Ahhh… You’re one of the poor slobs stuck trying to clean up after the ChemE’s, then. We know what works, and you people want us to know why it works. 
Great thread! Here we go…
Professional magician / mindreader.
The OP asks about idiotic assumptions people make. Well, the first and foremost is that I can live on fresh air and good wishes i.e. that what I do isn’t work and doesn’t need to be paid for. If a friend is organising a social event, they often ask me if I’d like to go along and provide the entertainment. This is all fine and welcome, but they seem startled that there should be any question of paying me for what I do.
Let me put this in context so that I’m clear. I often do entertain people free of charge, because I enjoy what I do and I enjoy entertaining people. But let me give you this example. A friend of mine was hosting a party. He had one friend who is in the catering business, who was going to take care of the food, and another who was a pro DJ / MC, so he was going to take care of the live music. I was invited to entertain people. I did it for nothing, because my understanding was that everyone was just making their contribution to help the party go with a swing. Only after the event, it turns out that the catering guy was being paid his full professional rate, ditto the DJ. Apparently, because my work doesn’t involve any consumables or special equipment, the assumption is made that I neither need nor warrant any payment. Even though it’s taken me 20 years to learn what I know about entertaining people and giving them a good time.
And so it goes on.
No, not all magicians are the same, and I don’t pull rabbits out of hats, do anything with doves, saw women in half or do “that one with the big silver rings”.
No, I don’t want to discuss a trick you once saw on telly. Yes, I do probably know how it’s done, but no, I’m not especially keen to explain it to you, and trying to goad me isn’t going to help.
Yes, I have seen “those telly shows that give all the tricks away” but no, the magic trade isn’t all bent out of shape about them because the so-called ‘secrets’ featured in the shows aren’t the real ones anyway and the guy performing the tricks is hopeless.
Thanks for sharing your insight that “All the tricks are simple, when you know how, aren’t they?” but no, this isn’t true. Thank you also for sharing your wisdom that “It’s all slight [sic.] of hand, isn’t it?”, but no, that’s not true either.
You learned a quick trick a few years ago yourself, did you? Good for you. No, I don’t particularly want to see it. It’s probably not especially good, I’ve probably seen it 173 times already, and I’m here to work, not to watch.
No, I don’t read palms. Yes, I can, but no, it’s not what I’m here to do.
Marked cards? No, these are not marked cards, and if you think about you’ll realise that even if they were marked, that couldn’t possibly help with this particular trick. Yes, you can check the cards if you want, sure, but (a) you wouldn’t know what to look for or how and (b) if I wanted to use marked cards – I don’t, but if I did – I’d be able to do it in a way you’d never detect in a zillion years.
No, I can’t use mind-reading to get girls to do anything they wouldn’t want to do normally, and the suggestion denigrates me, my female friends, and yourself for thinking of it. You really don’t have to spill your mind trash around in public.
Blah blah blah.
I’m also self-employed, so I get all the nonsense that others in the same position have already mentioned. Yep, it’s really nice that I have nothing to do all day except watch TV and chat to my friends on the phone. And hey, what a great added bonus – I don’t have anythig to do all day, so I’m free to run your errands, solve your problems, do things on your behalf. Please, do keep coming up with those ideas for how to use my life and my time, because I really can’t think of anything to do to fill these long hours while you’re at work.
One of my professors said you get to call yourself an astronomer once you get a bachelor’s degree in astronomy. She knew everything (she said so one day in class), so we know this is true. I can’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t be true for physics, too.
I’m a caretaker. I have no idea if anyone ever has any misconceptions about my job. Maybe that I actually work? In theory, I’m a maid, chaffeur, and cook but in practice, I’m paid to keep my employer company and nap on her couch in between episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Yeah, that might be an untrue stereotype, but you ***do ***wield that red pen like a sword. A really big one. What would Freud say?
This used to drive me nuts. Many, many years ago I worked at Sears Roebuck in their corporate finance department. I was located on the 43rd floor of the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago, along with tens of thousands of other Sears employees. When meeting someone new and disclosing that I work at Sears the typical response is “Oh, do you know my sister-in-law? She works in the shoe department at the Fox Valley store.” Sorry, I am trying to meet all Sears employees but since there are 450,000 of them I haven’t gotten to your SIL yet. Actually, that was the least annoying thing about working for Sears but that’s a different thread someday.
He’d say, “Well, if people would stop being so stupid with their misspellings, lack of punctuation, and completely wrong constructions, viva wouldn’t have to run around and correct signs in public!”
I say once you start doing research, you’re a physicist. I called myself a physicist when I was a grad student (unless I was talking to other physics people, in which case I called myself a grad student). My reasoning was that since most research is actually done by grad students and postdocs, it seems a little unfair not to call them physicists.
As for condensed matter vs. astrophysics, Angua is right, they’re quite separate fields. For example, I’m a condensed matter physicist and I know jack shit about astrophysics. This leads to interesting conversations with my father-in-law, who persists in asking me about the latest breakthroughs in cosmology and always seems surprised when I have no idea.
I’m considering going into mortuary science. I haven’t committed to anything yet; I’ve just been looking at the professional programs, seeing what pre-reqs I need to catch up on (my bachelor’s in Theatre/Creative Writing didn’t leave me time for much hard science, unfortunately), if I can transfer credits from my local community college, etc. Anyway, I mentioned it to a friend, and he replied: “Don’t do any voodoo on me!” Great. I’m already a creepy Addams-family type, and I haven’t even started any classes yet.
look!ninjas’s post reminded me about the stupid assumptions made about my sister’s job. She’s a pathologist (doctor who performs autopsies).
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Nope, she’s not Kay Scarpetta or Gil Grissom–she doesn’t carry a gun or try to solve crimes.
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No, she’s not a social outcast and does not have a morbid fascination about death.
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No, she’s not going to entertain you with her most disgusting stories from work, or tidbits from the time she had to autopsy a famous person. That would be unethical.
…and i’m an *editor * for a consulting firm.
::sigh::
I’m wanna have a party. I’ll pay. If you’re ever already in the Chicago area for some reason (because airfare is just a tad out of my budget) let me know. I’ll schedule the party around you.
I want a magician who doesn’t wear a clown nose! (Plus also those card twistie sculpture things you make are COOL.)
Likewise as an astronomer, I know jack shit about condensed matter physics. 
Also, astronomy is a huge field. When I tell you that something is outside my area of expertise, please believe me.
I work in data processing. I work with computers.
People have the idiotic assumption that this requires some sort of intelligence.
Truth is that I could be replaced with a shaved chimp.
Nah…there’d be no reason to shave him…
-Translation? Like at meetings and stuff? (No, that’s simultaneous interpretation. I could give the briefing notes a whirl, though.)
-No, we don’t need a translator. Our secretary is bilingual. (That’s nice. Can s/he write perfectly in the target language? Can s/he do terminological research, so s/he’s writing things that make sense? Can s/he do this at 600 words/hour on top of her additional duties?)
Hehe, I caught Buffy out of the corner of my eye and combined that with ‘caretaker’ to think you kept up a cemetary until I read further. 
I used to proofread some of the “…For Dummies” books. No copyediting, just straight proofreading.
The typical response I got was, “Oooh! I’d LOVE to do that! I LOVE to read! Everytime I read a book I find spelling errors!” And then they’d want to do it for a living, because a buck a page sounds pretty fine when you’re looking at a 300 or 400 page book.
I finally started telling people how to determine if you really, REALLY want to be a proofreader: Go to the library, and find the most esoteric, boring, out-of-your-field-of-interest, long-winded, technical or semi-technical book you can find. Read every single word of it, from the title page to the glossary. Make sure you read every single caption, matching it up with every reference. Check every page number, every unusual spelling, every country name, every abbreviation against your Chicago Manual, and remember that you may have Editorial Guidelines that differ from the Chicago Manual.
Then…go back and do it again and AGAIN, because you’ve only finished the first of about three reads.
And make sure that you finish 100 pages every day, because you’re on deadline, y’know.
A buck a page? Well, I suppose you could make a living at that rate, if you don’t mind doing said living in a cardboard box.
Lawyer here.
In my experience, what most people do not know about the law as a profession is how very large the field is, how fact-specific, and how jurisdiction-specific.
I do a lot of rather specialized regulatory work. I am almost afraid to tell people I’m a lawyer, because I fear that they will immediately describe some sort of legal issue or problem they have, and expect that I will know the answer - even if their problem involves something I never do, like family law, or (in extreme cases) they are from a different country where the laws are totally different.
I also fear that, in giving some off-the-cuff answer, I’ll expose myself to liability for being wrong, find myself in some future conflict of interest, or otherwise get into trouble.
Naturally, people think I’m in court all day. As a matter of fact, I rarely see the inside of a court room. Most of what I do is consult with business people concerning the legal risks in undertaking certain activities, and how to minimize those risks. Boring compared to courtroom drama, but that is what a lot of lawyers actually do.
That’s cool. I work for the same company.
And freelance copy editors make more than a buck a page, not much more, but a little.
architect here.
i get the same thing as the artist-types. you charge WHAT?!?! it’s just drawings!
i also get my family and friends hitting me up for work, and they either expect me to do it for free, or they want to pay me like 200 bucks to design a 4,000 square foot house.
people also give computers way too much credit when it comes to the field of architecture. like an owner will completely change the entire concept of a project, and then expect us to get the revisions done that day. they’ll be like “it’s all on the computer, right? can’t you just press a button?” sure, computers speed up drawing, but they DO nothing in and of themselves.
more gripes. when you tell someone you’re an architect, you get one of two reactions. the first is “ooohhhh, then why do you drive that beat up volkswagen? architects are loaded”. no. architects are very rarely loaded. and what gets me, this is usually coming from one of those 200 dollar house plans people. think about it, people.
the other is “i was almost an architect.” everyone was “almost” an architect. acotrs are famous for saying that. what does that mean, exactly? that you thought it sounded cool for ten minutes in high school. even the girl who cut my hair at fantastic sam’s said that. i guess the discount cosmetology field was just too attractive.
no one even knows what we do. they think we sit around sketching pretty pictures all day. or they think its some high-powered office type stuff, all propagated by the movies. whenever they need a vague profession for the leading guy, it’s architecture to the rescue! just give him a tube and show him looking at a blueprint for ten seconds and you’re done!