To ask what's the least realistic depiction of your job in a film, tv show or book?

[ZoinksRun]

I'm always watching things and thinking 'I bet that job isn't like that.' People in my job on tv are always dim, well dressed (immaculate hair, nails, shoes) and never look stressed which is very unrealistic! They do all seem to have 'ie' or 'y' ending names which to be honest is pretty accurate

Suits.

Reality is not fun or glam!

Actually I think the closest I got was where the The Joker in the Joker tries to get his medical/ social care records. There's a medical records guy that can't give it to him, and the joker snatched the files. That guy is the only medical record admin I've ever seen in a film. Plenty in mental health hospitals/ secure units though.

Any medical drama, they never show the dark humour. Don’t get me started on CPR.

Being a postie is nothing like Postman Pat. Honestly. Our office doesn't even have a helicopter.

Never seen my job on the TV, in a film or a book.... It doesn't really surprise me as when I tell people what I do, a common response is "that's a JOB??"
It is dear reader, it very much is.

I am a front line social worker in children's services. In my LA we work from referral and hold the case and it only transfers if children go into long term care. I have never seen a realistic portrayal of the job. In soaps it is some joyless cow who comes out with a clipboard and within 15 minutes proclaims children are going into care. In other dramas we are some old hippy (yes you Sarah Lancashire) and maverick who brings their dog to work, just does what they want with no management chain or legal process.

I used to be an emergency nurse then a junior sister on a critical cardiac ward. Whilst hospital programmes are laughable, at least the profession is represented. I always ask children who are old enough what they think a social worker does (and their parents). Honestly no one has a clue. We are either snatching babies from misunderstood parents or being grossly negligent and leaving children in neglectful abusive homes without any interventions or scrutiny from several layers of management who actually make the decisions on how we proceed in complex cases (because it costs a lot and makes figures look bad).

Honestly, there are more middle managers than social workers in my LA because practically everything with a cost implication goes through a panel requiring at least half a day of extra paper work.

@Wrotten

Rachel Green fell into her job far too easily, is all I'm going to say.

How hard can it be to get a job as a waitress in a coffee shop?

@ZoinksRun

I'm always watching things and thinking 'I bet that job isn't like that.' People in my job on tv are always dim, well dressed (immaculate hair, nails, shoes) and never look stressed which is very unrealistic! They do all seem to have 'ie' or 'y' ending names which to be honest is pretty accurate

I found The Thick of It pretty accurate when I was in government comms!

I work in a bookshop. A customer shit on the shop floor today. Piles of it hidden by trollies. I don't recall seeing any of the young, attractive, bespectacled booksellers of the silver screen having to deal with that!

Cross LoD with Hot fuzz and it's somewhere in the middle with a shit load of acronyms that we don't know what they mean half the time.

We're all blonde barbies wearing the skimpiest bathing suit with clipboard and whistle. In reality, we look like drowned rats and despair of our iPads not working with wet fingers.

The original diet Coke ad - I used to moan to my colleagues as an apprentice that I'd been duped!

I've not seen my current job depicted but as a former bank clerk I can say
There isn't usually piles of gold bullion in a massive underground vault.
There's not usually tables piled high with bank notes ( the aim is to keep a minimum amount of cash needed to operate).
There's not usually a wall of safe deposit boxes. Most people are storing share certificates, deeds and wills in envelopes.

Believe it or not.... that kind of thing happens more often than you’d think. Especially in large institutions. Continuing to operate through the last 18 months (healthcare programmes all continued - and a lot of it in person, on site, complete with clinical placement) mean that there are few surprises anymore. Certainly very little that would make interesting tv. 🤣
I do love my job, though. It’s never dull, despite that.

Merryoldgoat

Nobody would depict my job for entertainment purposes.

I can't think of one job that couldn't be included in a storyline, in books or movies...

And yet... there is my job. Never in books/stories/movies.

I'm a physicist. No, not like the Big Bang Theory. Actually my exact profession was once mentioned on Casualty and once on Bosch and the whole community was so excited - even though it was completely inaccurate in so many ways

I'm a barrister and I came on to say Judge John Deed but @Terhou had already mentioned it 10 posts in!

@VienneseWhirligig

Don't know about inaccurate, but Yes Minister and Twenty Twelve were very accurate!!

Yes Minister has to be the least dated old programme still being shown!

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

DH is Army. They are always depicted running around fields with rifles or in trucks etc. Always dirty and with cam cream.

Reality... he rarely leaves the office. If it does, its to go to meetings in other offices.

During the Falklands spot of bother in the early 80s I sympathised with the wife of an Officer who lived next door. Rubbish, he's been getting paid for twenty years and it's the first time he'll have fired a weapon for real!

The only "recent" tv programme I've seen about my job is Probably "Frankie" - a series about community nurses and that was probably 10 years ago.

I remember all the team being excited that finally someone might know what a community nurse does rather than casualty, holby city or 24 hrs in a&e!

@DappledThings

There us a film called Admission in which the entire database for the university's admissions process is just one Excel spreadsheet with names and offer or reject on it

When everybody knows Admissions are run by somebody who has inherited multiple Access databases, hasn't a scooby what to do if something goes wrong with the 1987 server (as the original architect of the system must be about 100 by now) and the last time they saw Access in use was around 1994 - so the best case scenario when there are Velociraptors in the server room and there's been a power cut is to knock something up quickly on Excel and use multiple printouts with highlighter pens.

@madamehooch and booksellers in films always seem to make enough money to actually live on. I had to quit when I had children because with childcare, bookselling would have been an expensive hobby rather than a job.

@madamehooch

I work in a bookshop. A customer shit on the shop floor today. Piles of it hidden by trollies. I don't recall seeing any of the young, attractive, bespectacled booksellers of the silver screen having to deal with that!

My job I suppose gets seen a little on screen but always small parts and very rarely talk 😂 were as in reality we don’t stop talking and are a valid member of the team

My job gets depicted by big burly blokes with tattoos all dressed in black giving someone a kicking