Just a rant - people not making the effort to understand what I do

[TheOrigRights]

I used to have a very specific role in a scientific department. I'm not going to say what it is, because there was just one of me!
It had a bit of giggle factor, like someone working on..I don't know...bovine semen or something.
I haven't done this job for nearly 6 years. I am in broadly the same scientific field, but have taken quite a large step into publishing from research.
It's far easier to explain what I do and there are some things I work on which are very interesting (Covid, endangered species, medicine etc).

Yet people STILL ask "how are things in the semen world" [giggle].

It doesn't matter - they don't need to understand what I do, but I just feel dismissed and they're not really interested.

I used to think I didn't do a good job of explaining what I did, until I heard someone explaining nearly exactly the same thing on Desert Island Disks using the exact analogies I was using and breaking it down in the same way.

I think sometimes people fear they don't or can't understand and their minds close down.

To be clear, I'm not banging on about my job all the time, it's something that comes up now and again.

I worked for a high street bank in one of their very obscure high level technical departments. Most people refused to accept that i didn't work in a branch.
Knobs.

Think it depends what you do! I would definitely want details on bovine semen.
Anything office related I have no interest but even love hearing tales of my son's bar job. He works in a bar in which there is a lot of bottomless brunches and Prosecco. He found a drunk 70 year old woman kicking her knickers off as they were too uncomfortable!

Yeah, I get this! I was at my kids school for science week recently and all the little kids were so interested in my job. Probably more genuine interest in one hour than I've had from adults my whole working life

See, I think that’s really rude. If I met an author whose books I’d read, I’d tell them I enjoyed their book and commiserate with them how hard writing a whole novel must be.

I do wonder what goes on in people’s heads to think that a writer would appreciate a total stranger telling them how they’d do it better.

@Pringleface he asked you precisely so he could then call you boring and mock your job. Bet he does that kind of thing to lots if women. What a wanker.

It's not everyone, obviously, a huge number of readers want to say how much they've enjoyed a book or such-and-such a character! Those are the readers who make it all worthwhile. And criticism is part of the job, so that's ok too. It's the ones who start off with 'well, I would never have done that...' and then tell you how your characters should have behaved (because, obviously, the way they would do things is the only way possible) and then launch into telling you about the book they will write 'one day'. And then finish with 'and don't go stealing my idea!' Eyerolling time.

I work in a specialist area of marketing. When my grandma died, at her funeral I discovered (much to my amusement) that she'd told all her friends that I work in broadcasting - completely unrelated to what I do. People don't think too hard about these things!

The Desert Island Discs person may also be explaining it badly!

It’s like what I do is the spring board for people to unburden themselves of every medical condition that they, their family, friends and co workers suffer from.

I get “talked at” A LOT once I tell people what I do. I cringe when I’m asked. I know what is inevitably coming.

You asked if my friends ask what I do

occasionally they do, but even good friends often still think I work for a travel agent, as I used to do software and web testing for a travel agent

and DC people can relate to the travel bit 😁

But that was 9 years ago

i switched to a different job 9 years ago

but people still think I do “something with travel”

like I say, it does not me

nobody is interested in software and CRMs and stuff 😁

Don't take it personally OP, it's just people.

I work in a very distinct area of travel, focused on a few particular destinations. I have done for 15 years, and it's been about 6 since I moved away from the reservations department.

I regularly get messages from friends or acquaintances asking if I can help with their trip to Dubai or New York or South Africa or wherever. They hear as far as 'travel' and that's it; to them I work in a retail travel agent and always will.

I hear you.
Im a therapist and every person and their dog believes they can do it and would be better than me as everyone tells them their problems.
It’s made worse since CBT became so popular post Covid and I continually get asked if that’s what I do.

Not exactly the same but MIL winds me up by assuming her son is the main earner with the big important job, and I help make tea and do filing. We are actually both fairly senior in our workplace, I'm technically more senior than him and earn more, work longer hours and more responsibility. But MIL always asks how dp is paying for our renovations 🙄e.g 'ooh Dave must have got a good bonus this year for the new garage' feck off MIL.

Instead of explaining your job as you would to your manager in a performance review.. try explaining it as if you were a stand up comedian. Or to a 5 year old. Either of those approaches will give a high level brief description and possibly even be memorable for a good reason.

You're in control of your life's narrative, you don't have to keep the same persona in all contexts if you don't like the responses.

I am highly technically skilled in IT and regularly get cold calls from recruiters, but my job is "making people's computers work better" or sometimes "stopping people breaking their computers" 😄

That's one of the reasons I think I still really enjoy my job, it's the one area of my life where I can talk about what I do and people are forced to listen and maybe even give a shit 😂

@TiredandLate that would drive me mad! Have you told her you earn more?

@PandaOrLion friend who's a psychologist never tells people anymore, she just says she's a consultant and leaves it there

Every time I talk to my mother-
"Oh, have you changed jobs?"
It's been nearly 2 years.

I used to work in education but not as a school teacher. People (including my own brothers, to whom I had explained this many times), couldn’t get their heads round the facts that I didn’t work with children and I didn’t get school holidays off. I gave up explaining in the end. They obviously weren’t listening.

I'd count yourself very lucky, to be honest. Take it from a teacher. You only have to read mumsnet to see how painful it is to have everyone think they know exactly what your job is, how easy it is and how they could do it better.

A job that no-one had any perception of sounds blissful. My best friend of fifteen years has one of those. I've tried to show an interest, but like the software people on this thread, he just laughs and says it's really not explainable and I'd be bored anyway.

That's so weird, I know what all my friends do. It's kind of normal to talk a bit I'm about work stuff, even funny stuff that's happened?

I work in a supervisor role in a grand property for a preservation trust. I open up the house (takes 40 mins!), supervise house stewards, take guided tours, muck in with weddings and events (had a private hire for film making 3 days last week), deal with visitor queries/problems etc. I'm constantly on my radio and my step count is in the high teens most days. At a social event someone mentioned they'd visited my workplace and I overheard my husband explain that I work there and that "she opens the place up in the morning, does the cleaning". I do always have a cloth and disinfectant spray in my bag as we have touch pads around the place and I like to keep them clean but I'm not the janitor! I have also had a visitor say "Oh I thought you were the cleaner" when a house steward, unsure of the details, asked me to explain a particular period of the property's history to them.

Your issue isn’t that people aren’t interested in what you do NOW.
It’s the fact they are still stuck on the ‘bovine semen’ p, giggle giggle, as if they were 13yo.

If they were able to move on from that you might have a different response

My 3 adult dc all work in jobs that l don't fully understand what they actually do. I know their job titles and bits about two of them but my third is in some information systems stuff and l genuinely have no idea what actually happens. I am interested in how they get on with their workmates/ boss and if they are happy or stressed etc but as to what they actually do all day l have very little idea.
As a teacher everyone presumes they know what we do but unless you are in the actual job you have no idea of the amount of paperwork behind the scenes. It's horrendous. I don't feel insulted by that as why would people know as they are not doing the job.

@Vgt6y357

Thats rude and dismissive. Most of the people we meet or even ‘friends’ don’t need to understand the finer points ( or any points ) of our jobs.

your OH should be saying ‘ she runs xxxHall’ though.

I think most people are pretty vague about their friend's jobs, unless something really obvious like doctor, nurse etc. I have a vague idea that friends work in finance, IT, advertising and so on, but a lot of jobs just aren't that interesting as a topic of conversation.

No one has really heard of my job unless they work in the same industry. If someone asks where I work I generally just tell them the industry. If the person happens to work in the same industry then I tell them my exact role as they are likely to be familiar with it.

I don't know why you feel the need for everyone to know what you do? I don't know what my friends do - well my understanding is vague - for example Paediatric consultant - don't know their speciality, and they refuse to talk about their work and no one cares.