on more than one occasion, making comments about my body and one even directly propositioned me with sexual innuendos. I was a 15 year old child!

Managers who had the licence (a married couple) were lazy bastards, either sitting upstairs in their living quarters even when we were swamped and could have used the extra hands or sitting in the bar area with the regulars getting pissed as farts.

The main reason it was an awful job was I make a truly terrible waitress. I’m accident prone and there were so many incidents of dropping plates etc.

I remember one time in particular with a large party out for a work Christmas dinner. A lady dressed in an emerald green, long silk dress had ordered her meal with a jacket potato as her side. Hers was the last meal I was serving to the table and as I was putting her plate down in front of her, I somehow caught the lip of the plate on the edge of the table and that potato that was covered in oozing, melted butter flew off the plate and skidded its greasy way all across the lap of her dress and down one leg, leaving a lovely, oily stain for her to remember her night out by!

Never again, but it has left me with a lifelong appreciation for all service staff.

I worked for a while as a stud groom. The mares and foals were lovely, the staying awake all night and having to creep round the yard in the pitch dark every 15 minutes in case a mare had gone into labour, less so. Especially if everybody else was off to a show the next day and leaving you on your own in a yardful of boxes containing mares and foals that needed mucking out. Ye Gods, they make a mess in there. And mares can get very possessive and unpredictable when they have a newborn to protect, and you are invading their safe space. There's no way I'd muck out the stallion on my own. He was genuinely dangerous.

Ooh you've got me very intrigued.... 🤔

Teacher?

I started a path to be a midwife. I was going to a year as a midwifery assistant to get a feel for it and understand it better. I loved the actual job. However witnessing way too many midwives begging doctors for interventions and not getting them. The severe bitching of working with nearly all female staff I gave it up after seeing how many risks were taken and how many babies put in special care that needn’t have been.
ironically I had another baby who was then left brain damaged by delays and negligence. Now all these reports come out about this kind of thing and honestly I am not shocked all but at least I tried. I also realised I would never ever have wanted to get that close to and put my hand up some of the filthy stinking women that came in! Least I found out before committing to uni!!

Make up artist and hair stylist fashion industry which I loved but long hours, difficult clients, struggle getting paid. Spent all my time doing friends make up before a light out and no time for me!

Owned a cafe for a bit, also long antisocial hours. Great regulars, and difficult customers too. Thought both jobs would be amazing and fun.

thanks for this thread op it’s really interesting

I trained as a counsellor, degree in counselling and psychotherapy, post grad qualifications, years of studying (much of it I didn’t find that interesting though loved Freud) then hours of unpaid work until accredited.

Clients were all interesting it’s never what they initially bring that is that interesting work. But I found the sitting around for hours really got to me. I wish I had done walking therapy sessions. But saying that I found the work just wasn’t fulfilling for me. I found myself at times getting bored and would take this to supervision to explore. I felt incredibly guilty about this. Sometimes it was the client who was stuck and their boredom became my boredom but ultimately I wasn’t finding the work challenging enough the role isn’t for me

I now manage a forensic rehabilitation mh unit and I absolutely love it. Everyday is different, it’s certainly challenging at times , demanding, at times very stressful and very varied. I’m utterly exhausted by the end of the week but I am never bored (well that’s a bit of a lie the meetings can be tedious and the endless admin). I use my skills I have learnt but feel I should have trained as a mh nurse and I regret this. But love my job so all has worked out well

I taught and coached aquatic sports for 30yrs. I bloody loved it.
The ‘Oh you’re just a swimming teacher!’ mob were a pain in the bum and some parents could be a pain, but overall it was a fab career. I quit full time after a shoulder accident but still teach part time.

After going so far with the qualifications I decided to interview for the tutor course and train to be a tutor - training new swimming teachers.

I hated it.
I walked in behind one candidate (who failed) saying that she would pass anyway because the club paid for the course. That club were furious with ME for the three failures from the club. All these candidates needed serious chasing to get any work out of them. The rest of the candidates passed. The club had expected automatic passes for their money too.
I only did it for a couple of years. I went to try another tutors course in aquatic fitness, thinking I was far too close to teaching swimming.
I cannot begin to post how badly that went, except that you weren’t supposed to run two courses concurrently (tutor and teacher here) and either no one noticed, no one cared or both.
I had dreams of making other teachers feel as enthusiastic about teaching as I do.
It all came down to money and I remember the odd one or two that will be fantastic teachers without much help from me, they were so interested in the subject they devoured information. I just gave them the piece of paper they need to get work.

I'm a TikTok moderator which I thought would be great, I was desperate to get the job.

It's not. I spend hour upon hour watching people cook breakfast, do their makeup, shopping, cleaning etc. They over share so much I feel like I know them more than my own family. I've grown to hate complete strangers.

Florist. Punishing hours, often freezing cold, hands in and out of water all the time getting dry and cracked, thorns, and the occasional bridezilla!

Interesting. Someone asked me to be a mod on a Facebook group they set up. That wasnt paid but I declined because it looks awful to me- you have to monitor it constantly and I dont want to spend hours and hours policing people on FB. I want to be able to relax when I get home from work!

Early noughties, a colleague left a public sector average paying dept for a job working to a wealthy family (think one of the big name long-standing wealthy British families) paying twice as much. Ooooooh, we all said. How glam. Fast forward 6 months, she’d left after: having a phone thrown at her; being expected to pick up used tampons from the bathroom floor; and take calls at all times of day and night, all from the latest wife, including from an aeroplane when she called my ex-colleague in the middle of the night to tell her ‘I’m cold’. The grass most certainly was not greener.

@LilMagpie that sounds like a tough job. I know from the lovely staff, especially the Receptionists, at my own Vet practice how the staff receive abuse from some clients. It’s disgusting. Be aware that many of us really appreciate your work and the kindness and care you show to our animals. 💐

@pinkfluffymonkey I'm pretty sure I know which florist you mean. My teenage saturday job was with a florist who really knew her stuff and I used to wonder how a certain florist-to-the-stars got away with what she did.

I was going to say the same! I've been one for over 30 years and it can be soul destroying at times!

@chillikate NOOOOOO!! YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW! 😁

i can deal with all these other career choices being bad but I think that one’s broken something inside me!

Great idea for a post!
Unsurprisingly I haven’t seen any antique dealers on here! Probably because it’s a dying trade and has been for years.
It was an interesting world to be involved in generally but having a shop meant dealing with the general public. Sadly the rude ones, the thieves, the people who thought that antique centres were free museums to get out of the rain in and the deranged far outnumbered the paying customers and the lovely interesting browsers.
As for television companies wanting to film well known daytime programmes for free, shooing customers out of the shop for hours while they filmed and used our electricity. We fell for the promise of TV exposure for the business but the 3 minutes of airtime with no name check didn’t generate much. It was fun though refusing to engage with the yearly requests to film with us which went on for years.

I’m shocked at seeing here how many professions involving years of study and sacrifice make for such misery.

I was horrified to hear about orchestral contracts (or lack thereof). My sister was very lucky to end up in one of the few that do have "proper" employment contracts. But it was all rewritten take-it-or-leave-it after covid and apparently quite a few of their regular musicians have gone part-time because the schedule is so brutal otherwise.

If someone starts the "I have a job I wouldn't give up if I won the lottery thread", I'll join it though. Having discounted music as a career - I guess I could have been a jobbing orchestral violinist, but it would probably have spoilt it for me and anyway I'm more of a morning person than an evening person! - I've actually ended up as a violin teacher. Turns out that it's my happy place. Would be tougher if I needed to achieve a full time salary doing it though - I don't think I'm suited to doing anything full time! Would also be great if I could justify employing someone to do my admin!

In contrast, I love it. The shit sandwiches are the type I'd rather eat than what I read about in other sectors in this thread! Only exception being the public on the farm; dogs harassing livestock number 1 offence but leaving gates open, littering, shit everywhere human and dog 🤦‍♀️ cant bear it.

This is a really interesting thread, thanks for starting it OP.

it has made me think about the reality of my dull office job. I am a spreadsheet wrangler and I’m really good at it, which means that all of the people I work with that either hate spreadsheets (or are a bit scared of them) are very appreciative of me 😃
I work 9-5 ish (hours are very flexible) but then I don’t have to give a shit about it outside office hours. Pay is good and steady. Six weeks Guilt free annual leave.

there’s a reason why some people ‘long for boredom’

I work for a Local Authority @Runki and your post has shocked me. Completely unacceptable behaviour that I have never experienced in 20 years on the receiving end of the training you describe. Sounds like a toxic culture at that particular LA?

...and that's not even factoring in all the poo'

that last bit made me laugh so much

My husband was a council bus driver. Most of the public were wonderful he came home with great stories. However Management treated drivers very badly, the union rep was best mates with the manager so nothing changed. EG he got written up for stopping to help someone who'd fallen face downi into a puddle (drunk) then the local paper got hold of the story, and suddenly the manager said how proud they were of him. Two faced a**hole.

I could write a book.

I wouldn't bother - I hear the pay's terrible.😂