(Thx Scarlett67) What idiotic assumptions to others make about your job?

In My Humble Opinion
121

Like some others here I’m a grad student in physics. (Female). I don’t have too many problems with misconceptions about my job. The biggest impression most people have of physics is that’s it’s difficult, and I can’t say I disagree with that. Most conversations I have with strangers go like this:

“What do you do?”
“I’m a grad students in physics.”
“Oooohhh, physics. I took physics once…it was really hard. I barely passed. You must be really smart.”
“I wish.”

Sometimes people ask me about the latest astrophysics or astronomy news and I haven’t the faintest idea what they are talking about. Just because I’m a physicist (according to some definitions) doesn’t mean I know about the Mars probe.

The only thing that bothers me is when strangers come up to me, find out I do physics, and then say, “Ooh, physics…you know, I’m Really Interested in Quantum Mechanics.” (Translation: I’ve read a bunch of mystic BS that pretends to be related to Quantum Mechanics.) Then the person rambles on about solipsism and consciousness and how quantum mechanics proves (insert unprovable metaphysical assertion here).
Actually, my mother kind of does this too. (“You know, all you have to do is remember to ‘turn the light backwards’—it’s the secret of the golden lotus–I read about it in some book a long time ago.”) Wow, to think I’ve been wasting my time studying field theory and particle physics when some Eastern mystic figured it out already just by meditating. Thanks for the tip. :rolleyes:

122

No wait, there’s one more thing that bugs me. I do theory–the particle physics kind. Please stop telling me to invent more efficient solar power. That’s a great goal, but it’s someone else’s job. I really don’t think my field theory and string theory knowledge would be a huge help in that field.

123

True. It sounds great to a lot of people, because you have a 100 page/day deadline, so you’re making $100 a day! To work at home! And you can still take care of the house and kids and everything!

IRL, of course, it’s not like you’re doing 100 pages every day of the week…maybe 300 total in a 10 day period. And most days it would take me 8-10 hours to clear that 100 pages, IF I had a pretty clean copy. (Full timers get more books, I think, but you can only do so much.)

124

I’m the site administrator for the MCAT exam at my university.

No, I’m not a medical student.

No, I don’t want to be a medical student. In fact, I’d rather poke my eye out with a stick.

No, I can’t help you get into medical school by putting in a “good word for you” - the admissions committee doesn’t even know who I am.

No, I don’t know what the answer to question 73, page 2 of the Biological Sciences section is. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you, particularly not during the exam.

and finally,

No, I’m not impressed because you’re “going to be a Dr!” Sorry dude.

125

Yeah, then once you’re done with a book, what do you do after? You have to find a way to get more jobs for proofreading, reviewing, editing, or whatever. So you have to spend a lot of time doing that and NOT getting paid in order to get someone to give you work so you can get paid.

Some of my friends still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that at least 25% to 50% of the time I say I’m working but I’m not getting paid because I’m busting my ass trying to find someone to give me work. And unless you know someone who knows someone, it’s not easy.

126

Former archaeologist here, on one site we had regular visits from an old dear who would tell us “You won’t find any diamonds!” :smiley:

Um despite my former profession I don’t know what one is – unless it’s another word for coprolite?

When you are standing in the middle of a 30m square 10 foot deep trench* and someone asks “Have you found anything?” I always wanted to answer “Dirt and stones.” Also, depending on the kind of dig, you don’t always do it in tiny increments. On most of the sites I worked pickaxes and shovels were used far more than tiny trowels and scrapers.

*Yeah, I know, units!

127

Dammit. Now I’m just jealous. I always had to use the itty-bitty little trowels, brushes and scrapers. God knows sometimes I wish I had an earth-mover or some other huge machine or powertool. sigh I ruined more boots during those years by all the hours spent squatting in a yard by yard square, brushing and scraping and measuring the amount I had brushed and scraped over and over.

Ugh - I also hated making the topography maps. I never minded being behind the scope. I just hated being the person holding the stick.

128

[QUOTE=violacrane]

Um despite my former profession I don’t know what one is – unless it’s another word for coprolite?

[QUOTE]

Crotchety old guy: “Hey is that a leverite?”
Archaeologist: (sigh…here we go again…) “I’m not sure sir, what is a leverite?”
Crotchety old guy: It’s a rock that when you find one you leverite (leave 'er right) there!! Hahahaha…snork…hahahah!"
::wanders away thinking how stupid archaeologist are::

I swear I have heard that “joke” at least a hundred times. And, without fail, it is always a crotchety old guy.
My other favorite, although not an idiotic assumption, happens when we are working on historical sites. The exchange usually goes like this…

Onlooker: “Are you guys digging for gold?”
Me: “No, we’re conducting an archaeological investigation.”
Onlooker: “Wow, that’s neat. Come over here kids and look at this. What are you finding? It looks like a bunch of old trash.”
Me: “Well, it is. We found an old privy and now we’re excavating it. Privies were often used as trash pits.”
Onlooker: “A privy? Isn’t that a bathroom?”
Me: “Yep.”
Onlooker: (pause) “Does that mean your digging in…?”
Me: “Yep.”
Onlooker: “Oh. Come on kids, let’s go and don’t touch anything.”

129

You’d be surprised at how few of the “youngsters” coming out these days actually have those skills. GPS/GIS have pretty much supplanted all of the old mapmaking skills and tools. It has definitely become one of those “You know back when I was a field tech…” kind of things.

130

I am an “instructor” (the only recognized title) at a private business “university”. The owner/president of the university firmly believes that the only time I (or any other instructor) spend working is the time I spend in the classroom, in front of students. He honestly has no idea of how much time it takes to properly prepare for each day of class (and we meet FOUR days a week), nor of how much time it takes to grade homework and exams after class is over. He’s much more concerned about whether or not we enforce the dress policy, and make sure that no student has food or drink or an active cell phone in the classroom.

I teach online classes at the same university. There is a firm belief by both the president and the online course personnel that once you have created an online course: 1) the course is set in stone, and everything (exams, homework, etc.) runs automatically–meaning that the course can simply be duplicated as-is from one term to the next, with no additional work on the instructor’s part, and 2) anyone who knows anything about the subject matter is completely qualified to be an instructor of an online course, even if they have ZERO computer skills and have never taught any course at all in their lives. We have to keep reminding the Powers That Be that we spend a LOT of time tweaking course content from one term to the next, AND that you have to at least know how to use a browser, a mouse, and an e-mail program to be a useful instructore.

There is also a pervasive belief that we actually take time off between terms, when there are no classes scheduled. Just before the last Christmas break, I had to remind at least a half-dozen fellow employees that I would be spending a considerable amount of my “vacation” writing syllabi and modifying my online course content for the next term. About the only time I really have off is the two-week summer break, but even then, that’s only because I plan things out well in advance, and I still only take about a week completely off work.

131

I’m also in video games (I’m a programmer). And yes, it is a great job.

I work for Capcom, used to work for 3DO before it went under.

The question I get the most is “what do you think of X”, where X is some game written by someone else for some platform, and I’ve almost never played it. Any random teenager is more likely to have played X than I am (although I think I play unusually few video games for someone with my job).

I also think it’s neat that there are so many astronomers here… my dad is an astrophysicist, so I feel like I should get to be a junior-hanger-on to the astronomy club. I don’t actually know much of anything about it, but at least I won’t make idiotic assumptions (unless they concern things that have drastically changed in the past 20 years or so).

132

One time I was listening to this know it all guy behind the fence lecturing his family about how we did it all “inch by inch”. He also mistook me for a boy so I took great satisfaction out of standing up, shaking my plaits out of my hat, taking up the pick and whacking the hell out of what I’d just been cleaning up :smiley: (The secret is to scrape it all clean very very carefully so you know just what needs removing with the pick.)

As for holding the stick – or ranging pole as we call it I was a past master at commandeering the theodolite and now Ol’Gaffer tells us the young whippersnappers know nothing of these arcane skills. Mind you on my first dig they still used Wheeler boxes! (10ft square trenches, named after Sir Mortimer W
Wheeler).

133

Hm, you mean any random day after Everquest did an 8 hour patch?

grin duck and run…

134

Hell, no… I got enough of that at the job before this one when I worked in a hospital as a Sanitation Technician (read: janitor) and would occasionally have to go into the morgue to pick up its biohazard to dispose of in the trailer behind the hospital.

I’m 98% certain that one of those times, I was transferring a severed human shin and foot. Gah.

135

The Dummies books people are paying $1/page for proofreading, and expecting 100 pp/day? That’s slave labor, m’dear. And I say that knowing that I routinely accept page rates that are on the low end – but my rates are still much higher than that. I can make the lower rates work because I’m fast.

If you’re still doing that work, I advise you to use your experience to get new clients who won’t work you like a dog for peanut pay.

136

Just chiming in again . . .

Actual conversation:

“You’re an astronomer? Cool! I have some questions about string theory!”

“Oh, yeah? Did ya see that Elegant Universe miniseries they did on Nova?”

“Yeah!”

“Me too. So you know exactly as much about string theory as I do. Possibly more, since my eyes kept glazing over.”

137

We have two jobs that tend to create “idiotic assumptions” in our house.

First: I work as a billing specialist in a ENT-surgical practice.

[ul]
[li]Yes, I know health insurance sucks.[/li][li]No, I don’t know why you got “x” bill from “y” doctor’s office/hospital - I don’t work there.[/li][li]I can’t just change the diagnosis/procedure code because your insurance told you we billed it “wrong”. That’s called INSURANCE FRAUD.[/li][li]Pre-certification does not guarantee payment by your insurance company. For that matter, billing doesn’t guarantee payment by your insurance company.[/li][li]No, really - insurance companies lie to their policyholders, usually to delay payment to us.[/li][li]No, I REALLY don’t want to hear how your incision is draining, etc. Let me transfer you to a nurse.[/li][/ul]

OTOH, I do know a lot about getting claims paid legally, how to appeal a claim, and how to deal with your insurance company in the most efficient manner. But I still spend LOTS of time on hold - and occasionally am trying to get things fixed by a customer service rep in a call center in either India or Jamaica.

I’m going to stop before this turns into something I should Pit about health care. :wink:

Second: My boyfriend is a cable service technician.
[ul]
[li]Yes, he’s aware that your bill is “outrageous”.[/li][li]No, he can’t tell you what’s wrong with your TV set without looking.[/li][li]He can’t fix equipment not owned by the cable company. This includes computers, routers, tv sets and phones.[/li][/ul]

Many of the issues he deals with are much the same as someone working in tech support, and many of the fixes are the same or similar; i.e. Plug it in, put new batteries in the remote, turn it off/on, etc. But he also has to climb poles when it’s sleeting/raining/snowing and go in crawl spaces no matter how “icky” it is.

I don’t know that I know of a job that DOESN’T have some kind of idiotic assumption about it - heck, when I was a receptionist, I’ve had people ask why someone didn’t answer their phone after I transferred. Well, I don’t know. They might not be in, or they might be busy, or they might be avoiding you. Take your pick. :rolleyes:

138

My job comes with similar assumptions as most of the other technology people have posted here.

I’m a computer engineer, I work with integrated circuit development and validation…

Apparently most people don’t realize such a job exists, as I can’t possibly work in the computer field unless I’m fixing computers or writing software all day. Yes, big news people, someone has to design the hardware too!

Of course once I try to explain the difference to people about what exactly a microchip is, I get a very glazed over look.

Additionally everyone assumes that I want to fix their computer problems, since, after all, that’s what I went to college for. :rolleyes: I get the wonderful vague things like “my computer is broken,” or “my internet doesn’t work.” I usually respond with a “Well, that’s nice to hear, so?” I just want to tell these people, yes, I can fix computers, not because of my job, it’s something I learned how to do on my own, and you are all perfectly capable of figuring it out too – I wasn’t born with the knowledge and I didn’t go to school to learn that stuff!

And for some reason “works with computers” seems to translate in many people’s minds to various things such as:
[ul]
[li]Can rewire houses[/li][li]Knows how to fix TVs and related devices[/li][li]Can hack into secret government computers and do all sorts of fun stuff[/li][/ul]

139

Well, I was a freelancer for the company that contracts with the Dummies people. But as of a year or so ago, that’s what they paid. For a really clean book, it would be quick work. (A lot of the titles are basically re-edited versions of a previous title, so they require few corrections.)

But boy. I had some doozies, and they wouldn’t have been worth three times that amount.

I did get to do it all on the computer, as opposed to having hard copies…don’t know if that makes a difference, but it was nice for me.

I wouldn’t mind doing more freelance, but haven’t really worked on finding any work…too lazy to go out and find clients, I guess.

140

I work for an educational testing firm.

People either:

Think that standardized testing is just filling in bubbles. Things have changed within the past decade or two, and at least 20 states now want open-ended testing which always involves written answers. So no, “a machine can’t just score the tests”. There was an interesting attempt by one of the publishing houses to create a program that could analyze student writing, but it seems to have been a dismal failure because you can’t teach a program how to score holistically or even analytically for voice.

OR

They know what I do and worry that I’m going to spend my time analyzing what they write. Nope, not going to happen unless I’m in a pissy mood. I like to read, and consciously thinking about things like sentence fluency, mechanics, organization and topic development is one good way to ruin the reading experience. If someone would like me to beta something for them I can give them my opinion of their writing, but that’s about it outside of work. If I was that pedantic, my own posts on message boards and what have you would be a lot more formal. :dubious: