It's impossible to know what something is like until you throw yourself into the thick of it. Even something as predictable as a job can be unknowable until you arrive. Years of college and on-the-job training go out the window the moment you're left without your supervisor or you encounter an unruly customer. Just listen to these stories below about how their dreams devolved into nightmares.
*The following article contains discussion of suicide/self-harm.
Reddit user, u/TonyWitDaBigCojones, wanted to hear how things weren't what you pictured when they asked:
When Emotions Mix With Business
happy marge simpson GIFGiphyI wanted/want to be an illustrator or graphic designer. I enjoy illustration but it's a lot more emotionally labor intensive than I thought it would be. Graphic design SUCKS
Punching Way, Way Down
When I was 16 the manager of our local GameStop liked me. I was personable and extremely knowledgeable on the subject. He offered me a job when I turned 17. On my birthday I had an interview and was hired. My first day I realized all of the upperclassman nerds who were bullied in school like myself had jobs at that GameStop. And they seemed to cope with the bullying at school by bullying younger employees.
My first week in I had a kid in the class above me throw all the Xbox game cases off the display on to the floor right after I spent a hour alphabetizing them. He grinned, called me a retard and told me to do it again. That was the first but not the last time I've cried at work.
Yes, Chef.
Being a chef/cook isn't all it's made out to be. No creativity freedom unless you open up your own little business where you have all the freedom to sell and make what you like. Plus serving tens or hundreds of people is fun to a certain point. It's tiring and physically and mentally draining; but every once in a while hearing a customer say your food tastes amazing is very uplifting and almost makes it worth all the hassle.
When It Looks Flashier Than It Really Is
Might be a bit too late, but Investment Banking
Loved finance from a really young age and got a finance major in college. Was lucky enough to join a bulge bracket for a Summer internship.
That's when I realized that it was nothing like what I had imagined. While I knew they had long hours, regularly working 100+hours a week is something else. More importantly, it was really just a bunch of b-tch-work that I found uninteresting. It became quite clear to me why everyone seems to want to leave banking for Private Equity (which isn't THAT much better IMO)
Oh...I calculated how much money I made hourly. It came to about $8.50. The compensation looks decent until you realize you're working 100 hours a week and getting paid for 37.5 of them. Luckily I also got a computer science major while in college and now I'm working in software engineering.
Billing As Opposed To Healing
Working in healthcare in the US: I thought I would get to make a real difference and help people, a dream come true!
The reality was my managers expected me to bill for more services than medically necessary, and squeeze extra "units" of billable time out of every patient, whether they needed or wanted it. I quit that sh-t after I started having chronic nightmares and insomnia
Less Trench Coats With Fedoras And More Paperwork
I got a job working for a private investigator. I was so excited about starting, assuming the whole job would be fascinating. Christ on a bike it was boring. It was 90% paperwork and not any kind of interesting detective work happened at all. The boss was a d-ck too.
Teaching Alongside The Terribles
dream job —> professor. turns out people in academia are extremely toxic.
When I was looking into getting my PhD (grandfather was a professor), every single professor I knew or knew my grandpa talked me out of it.
Yeah, Horses Stink
When I lost my job as a waitress when COVID hit, I saw a job posting to assist as a horse breeder. I eagerly applied. Horses are cool! And I'd ridden them on occasion growing up.
The job...is not cool. It is slimy and stinky and disgusting as f-ck.
I too have worked with horses briefly and oh it's too true. They are beautiful to look at but they are nasty, mean, dirty a-- motherf-ckers to take care of.
You're Not Training For The Right Job
homer simpson healthy food GIFGiphyI feel very fortunate to be as employable being a doctor, but it definitely isn't what anyone thinks it'll be.
When you're pre-med, or even in medical school, you aren't prepared appropriately for the job you're actually taking. I don't think most people really understand that.
I'm a primary care doc, but I won't gripe about that in specific...I'm just gonna say that, no matter who out there glibly says "you know what you signed up for"...no, most med students didn't. There's just no way to quite understand how much bureaucracatic BS and insurance BS there is inside the US until you actually have to dedicate the majority of your work to it.
SsutuanjoeNot What They Show The World, But What They're Hiding
I never actually got a job there but as a teenager I would always hear about how amazing the offices and benefits were at Google and dreamt of working there. It wasn't until I was my late 20s (depressingly enough) that I realized the reason their offices are so nice is because they want people to work absurd hours and never have to worry about like where they're going to eat or who's taking care of their kid.
My current employer does a lot of work with Google and we've visited their offices several times - no one is ever using those amenities. A lot of them just seem like they're there to show off to visitors. One of the buildings has a small arcade in it and the games are always powered off.
Still Getting Paid To Put Letters Together
When I was younger, I've always wanted to be a writer. Just like Jane Austen or something...
I write vacuum-cleaner reviews for a living.
When Customers Ruin The Thing You Love Most
I'm big into the Jeep life. I left the sh-t hours of a sound and life tech to work at a jeep shop. I learned a lot but customers are a--holes and it wore me out. Especially after COVID!
If I didn't have to talk to self [centered] customers all day it would have been a awesome job!
Never Let Anyone Make You Feel Bad For Needing A Break
I dreamed of teaching English in Japan, but the job was mostly grading (finding all the SPAG errors in 600 essays :/), I didn't get the student breaks off, and was constantly pressured to stay late and take sick days out of my VACATION (not sick leave).
I hated never having any free time and felt like my coworkers were criticizing me for being an inferior person for wanting to have a life outside of work. I actually wanted to kill myself because I thought I was a sh-tty person for wanting time off more than I wanted to help students and that the rest of my life would suck because of having to spend it all at work.
Asking For More Than They Bargained For
I dreamed of working on sustainable buildings, turns out it's about 50% getting yelled at by contractors because they don't want to do the things they signed a contract to do, and another 50% begging the contractors to give documentation proving they did the thing they're contracted to do, after you finally got them to do it. It's infuriating. Still doing it though.
Edit: to those telling me this is just what construction is, sustainability is an EXTRA step beyond those normal things contractors don't want to do. Asking them to do something they don't want to in normal construction is like asking them to jump through a hoop. Now ask them to do sustainability stuff, that's like asking them to jump through a flaming hoop half the size over a bed of nails.
Teaching Isn't For Everyone
I wanted to be a teacher. I student taught for three months, I got called a dumb mother f-cker on my first day. Later I was stabbed by a pin from a kid who was just going around stabbing kids with pins. I never got my certificate.
About 5 years later I started working at a day care and I love it.
A Well Remembered Lesson
homer simpson evidence GIFGiphyPaleontologist. Living the dream, right? Boss slowly got more controlling until (eight years in) they stated "I pay you, do as I say". Not exactly a lot of available paleontology jobs and now with Covid I'm just treading water with temp jobs until museums start hiring again. Sent out some resumes last week.
People don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses.
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If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
Redditor BarooTangClan wanted to compare notes on all the entertainment we've said "that's enough" to.
"What will make you instantly stop watching a movie or show and why?"
I hate bad acting, writing, storytelling... I hate bad anything.
Stop Jumping
Fight Scene GIF by Operation FortuneGiphy"Fight scenes with a million visual cuts. Gives me motion sickness. Contrast the absolutely masterful work in John Wick. long cuts, realistic use of weapons (mostly), 100% skill."
StabbyPants
Louder
"When the actors whisper the whole movie and you have to crank the volume to hear what's being said - but the soundtrack or some other misc noise starts blaring at a higher volume directly after."
Blaze*itch
"I basically had to watch Stranger Things up in my attic with the windows and doors closed. I was worried the neighbors would think something was wrong or be annoyed if I watched it downstairs in my single family home. It was ridiculous."
ForecastForFourCats
"spice things up"
"Love triangles out of no where in a second or third season to 'spice things up' because studio writers are hacks and their idea of relationship drama is 'potential infidelity' at all times. It's the most tired trope on the go**amn planet and the second I see it rear its head I dip right the hell out."
amalgamas
"The whole concept of a love triangle to begin with an incredibly juvenile. Any healthy functioning adult who found themselves in a love triangle would soon choose to find themselves single."
Ouch_i_fell_down
Save your lips...
"When couples in a movie/show have a fight and one of them instantly goes to a friend and end up kissing her/him after talking for 5 minutes. I cringe so hard i turn it off and never watch it again."
Dry-Mycologist3966
"This pissed me off so much in Manifest. Girl is desperate to get back her ex-fiancé, he finally breaks up with his wife to get back with her and she's like 'nah, it's not fair to your wife, let me do this other dude I just met through a calling and be pissed at you for being jealous.' Michaela was the worst and everyone acted as if she were a saint the entire time."
gingerisla
Talk to Me
In Love Flirt GIF by OriginalsGiphy"Shows where a single polite conversation could fix everything."
Horror_Librarian_133
We are going overboard with the witty repartee. Talk normal...
Shut Up
Scared Home Alone GIF by FreeformGiphy"Annoying main character, especially if it's a kid."
abananation
"Kids who have a quippy, sassy retort to everything, and everyone just kind of crumbles before their wit."
CarpetPure7924
Speak Good
"Shows where kids in high school talk like they are 30 years olds who have done everything, been everywhere, know it all and use a ridiculously flowery and extensive vocabulary in every conversation. Like, have any of these writers ever been to high school? Literally no one talks like that. Even worse is when, in addition to this, all the adults talk normal or are just plain stupid, like so weird parallel universe."
StretchArmstrong74
Nonsense
"If the movie is too dark. Not graphic, just literally dark. I lose all sense of intensity in dark scenes and I'm not straining my damn eyes trying to figure out what the hell is going on."
TheShadowOfKaos
"I've seen about 10 percent of all DC movies recently. I've seen all of the individual films in full, just actually saw 10% of each of them."
Mortlach78
"Movies in the late 80s had a lot of dark but you could see the depth because of different shooting techniques. Now you cant see crap because its a CGI fest drowned in black color so you can't see crap because you have no depth in a scene. Compare night scenes in dark alleys in 80's movies and movies now. Utter crap show in the new ones."
Bombzey
Pay Attention Storytellers
"Bad editing would be a big one. A lot of modern horror movies can't help but edit the movies like they're trailers, with added noises to scare the audience because they are afraid the script alone isn't enough to keep people watching."
ThisIsCreation
"I remember this is where the first transformers movie lost me. When the transformers are fighting at the end, it's all a big, jumbled mess of metal and I can barely tell what's going on or who is who."
1840_NO
Drama
will devry soap opera GIF by General HospitalGiphy"When they go straight to relationship drama right away when it wasn't the selling point of the show."
LightInthewater
Do better, Hollywood. It's not that hard.
RedditorCallMehRiverwanted to hear about all the ways none of us what to leave this life.
"What Do You Think Would Be The Worst Death Imaginable?"
My list of the worst deaths is long. My imagination runs amok.
Trapped
season 6 friends GIFGiphy"For me? Being trapped in a small tube or cave (like the ones you have to wiggle through) and getting stuck to where you can’t move your arms. And all you can do is wait to die. I’m getting chills just thinking about it."
Stuck
"The more I hear about cavers that get stuck, the more I think that's a crap way to go."
- braydenmaine
"There’s a great YouTube channel called Ask a Mortician and this was her #1 worse way to die. I can’t remember the exact details or their names, but two well-known divers went into an underwater cave."
"One of them became entangled and died. Years later, his friend dives back down there to try and retrieve his body, the body itself is rotten and his head comes off and the other guy also becomes tangled and dies. Really sad."
- melancholybuzzard
A Long Process
"Believed to be in a coma but coherent through the whole 20 year process until they pull the plug."
weebeardedman
"Oh man this just reminded me of a story I read on here about a guy who lost the ability to move and speak but was completely conscious. Had to just lay there and be awake but trapped in a useless body. His family thought he was brain dead or something and he couldn’t communicate to them that he was 'all there.' Crazy"
habeeb51
Slow & Steady
"Being slowly impaled by a growing bamboo. It was a form of torture probably used by the japanese during WW2 against Allied prisoners."
JazzySocrate
"My uncle who served back in the day said that people would have the bamboo slipped under their fingernails because it would continue to grow still. It would just continue growing into the body."
Payness0826
Excruciating
"Rabies."
Santolmo
"The scariest part is that once you have symptoms, you 100% will die. A 100% mortality rate has to be a psychological torture in itself."
RonaldRawdog
"Not only that, you feel irrational fear. Your brain is literally being eaten apart by the virus and it fu*ks up everything on it. You can't drink water because it hurts you. You feel dizzy, present a fever, excessively salivate, everything hurts and it only gets worse. I'd rather take a bullet and die when the symptoms are still tolerable."
Santolmo
Why can't we all just go engulfed in calm and quiet?
Suspended
"Some pulpy sci-fi book I read a while back had one of the best deaths of this real piece of crap bad guy. Left to die in a drowning sea lab under the Antarctic ice, he freezes himself in a state of the art suspended animation pod with some kind cold fusion power source that would keep it running for millions of years."
"But he forgot to inject himself with the drug that would put him to sleep. So basically he is in suspended animation at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean while his mind is perfectly awake and conscious in a near unbreakable machine that won't run out of power for millions of years and nobody knows about it."
DubiousAlibi
No Cure
"As an RN I have always thought that the worst way to die (natural process) is ALS. Lou Gehrig's Disease."
randymn1963
"My mom and grandmother have Huntington's disease, which is essentially ALS, Alzheimer's, and Dementia combined into one really messed up genetic disease. I have a 50% chance of inheriting it and if I hit 40 and there's still no cure I can't promise I'll feel like continuing on with my life because that disease is absolutely freaking miserable."
DevTheDummy
Agony...
"Radiation poisoning."
binhan123ad
"The fact your chromosomes can be so destroyed your body basically lost it's genetic code and with it the ability to make any new cells. It's literally a 'dead man walking' and you slowly rot away in agony. Stuff is so unimaginably f**ked up."
yea_nah448
"What's also bad about radiation is that it affects your nerves and brain cells last, so you have everything in place to feel all the pain of the rest of your cells being destroyed."
nosmelc
Goo
Not Listening Season 2 GIF by The Fresh Prince of Bel-AirGiphy"I want to believe anything that slowly kills you painfully to be the worst. Such as slowly being crushed or something where the pain is beyond compare and yet not enough to throw you into shock or unconsciousness."
Beardless_Man
"Alternatively, being rapidly crushed into goo would probably be the least painful. I'm talking one of those massive industrial hammers they use for large steel work. Basically smooshed before the nerve signals make it to the brain."
Bannon9k
Now I'll never sleep again without nightmares of death.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
