# Are there any good, realistic fictional portrayals of your job? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 23, 2020, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392 "2020-02-23T11:21:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392/41 "2020-02-24T21:39:00Z")
> [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](#): > > I came in to comment on this exact sequence. I run a pharmaceutical warehouse, and I was actually impressed by how accurate it seemed: Mike went overboard compared to any auditor I’ve ever seemed by rifling through the trash for pick orders and incoming BoLs, but the general reactions of the warehouse employees (including the rolling eyes at the work shutdown while that team lead went for obviously unnecessary lift belts) seemed about right, as did the set-up of the warehouse and the loading bays. The only real issues I had with any of those sequences was that Mike and the warehouse supervisor used flashlights to peer into one of the trucks when there was a dock floodlight right next to the door controls that anyone familiar with loading docks would have used instead. Yes, I thought the same thing when they used their little flashlights instead of the dock lights! ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392/42 "2020-02-24T21:50:30Z")
[Indiana Jones franchise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Jones_(franchise)). As an archaeologist, I also dislike nazis, and occasionally I am required to wear a hat. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392/43 "2020-02-24T21:57:34Z")
_The Librarians_ is so accurate I’ve considered sending in scripts. Not. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392/44 "2020-02-24T22:17:36Z")
> [@Projammer](#): > > **Wildabeast** beat me to the Mr. Robot nomination. At to that, Halt and Catch Fire didn’t take too many liberties with the early days of computers. Considering that it was intended to be a pseudo-documentary I’ll say they did well enough. Speaking of _Halt and Catch Fire_, as I understand it that whole season 1 plot of reverse engineering IBM’s BIOS is actually based on reality. In real life that was how Compaq was able to make the first computer that could honestly claim to be 100% IBM compatible. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2020, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392/45 "2020-02-25T03:42:32Z")
As a former railroader, I’ve never seen a film that got the technical details even mostly right; usually just bits and pieces cherry-picked to advance the plot. As an ex-mud logger (an arcane technical position in oilfield drilling) my particular job has never, far as I can tell, been portrayed in fiction. For offshore oil and gas drilling operations in general, the recent movie about the _Deepwater Horizon_ disaster wasn’t wildly off the mark, but I guess it doesn’t count as it’s based on real events. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2020, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392/46 "2020-02-25T04:57:10Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > Believe it or not, but I had a civil procedure professor in law school who sometimes showed clips from “My Cousin Vinny” in class. Because of the need to show Joe Pesci as completely out of his element, the rest of the movie did a fairly good job showing a realistic portrayal of the legal process. Same with my civil procedure class as well (though if you went to Emory Law School then it was the same guy ;)). Though I work for the US government as a Federal Investigator (Department of Labor, not FBI) and no one has gotten is close (or even really tried to portray us much). Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2020, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392/47 "2020-02-25T11:49:02Z")
Some of the dialog in “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” was actually pretty good when they were debugging their program. Though there are way too few monitors. Brian [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-realistic-fictional-portrayals-of-your-job/848392.md?page=2)