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!

I work in the fashion industry. I am now very good at excel spreadsheets, not as creative as people might think.

I worked for a small specialist bookshop chain. It was my dream job. Taken over by a bunch of asset-stripping morons. After six months of hell, all the staff resigned together and I went to work for a large bookshop chain. Absolutely dreadful. All the knowledge and insight I had previously gained counted for nothing and I left after three days. If they had put me in the department which was my subject and background I would still be there.

Another event manager here. I did workshops, seminars and small conferences for a business association for a while. Moved out of that into online business programmes (like accelerators/incubators) during covid, which I enjoyed more as fully from home and flexible. Went back into events briefly at the start of this year and lasted 3 months.

It wasn't as fun as I remembered and was just hard work, impractical hours with a toddler at home, and expensive due to my commute. People register for things and don't show up. The wastage was huge even with policies in place to try and minimise environmental impact. Small budgets so expected to deliver gourmet catering with a Pret sandwich budget. People questioning the value of the event. Struggling to find speakers who had interesting things to say and were available to participate. Trying to come up with ideas for new, interesting and useful events for the target audience. People expecting me to be a subject matter expert on whatever the event was about, when my expertise is actually in booking venues and ordering catering, not the next wave of digital finance.

Back wfh on my online programmes and much happier now.

Also “travelling with work”. Used to annoy me no end when MIL (who had done a few years as a secretary) would bang on about how “lucky” I was. To her travel was all about holidays. My time spent working on deals
in the Far East and in Eastern Europe was one of the toughest times I’ve ever had literally worked round the sodding clock in the company of stressed clients for 24 hours it was certainly not cocktail hour at the pool type travel that she envisaged!.

Event manager would actually be my nightmare job occasionally had to do that at my old job - hated it. I get stressed about my own parties let alone organising anything else.

😂

Really interesting thread - some really surprising ones to me like 3 architects!

sadly have to be the 3rd to say vet. For all the reasons listed by two previous posters but also, as a minor thing, because it was always the genuinely nice owners who had awful things happen to their pets which was a slightly odd major stress addition.

Tho nothing compared to the endless complaints about costs from people who were knackering their own animals through just being shit pet owners who apparently had zero interest in actually learning about even basic requirements. Honestly soul destroying if you actually care about animals

Cocktail waitress. I thought it would fun, a bit glam and good tips. Just ended up being treated like crap by the men making the cocktails and groped by (some) customers. Lasted 1 shift in one bar and about an hour in the second bar. The second bar I didn't even quit - I just walked out. Went back to food waitressing.

Those are the exact reasons I got out of teaching!
Now working a 'boring' admin job but love it as I switch off when I leave the building and best of all, no hours of planning and marking in the evening or weekend!

When people even try to talk about the 'time off'/bUt yoU Get so MaNy hOlidAys angle I like to say this sort of thing:

Imagine being a mechanic and you had to prepare for work the next day by fixing cars in your lounge for 3 hours a night or more the night before plus 6 hours of tinkering on a Sunday!! Unpaid!

There aren't many jobs where you have to work at home so much (obviously law, but even then at you don't have to teach hundreds of clients the next day who you try to coax into accepting your 'product'/performance, whilst being heckled by them or worse lol).

This, it's absolutely this.

I've had multiple suggestions over the years about taking my hobbies and turning them into an income. It very quickly takes something enjoyable you do on your own timeframe, into something completely unenjoyable.

Working in film production. It's either ridiculously busy or so quiet you may as well go to sleep. Loads of coke heads and arseholes all around. Horribly long hours. Loads of free food and booze, that was the positive. Everyone thinks your a jammy bastard but I'd rather just work in an office for a widget manufacturer?!

Another events person who generally is just waiting for it to finish so it can get packed away and we all go home. Also have a few excellent party stories, mostly the 'talent' are lovely but their hangers on are often twats. Working at big events also ruins attending big events. When you work at them you don't have to queue for a portaloo with 10000 other people, so why would you pay for the privilege of having to do that. I often even turn down freebie tickets nowadays.

I used to be publicist in the arts and entertainment industry. Worked with loads of famous people, did some really creative work, been on set with loads of TV shows, photoshoots, opening nights, the lot.

For about 95% of the time it was absolutely fucking awful.

This is a fascinating thread, thank you OP for starting it. My job is not typically thought of as glamorous or creative or aspirational (think tech and banking) and occasionally I wonder if I should have tried something more exciting. But I love my job and it’s extremely well paid, I am never bored, always learning and every day I work with very clever and decent people and I am always treated with respect.

Oh and I ended up in IT/Systems work which has been fantastic, well paid and very flexible. I do think people are drawn to jobs which they feel they can understand so things like IT/Insurance etc get overlooked when they are actually great careers, it was much easier in the 80s/90s to try a few things and see what suited you I think. My dd and her friends leaving uni seem to have much clearer ideas of what they think they want, but I do wonder how many will actually like what that turns out to be.

Assistant to a fashion stylist. My boss worked on shoots for all the big mags, ad campaigns, celebs.

Day to day it was basically an extremely high pressured admin job. I spent all my time sending emails, booking taxis, packing and unpacking packages/suitcases, picking things up and dropping things off. I was expected to be on call all hours and over weekends, though I only billed for certain full days as a freelancer. The hours I was doing I was barely scraping minimum wage. If you’re starting out and don’t have parents to bankroll you while you work for free, you’ve got no chance.

Shoot days were intense, gruelling, physically exhausting. Carrying enormous suitcases up flights of rickety stairs. Sitting on the floor all day to fix the garments. Working from 6am call time to midnight on set, while also planning the next shoots on my laptop, sometimes for several days in a row. Seeing it all come together was really satisfying and kind of addictive though. You also get addicted to the adrenaline - everything is last minute, things nearly don’t happen, you’re begging people to pull strings, so when it all comes off you feel like you actually did something (vapid and pointless though it objectively is). Also fun problem solving - doing themed shoots I had to call in loads of ridiculous props, I had a lot of trust and opportunity to bring ideas to the table.

Models are treated like absolute shit. They’re basically children, often don’t speak English and are treated as if they’re an inanimate object. If you’re not smiley and delightful after 12 hours of being half naked in the cold, everyone will say you’ve got a bad attitude and won’t book you again.

It’s a female dominated industry but the photographers were most often male and twats. Every famous photographer had 5 assistants who set everything up and often also took most of the shots, while the famous photographer chatted up teenage models, ate lunch and ordered drinks.

A-list celebrities were without exception lovely, shook hands with everyone and remembered names of the smallest underlings. C-listers were divas and a nightmare, ignored assistants and talked only through their managers.

By the end I had several assistants under me and I was more or less constantly on the verge of nervous breakdown, and still broke. I quit when I realised that I was actually really good at the job and the thought that I would progress in it and this would be my life forever filled me with utter dread. Still work in the creative industries though, so clearly I didn’t learn my lesson 😂

Yes! I've aways loved graphic design and I end up being the go-to person in work for that sort of stuff and everyone assumes I should be looking for a comms or design job because I'd be "great at it". Yes, maybe, but the pay is crap, you're creativity is limited to the whims of clients and everybody has an opinion on what you create. No thanks. I get the best of both worlds and I'm happy with that. I have a lot of friends in creative industries and I'm so glad I've seen what's behind the curtain. Most of them do love it but it's not the job a lot of people imagine it to be.

Working in a children's nursery. I adored the children, even the ones who wiped their yoghurt covered hands over my navy trousers, but they were messy creatures and at least 50% of my job was cleaning. And we weren't supposed to be seen cleaning by the parents either so we had to clean super fast. We had this really deep ball pool that the children were always getting stuck in so I used to have to sit on the edge and pull them out, usually about 10 seconds after they had jumped in. Bits of it I loved and I still remember the children with fondness, decades later but it was very messy and very exhausting. I was 19 at the time and very naive about the mess 15 1-2 year olds could create eating tinned peaches. Some of them had to be stripped down to their nappies before mealtimes and then given a bath afterwards.

I'm an academic librarian too. Currently closing down our library :(

Archaeologist. People want to know about the exciting finds you have made.

The fact that on a new dig you spend the first day or so turf cutting. Then days removing soil to get to the level, and then just more soil removal. Of the digs I have done, the most exciting find I made was wood (which is rare normally, but it was a wetland site, wood was very common).

Geo-phys archaeologist - days spent walking lines holding a heavy piece of kit. I see now they use quad bikes to do this, so just driving across fields.

People are excited when I tell them I worked with soil from Jorvik. Not so interested when I explain, the soil had been left in a plastic bag for over 10 years when I got to it. I had to put it in water, agitate with my hand (up to my elbow in this watery mix) and then boil for half an hour. In a room with no openable windows in the middle of summer, the smell was interesting. Then filter the top residue to investigate the insect remains. The delight of being told, that the remains demonstrated it was midden (rubbish pit) waste.

Opposite I had a job in PR that I thought might be good. It was AMAZING I had time of my life. I really kick myself for leaving that role after only a year (thought I wanted something grittier and more challenging; which I got and I now look back longingly knowing I’ll never have that sort of opportunity again)

While tech can be all the things you said (my partner has worked there for over a decade), it is extremely hard to get an entry level job right now. I have a MSc in the field, plus lots of other work experience and have heard diddly squat back from tech jobs - ditto other (even more qualified imo) people from my uni cohort.

Also, avoid FAANG like the plague!

That's an interesting one. I think a lot of careers have been glamourised beyond recognition but librarian has always been something different. I'd maybe say romanticised is a better word?

I always remember my Aunt was the first person in our family to go to college and university. She became a librarian and it was such a big deal where I came from where people barely scraped through school. She was a "braniac". Being a librarian was held in such high esteem. You could rebel against any authority but don't fuck with the librarian.

I still think it's a great job so it's interesting to hear the other side. I've always thought of it as one of my ideal jobs on my "if money wasn't an issue" list.

I’m in a different country, but took my subjects at uni (did a bachelor in History whilst working as a substitute) and then doing my pedagogical bit over two years whilst working. I managed just before a new rule requiring a Master came in to force. But don’t think I’ll do a master now. It is 15K extra a year, but bloody 4 yrs part time so perhaps when I’m in my 60’s.

That said; getting a foot in the door as a sub was great. Working with adults is what I thrive with, but I recommend testing it out a while before committing yourself. It does have its very specific set of challenges.

I thought I'd love academia. I hated it. I didn't fit in at all, wasn't as qualified as my colleagues, and although I'm pretty intellectual I wasn't as intellectual as them, and had interests I think they considered lowbrow. I felt like a fish out of water and changed jobs after a couple of years.

This thread is very interesting. Some of my "dream" careers that I didn't quite make it to are mentioned and has given me pause.

My auntie said to me recently "but do you really still want a career? Or do you just want a job you can go to, clock out of, and spend your free time with your family?" It was the first time I ever thought about it. I always saw myself having a "career". But recently, having a job that I don't take home with me, weekends and evenings free, seems more appealing. And this thread kind of supports that.