Jobs That Seem Easy But Are Actually Incredibly Challenging
Reddit user CeleryLover4U asked: 'What's a job or profession that seems easy, but is incredibly challenging?'
When we hear about other people's jobs, we've surely all done that thing where we make assumptions about the work they do and maybe even judge them for having such an easy or unimportant job.
But some jobs are much harder than they look.
Redditor CeleryLover4U asked:
"What's a job or profession that seems easy but is incredibly challenging?"
Customer Service
"Anything customer-facing. The public is dumb and horrendous."
- gwarrior5
"My go-to explanation is, 'Anyone can do it, but few can do it for long.'"
- Conscious_Camel4830
"The further I get in my corporate career, the less I believe I will ever again be capable of working a public-facing job. I don’t know how I did it in the past. I couldn’t handle it in the present."
"I know people are only getting worse about how they treat workers. It is disturbing, embarrassing, and draining for everyone."
- First-Combination-12
High Stakes
"A pharmacist."
"You face the public. Your mistake can literally kill someone."
- VaeSapiens
"Yes, Pharmacist. So many people think their job is essentially the same as any other kind of retail worker and they just prepare prescriptions written by a doctor without having to know anything about them."
"They are very highly trained in, well, pharmacology; and it's not uncommon for a pharmacist to notice things like potentially dangerous drug interactions that the doctor hadn't."
- Worth_University_884
Teaching Woes
"Two nuggets of wisdom from my mentor teacher when I was younger:"
"'Teaching is the easiest job to do poorly and the hardest job to do well,' and 'You get to choose two of the following three: Friends, family, or being a good teacher. You don't have enough time to do all three.'"
"We all know colleagues or remember teachers who were lazy and chose the easy route, but any teacher who is trying to be a good teacher has probably sacrificed their friends and their sleep for little pay and a stressful work environment. There's a reason something like half quit the profession within the first five years."
- bq87
Creativity Is "Easy"
"Some creative professions, such as designers, are often perceived as 'easy' due to their creative nature. However, they may face the constant need to find inspiration, deal with criticism, and meet deadlines."
- rubberduckyis
"EVERYBODY thinks they are a designer, up until the point of having to do the work. But come critique time, mysteriously, EVERYBODY IS A F**KING DESIGNER AGAIN."
"The most important skill to have as a designer is THICK SKIN."
- whitepepper
Care Fatigue Is Real
"Care work."
"I wish it could be taken for granted that no one thinks it's easy. But unfortunately, many people still see it as an unskilled job and have no idea of the many emotional complexities, or of how much empathy, all the time, is needed to form the sorts of relationships with service users that they really need."
- MangoMatiLemonMelon
Physical Labor Generally Wins
"I’m going to say most types of unskilled labor and that’s because there’s such little (visible) reward and such a huge amount of bulls**t. I’ve done customer service, barista, sales, serving, etc; and it was all much harder than my cushy desk job that actually can be considered life or death."
- anachronistika
Their Memory Banks Must Be Wild
"I don't know if I'd call it incredibly challenging, but being one of those old school taxi drivers who know the city like the back of his hand and can literally just drive wherever being told nothing but an address is pretty impressively skilled."
"Not sure if it's still like this, but British cabbies used to be legendary for this. I'm 40 and I don't think most young people appreciate how much the quality of cab service has gone down since the advent of things like Uber."
"Nowadays it's just kind of expected that a rideshare/cab driver doesn't know exactly where you're trying to get and has to rely on GPS directions that they often f up. Back when I was in college, cabbies were complete experts on their city."
"More even than knowing how to get somewhere, they could also give you advice. You could just generally describe a type of bar/club/business you're looking for, and they'll take you right to one that was spot on. Especially in really big cities like NYC."
- Yak-Mak-5000
Professional Cooking
"Being a chef."
- Canadian_bro7
"I would love to meet the person who thinks being a chef is easy! I cook my own food and it’s not only OK to eat but I make a batch of it so I have some for later. So, to make food that is above good and portion it correctly many times a day and do it consistently with minimal wastage (so they make a profit), strikes me as extremely difficult."
- ChuckDeBongo
Team Leading, Oof
"Anything that involves a lot of people skills and socializing. I thought these positions were just the bulls**t of sitting in meetings all day and not a lot of work happening but having to be the one leading those meetings and doing public speaking is taxing in a way I didn’t realize."
- Counterboudd
Not a Pet Sitter At All
"Veterinary Technician."
"Do the job of an RN, anesthesiology tech, dental hygienist, radiology tech, phlebotomist, lab tech, and CNA, but probably don’t make a living wage and have people undervalue your career because you 'play with puppies and kittens all day.'"
- forthegoddessathena
Harder Than It Looks!
"Sometimes, when my brain is fried from thinking and my ego is shot from not fixing the problem, I want to be a garbage man... not a ton of thinking, just put the trash in the truck, and a lot of them have trucks that do it for you!"
"But if the robot either doesn't work or you don't have one on your truck, it smells really bad, the pay isn't what it used to be, you might find a dead body and certainly find dead animal carcasses... and people are id**ts, overfilling their bags, just to have them fall apart before you get to the truck, not putting their trash out and then blaming you, making you come back out."
"Your body probably is sore every day, and you have to take two baths before you can kiss your wife..."
"Ehh, maybe things are not so bad where I am."
- Joebroni1414
Twiddling Thumbs and Listening
"Therapist here. I’ve always said that it’s pretty easy to be an okay therapist—as in, it’s not that hard to listen to people’s problems and say, 'Oh wow, that’s so hard, poor you.'"
"But to be a good therapist? To know when your client is getting stuck in the same patterns, or to notice what your client isn’t saying? To realize that they’re only ever saying how amazing their spouse is, and to think, 'Hmm, nobody’s marriage is perfect, something’s going on there'?"
"To be able to ask questions like, 'Hey, we’ve been talking a lot about your job, but what’s going on with your family?' And then to be able to call them on their s**t, but with kindness and empathy? Balancing that s**t is hard."
"Anybody can have empathy, but knowing when to use empathy and when and how to challenge someone is so much harder. And that’s only one dimension of what makes being a therapist challenging."
- mylovelanguageiswine
Constant Updates
"For the most part, my job is really easy (marketing tech). But having to constantly stay on top of new platforms, new tech, updates, etc etc is exhausting and overwhelming and I really hate it."
"Also, the constant responsibility to locate and execute opportunities to optimize things and increase value for higher-ups. Nobody in corporate roles can ever just reach a point of being 'good enough.' More and better is always required."
"Just some of the big reasons I’m considering a career change."
- GlizzyMcGuire_
Performing Is Not Easy
"Performing arts and other types of art. People think it’s a cakewalk or 'not a real job,' not realizing the literal lifetime of training, rejection, and perseverance that it takes to reach a professional level and how insanely competitive those spaces are."
- ThrowRA1r3a5
All About Perception
"I suspect everything fits this. Consider that someone whose job is stacking boxes in a warehouse has to know how to lift boxes, how many can be stacked, know if certain ones must be easily accessible, know how to use any equipment that is used to move boxes around."
"Not to mention if some have hazardous or fragile materials inside, if some HAVE to be stacked on the bottom, if a mistake is made and all the boxes have to be restacked, etc."
"But everyone else is like, 'They're just stacking boxes.'"
- DrHugh
It's easy to make assumptions about someone else's work and responsibilities when we haven't lived with performing those tasks ourselves.
This gave us some things to think about, and it certainly reminded us that nothing good comes of making assumptions, especially when it minimizes someone else's experiences.
Red Flags From Job Listings That Scream 'Stay Away'
Reddit user Zdvj asked: 'What are some job-posting red flags that scream “Stay away”?'
Being able to work and make enough money to pay bills and get groceries is harder and more important than ever, but finding a good quality job where someone feels appreciated is being to feel as rare as, well, seeing a unicorn.
Ironically, it's the workplaces you'd want to avoid that are the exact ones who are seeking a unicorn themselves.
Redditor Zdvj asked:
"What are some job-posting red flags that scream 'Stay away'?"
"We're Looking For a Unicorn."
"Any use of the word 'Rockstar.'"
- Jsmith0730
"Or 'Ninja.'"
- Pumpkinspicepolice
"Also, 'Guru.'"
- nocolon
"Don't forget 'Wizard.'"
- ilikewc3
A Can-Do Attitude
"I’m finding a 'can-do attitude' to be problematic recently."
- chamomilky
The False Interview
"I agreed to a Zoom interview, showed up looking professional, and noticed eight other guys attending as well."
"The guy who called me said, 'Okay, guys, the presentation starts in 10 minutes; take notes because there will be questions at the end.'"
"I noped right out then and there."
- jimes00
"This happened to me once. They advertised for sales agents for home appliances."
"When I got there, it was a warehouse full of people who all thought they had a job interview, but it was a demonstration for one of those water companies. It was incredibly awkward."
- ishouldbefolding
"Anytime you enter a Zoom job interview,' and someone starts off with, 'Hello, everyone,' just disconnect immediately, because they are wasting your time."
- Effingehh
Signs of a High Turnover Rate
"'Urgently hiring multiple candidates.'"
- smurfsundermybed
"AKA: the entire last crew got p**sed and quit."
- miraculous-
To Be Determined
"'Salary to be discussed.'"
"Every single interview I've gone for that didn't disclose the salary upfront was severely underpaid."
- Mobile_Prune_3207
"When I was younger and recruiters reached out to me without a salary chat, I just took the interviews being naïve."
"Now I’ve learned the call doesn’t go any further until I know the salary band."
- toronto_programmer
Competitive for Whom?
"'Competitive wages.'"
- ACaffeinatedWandress
"Competitive pay means your pay will be competing against your bills."
- Random_Guy_47
A Fast-Paced Environment
"Fast-paced environment. That usually means absolute chaos with no one in charge."
- Spellflinger2019
"Translation: 'It’s so f**king busy and stressful that multiple people recently quit.'"
- md22mdrx
Team Player Culture
"'Work hard, play hard,' meaning, 'We’re all alcoholics.'"
- PaintedLady5519
"And even if they aren't alcoholics, they still schedule a lot of evening and weekend get-togethers that are unofficially mandatory."
- notthesedays
"And if you don't show up, you are 'not a team player.'"
- OldMork
Flexible Schedules
"And even if they aren't, they schedule a lot of evening and weekend get-togethers that are unofficially mandatory."
- missypierce
Degree and Pay Disagreement
"'Bachelor's degree required; starting pay $12.50 per hour.'"
- DeathSpiral321
A Variety of Factors
"A job listing written in all caps."
"A litany of technologies listed."
"'No job hoppers!'"
"If they ever suggest that you should care 'more about the work than compensation,' no, you shouldn't."
"'Some weekends' means, 'every weekend.'"
- template009
Start-Up Culture
"'Start-up culture,' means, 'a disorganized hot mess of egos."
- LeSmeg47
A Bubbly Personality
"Must have a bubbly personality."
"F**k off."
- silentwhim
"I wonder if this is code for, 'We want to hire an attractive young woman.'"
- beka13
"That's EXACTLY what that means."
- VivaLaCon88
"We're Family."
"'We are a family' companies expect you to be fine with getting underpaid and doing endless overtime because hey, they order food once in a while for the team, which is soo cool..."
- Zitson5150
From the Other Side of the Desk
"My job partially includes job placement. I went on a tour today with one of the higher-ups, and she used the word 'nightmare' several times to describe some things. Then she was complaining that they can’t get anyone to hire on or stay hired on, and that they had eight candidates file and get screened, and that day of, only two showed up."
"I wanted to ask so badly what they were paying, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to control my reaction, so I refrained."
"Then she complained later that people 'didn’t want to work, wanted to take days off during the middle of the week, and didn’t want to work over 40 hours.'"
"I was getting nauseous. I don’t want want to deal with that s**t, either, especially for half of my pay that I get now. Not to mention dealing with deadlines and back-breaking work."
"On top of that, they were b***hing about it from a nice office position. You don’t have to work in the factory with no climate control, lifting heavy s**t, or dealing with all the other countless bulls**t. You get to sit in a nice office and gossip with the other office people while making three times what those line workers get."
"I don’t know if I have the heart to place people in these positions."
- Jay-G
While we all need to make money and have a job in order to make that happen, we all deserve to have standards for our workplaces, just like the standards for how we are treated in our other relationships.
Though some of these characteristics have been on job listings for a long time, some of these tactics and phrases are pretty new and something to look out for, for those who haven't been job hunting for a while.
There is a fine line between doing your job and being asked to an accomplice.
I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a supervisor and thought... "Who did you sleep with for this job?"
Some bosses have no boundaries.
And what may sound like a simple favor or just part of your job description is actually nonsense.
Nonsense they gaslight you into doing.
I know we all have stories...
Redditor thekutsiwanted to hear about all the workplace lunacy a higher up has caused. They asked:
"What's the craziest thing your boss asked you to do?"
I wish some bosses could hear themselves when they speak. They'd be shocked.
Dumped
I Am Trash GIF by PBS Digital StudiosGiphy"My old shop owner used to have us techs pour coolant down the toilet instead of disposing of it properly. After enough of us raised a fuss he started dumping it in the street himself."
Led_Halen
The Bell
"I used to work at Taco Bell and on the receipt there was a little online survey at the bottom. My manager told me to go through the trashes to find receipts that people had thrown out so that we could fill them out ourselves so our store would get a better rating. I was a stupid 17 year old so of course I did it. We used to give ourselves perfect reviews all the time actually."
ha1fway_decent
On Fire
"Used to deliver pizza for Domino’s on an e-bike. The e-bikes we used had a bunch of wiring underneath the saddles. One day the wiring caught on fire while I was delivering an order, so the fire started burning underneath my bum (also obviously the batteries stopped working so it became very tough to ride the e-bike)."
"Asked the shift manager of that evening if I could get another e-bike to use for the rest of the evening. He told me 'as long as you’re not on fire yourself you’re using this e-bike.' Quit my job shortly after that."
NOOWOFFICIAL
Labor and Delivery
"At the beginning of Covid, most of our pregnant patients were staying at home and not coming to the hospital for minor things such as mild abd pain, UTI, STD checks, etc as they had before because they were scared to come to a hospital. Our census obviously dropped."
"To try to get the census back up, our managers told us that if a patient called asking whether they should come to the hospital or not, we were supposed to just tell them to come no matter what their complaint was, even if it was something that they absolutely did not need to come in for."
"I refused to do this so I’d just transfer any calls to my charge nurse and let them deal with it. Let’s bring an already immunocompromised pregnant patient to the hospital in the very beginning of an unpredictable pandemic for something they don’t really need to come in for, sure. Smh."
okitay
Minted
Eating Fast Tic Tac GIF by The BacheloretteGiphy"I had a boss at a fine dining restaurant that would check to see if all his staff had breath mints and then he would make us buy them and if we didn’t, it would be deducted out of our paycheck."
Relative_Elderberry1
Hospitality bosses can be meglomaniacs. They are obsessed, it's unhealthy.
Not an ATM
Okaay What GIF by ABC NetworkGiphy"Worked at a convenience store and my boss actually asked me if he could borrow $1000 to pay for part of the beer delivery because they wouldn't have enough. Quit not long after that."
baconpoutine89
Mighty Winds
"Used to deliver for Papa John's. One night the weather was cuh-razy, tornado warning and constant lightning/winds. They kept taking orders. The winds were so bad they kept pushing my car out of my lane. One driver was so close to a lightning strike that he was visibly shaken and disoriented when he somehow made it back. They let him sit and recuperate in the manager's office for awhile, but we still had to deliver orders."
No_Extension108
No Thanks...
"I was called to cover for a temp who quit on the spot off hours. I responded that I already was 2 whiskeys in and didn’t want to get into my car to drive to the site. He responded that since I was coherent enough to have a conversation with him I was ok to make the 30 minute drive to the office. I told him I wasn’t about to risk a DUI for him and hung up."
User Deleted
Hell No
"A long time ago I worked at a grocery store. They decided to no longer get the cleaners that came in with special gear to clean out the compactor, presumably to make extra money. The compactor began to stink to high heaven. I'm talking rotten meat, produce etc. So they asked me to climb inside and clean it. I laughed at them and said no."
"I told all my co-workers to say no. One did not listen and went in and cleaned it, he had to go home because he stunk so bad and reeked for days afterwards. There is a reason a specialist comes in to clean it, wears a Hazmat suit and has the machine disconnected with another person standing there making sure no one turns it on."
MorkSal
you'll figure it out
Looking Let Me Think GIF by TipsyElves.comGiphy"Run a nursing home laundry room with no experience and no training. I didn't even know how the machines worked. Industrial laundry machines are not like your home washing machine. The extent of my training was having an under qualified supervisor telling me 'you'll figure it out.'"
rosesforthemonsters
“clean up”
"Worked at a sh**ty college town pizza place that paid me $5/H plus tips under the table. It would get insanely busy on days when there were football games and boss required all hands on deck. 12+ hour days were not uncommon when there was a game."
"I got to the store at 10am (2 hours before opening) and worked until 3am the following day. By the time 2am rolls around and the crowds finally die down and we start closing shop and cleaning up, my boss pulls back the entire front counter (which was on wheels) to reveal dozens of little roaches scattering everywhere."
"He gave me a broom and told me to 'clean up' the roaches. I waited for him to go out back to smoke his cigarette, I took everything from the tip jar, and left. Never went back."
ArtFreek
Shark Bait
"My boss had me put together a remote control inflatable shark in a closet in secret. I work in a sales office with a pretty fun culture (well now I’m mostly remote and it’s actually a lot less fun ). I have no idea where they sound this shark but he had me put it together in the marketing departments closet to surprise everyone."
"It actually was very hard to get together so the most ridiculous part was the amount of actual work I was missing. And had to grab my boss for a 2nd set of eyes like 3 or 4 times."
imlittleeric
Little Floofs...
"Ex boss. He asked me to kill a litter of kittens by throwing them over an embankment. I was driving the front end loader over to a pile of bark chips that we had covered up for quite some time. I pulled back the plastic cover and see a fuzzy grey pile. It turned out to be a fresh litter of kittens (eyes haven't even opened)."
"I phoned it in to my boss and he said that there was no time to help them, and to just toss them over the embankment because we had customers waiting. I scoffed, hung up the phone and immediately called my girlfriend to come pick up the little floofs to take them to the local shelter."
"He's an ex boss for a reason. Honestly I was not surprised that he asked me to do that. The dude was a complete f**king prick. He's confided so much nasty crap to me that I could write a book. I found a picture of the little ones that I took before they were rescued."
PopGunner
'on call'
dance girls GIF by L2MGiphy"Would we like to go 'on call' (for free) if the one person scheduled for the Saturday shift needs help or calls in sick. A weekend away for a team building exercise paid for by ourselves, including travel, accommodation, food & expenses. In our own time. No thank you."
markste4321
4 big jugs...
"My boss at a grocery/retail store told me to pour 4 big jugs of this industrial glass cleaner down the sink drain in one of two public washrooms, they’ve been in the back so many years one chewed through the plastic and melted all the paint off the shelf, honestly don’t know how I didn’t damage my vision with the chemicals in the air, long story short I ended up with a few chemical burns on my arms and hands with not as little as an apology."
IMakeBrew
Keep it Running...
"Worked at Disney World at Space Mountain for 4 months on an internship. Long story short one day we found a LOT of human crap in the waiting line. After we made the appropriate calls to have it cleaned up the supervisor that was there told me not to stop the line and keep the ride running."
"After the supervisor left I immediately called the front of the line and told them to stop letting people in. Same supervisor also told me I 'should have kept the ride running' one day after I hit the e-stop in the unload area because I heard what only could be described as a tank of CO2 breaking open any time I sent a cart through."
Spoonerx2
“ghost”
"To jump into a cardboard compactor to un-jam it."
LoganEpp
"I had a manager who used make fun of me because I emphatically said no to doing this exact thing. Absolutely the f**k I will not. They went on about safe guards and how i wouldn’t get hurt, or I was afraid of the 'ghost' in the compactor. No, but malfunctions do happen, all the goddamn time. No. I won’t do it."
Overnights
come again over it GIFGiphy"I stock overnight at Walmart. The average speed 1 pallet of goods takes to stock is roughly an hour and a half for the dairy section when you work on it by yourself. My boss asked for it to be done in 20 minutes."
XarumeR
Disgusting...
"I worked at an independent retailer. The owner pocketed a lot of money and never wanted to spend anything. We had a massive rat infestation. Instead of getting help my boss had me create a position just for wiping rat pee and crap off of beer six backs before being put out."
BusConfident1756
Mascots
"Dress up in an animal mascot costume and snowboard down a slope because the usual guy had got messed up drunk the night before and they were worried he was going to vomit inside the costume again. I’d never been on a snowboard in my life."
FormalMango
I hate bosses. Except the ones here on this website.
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