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!

For 15 years I was a Nanny to the insanely rich and famous. Travelled the world on private jets, super yachts, been to many of the most exclusive hotels/resorts/islands in the world, often hanging out with billionaires. On paper it all sounds very exciting, whenever people found out what I did for a living they would be amazed and ask numerous questions, always “wow you’re so lucky, that must be amazing”. In reality I worked 24/7, people often treated me like shit, I very rarely got time off to actually enjoy all the places I was in, I lived out of a suitcase and I never got to see my family and friends. I was young and made a lot of money though which made it worth it at the time.

Yep that’s what I was going to say.slightly alarming as I’m retraining to professionally do my hobby. When there’s outside pressures eg a boss or a client, I find it hard to cope with 😅 but that’s life really and while I’m incredibly glad I had 9 years as a SAHM, and loved it, I still spent the time going ‘what am I going to do with my life, I want a job’ etc so I can’t win with myself!

Research scientist.

It's a pressurised 'publish or perish' culture. Your work is mostly funded by grants, and if you don't publish something exciting from your last grant, you'll struggle to get your next grant. You can't plan your life more than four years ahead, because there might be no money in your current lab and you might have to move 200 miles to the only other lab that's hiring in the niche you're researching in. Taking a break, e.g. to have a baby, will make a gap in your publication record that can count against you. There's a big culture of overwork. The pay does not reflect the level of qualification/expertise.

The day-to-day work of a lot of biological/medical research is repetitive grind work that takes no brainpower...it's mostly moving very, very small volumes of liquid around very precisely. It's fiddly, tedious and you have to be meticulous not to mess it up. You're often handling things that could make you ill - horrible chemicals, live pathogens, human samples, etc. And then the troubleshooting if something doesn't work...did we have a bad batch of one of the reagents? Did someone leave the enzyme out of the freezer? Did I miss out one of the 300 steps? Was the equipment not set properly?

I enjoyed my PhD and published a couple of papers I'm proud of and are still cited, but I was young and had no other responsibilities, and I could see even then it was not a job for life. Once I got my Dr title I left research, and I'm very glad I did.

Agree with this, I get treated like shit on people's shoe working in Uni professional services than I ever did on a psychiatric ward. Currently working on returning to mental health.

Model, hated it.
Actress, LOVED IT. Have a lot of stories about the rich and famous. Hollywood is weirder than you imagine.
Ran my own non profit for eating disorder prevention. That was a passion project. Mainly loved it.

Beauty company Managing Director.
It's an industry full of toxic people and liars. Men also get the top jobs over women 9 times out of 10. My last three bosses have been from pharma, automotive and the prison service. None of them have worked in beauty but as accountants they get the top job. I'd love a £1 for each bell-end that tells me it's can't be hard selling lipstick. Most spend their tenure touching up the young girls (one told me it was his personal harem) or telling the young female owners/ founders they are going to make millions.

I had a two year stint in charity retail. It was even worse. So much behind the scenes theft and that was stealing from the dying. I can't even bring myself to donate to those shops because it will be snaffled by the top brass.
Just 17 more months to go, hoorah.

Being a self employed sort of health worker.
Had rich clients, was dirt poor myself. Oh, the awfulness when a full week’s worth of work was cancelled because clients all of a sudden were off on holidays or whatever.

Turned out I’m very bad at self promoting!

Now a teacher for adult ex convicts and ex drug users. It is brilliant. The people are great. We have a lot in common, and they are adults so my take on education works a lot better than when I tried teaching teenagers.

I’m a commercially successful illustrator (not to sound like a nob!). When I tell people what I do they say how interesting and exciting it must be. The reality is constant hard deadlines, working through the night to get jobs done, poor pay unless it’s a big advertising job (which are very few and far between). I do love what I do in some ways, but it’s not the ‘artists dream’ that people imagine.

A lot of the skill of the job is understanding and translating what the editor or art director wants. It’s not all just making pretty pictures.
At the end of the day it’s still a job, with the same pressures, time constraints and boring admin side that many others have. Although I do understand that I might be in a privileged position to now be able to moan about it.

Actually I think it would be a horrible "job". Having to constantly think of something exciting to post, constantly comparing yourself to others trying to achieve the same and outdoing them, selling your soul to the devil for freebies (don't get me started on mothers who plaster their kids all over the internet), the constant pressure to have a perfect life. I think it leads to a hell of a lot of MH issues and al lot of these people seem to have narc traits. Urgh couldn't think of much worse tbh.

I will add crew on TV/Film. I have a relative who is a hair/makeup artist and people think it's all wandering about putting powder on celebs noses and chatting to stars.

Reality is self employed in an industry in crisis at the moment is a dreadful place, and when the jobs do come in it can by 4am starts, accompanied by night and split shoots, and doing thousands and thousands of steps and on your feet all day.

I write books for children. I’ve had more than 25 published by mainstream publishers, and have won couple of awards.

The pay is shocking. I don’t get royalties and am generally offered a flat fee, which is a joke considering the research and effort involved. The book designers are usually paid more than the writers.

I also edit and proofread for many different publishers. People think the job sounds glamorous but the pay for what is highly skilled work is an insult.

I worked with horses years ago in various places it was basically slave labour. Worst one was a large riding school where I lived on site. Easily 70 plus hours a week, one and a half days off a week and paid peanuts. I also became the dressage groom to a rider there who is now quite well known. Wpuld work all day on the yard then up til late cleaning the tack, get up at 4am to plait the horse and get lorry ready, go to show, come back to yard and have to work the rest of my shift in the riding school. I got no extra money for this.

No annual leave quota, no sick pay, you had to suck it up and get on with it because you love horses. Things are better now I believe but it's not across the industry. I never wanted to work with horses as a career after that tho I do have them now as a hobby

Working in Film&TV production. The hours are insane (minimum 60 per week) and often you’ll be working through the night. Most people have no lives outside of it, their partners and friends all work in the industry. It can be very toxic especially if you don’t fit into that clique. Everyone is freelance so there’s no job security, no benefits, you can be let go with a weeks notice usually and when you finally get time off, you’re actually unemployed so very rarely want to spend money and enjoy the break. Dealing with lots of egos constantly, both cast & crew. New entrants often put up with terrible working conditions and abuse because without a wealth of experience, they’re relying on their network to recommend them for the next job. There’s often an attitude of “well I had to put up with it, so why shouldn’t they” from more senior crew towards juniors too.

Owning my own business. Dont get me wrong- its great to be able to run your own business and take time off when you want and employ people to manage it for you but my God, the stress is immense. You never stop thinking about it, it becomes like your baby and even when you are off you are never really "off" because ultimately its always your responsibility.

I used to dream of having my own business and not being employed by someone else who dictated my hours and wages to me but I didnt realise the freedom that comes with going home on a Friday and never thinking about it again until Monday.

I still enjoy it but along with the advantages of it, there are also disadvantages (like anything really I suppose).

I'm not a midwife but whilst in hospital after a CS, in my own little bubble I was overwhelmed with the amazing experience that midwives have day in day out, bringing life into the world.

Then I watched from my bed, a midwife supporting a young woman. The young woman dressed and undressed her baby repeatedly, like a doll as she displayed the outfits to others.
The young woman didn't remember to feed her baby. Her baby cried and cried.

A midwife helped her to bath her baby. The young woman, sadly, had no idea. A full bath of really hot water, no thought of checking the temperature. Midwife advised her in less water and to check how hot it is.
The young woman used foul language and stormed off at the perceived criticism.

I realised that in my little bubble, being a midwife is a fantastic role.

In reality, I could see how sad it must feel to see some babies go home.

Me too! I trained as a chartered accountant - surely nobody’s dream - having realised that any job directly related to my English degree would be badly paid and stressful. And accountancy has been a dream for me: self-employed, wfh for 25 years, not a single bad debt, lovely respectful clients (if anyone wasn’t lovely or didn’t pay promptly, I didn’t do any more work for them. Simples)

A couple of jobs, I knew they were going to be shit before I even started, and they were.
The rest, I had some hopes for. But they were all awful, some more than others. In the academic/uni sector I had 2 roles, had my work stolen (ie. published without credit in someone else's name) in both of them - in the second role the thief (my immediate boss) was later dismissed for (other) gross misconduct.

In the private sector (financial services), the American companies were the worst - they think they own you. Long hours, working late nights and weekends, relentless deadlines, "pruning the tree" where they routinely make the bottom 10% redundant every year (often on the same day they put up the Christmas tree in the lobby). Senior managers having tantrums and swearing at us.
The only one that was somewhat better was a French company where people behaved like normal human beings, said please and thank you, and washed their hands in the loos (unlike most places I've worked). Nobody threw tantrums. Nobody cut their toenails at their desk (unlike 2 other places I'd worked). The coffee was decent. Two-thirds of the workforce took the whole of August off, so the summer was chilled out.

oh my goodness, I loved your story;

I always thought I'd love working in Further Education.
I tried it. What a feckin nightmare. Poorly paid, truly shite management who couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag. No resources. I did it for 18 months and thanked myself that I had my original career to slot back in to!

Working from home, honestly I'm so lonely, it's a hybrid role so even if you go into the office it's so large that you don't know who's who.
I live alone so that's hard too. Theres also the micro managing and constant reviewing of your targets, now upped to every two hours and often asked why you're not hitting those targets, the only way it seems is to not care about the actual customers and process them as quickly as possible which seems at odds with the actual job!
Yes I'm looking for an out asap!

Broadcast journalist - 80% boredom, hanging around being a coiled spring (according to the duty editor..) waiting for something to happen, 20% intense stress, terrified you were going to miss something. Sexism and bullying were rife (this was the 90s) and unless you were one of the stars, the pay wasn’t great. You were at the mercy of the latest trend as to which faces/voices were desirable - when I joined one programme, virtually all the on-air voices were female, understated, Received Pronunciation as that’s what the editor at the time liked, but when I was on maternity leave the editor changed and all the on-air voices were male and/or regional accents as that’s what he liked to hear. There were times when I absolutely loved my job but once I had children I couldn’t make it work.

I think lots of jobs are like this. I used to be flown all over the world, worked with celebs etc at events. The hours were long and the pay poor but it sounded much more exciting than the day to day slog. It was a friend who works abroad who helped me look at it differently. I went to a party and I was literally the only one there who only spoke one language (most spoke 3 or 4) and I felt really inadequate and bummed about my crappy event life. He was like “from the outside what you do is exciting”.

I haven’t read the thread so this might have already been said - lecturing.

I went into it thinking it was going to be an opportunity to do research, work with the next generation of professionals, be part of the process of generating new knowledge etc. Not going to lie, I thought it would be like a cross between Good Will Hunting and when Inspector Morse used to visit people at Oxford Uni.

It’s 12-15 hour days, 20% of your time actually working with students, the rest of the time doing pointless admin tasks which change every year because someone’s made up some new regulations to make an administrator’s life easier somewhere. Never having the time to actually do research or prepare teaching because you’re doing pointless admin tasks. Dealing with academic egos and people who ignore the jobs that need doing in order to further their own reputations.

another very lovely post

I opened a boutique. I loved buying the stock but the rest of it was so stressful. We were open seven days a week until 8pm so I was always working. The income was dependent on the weather (rainy days people didn’t wander by and pop in, sunny days, everyone was in the park or outdoors, we only made good money on cloudy days). Shoplifters were threatening and scary. The girls who worked for me were hard to manage. I could never switch off. Definitely the fantasy and reality were miles apart.