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

In My Humble Opinion
141

Heh. I have been in the Air Force, and I flew airplanes.

But NO, I never flew fighters. I have never shot anyone down. I have never owned a motorcycle and I never wore my leather jacket unless it was over my flight suit.

Now I fly airliners. It’s a great job, and any complaining I do is strictly in accordance with the Minimum Bitching Per Month (MBPM) that all pilots are required to submit in order to maintain Pilot Credibility. :wink:

But…no, I do not know when flight 2347 is leaving for Long Beach. I do not know what gate the Caracas flight is on. I know what gate I’m going to, and where I will fly when I get there. I am sometimes in a hurry to get there so that the passengers on my flight can get where they are going. When you ask me about something else I know as much as you do until I guide you over to a monitor, find your flight and then read what is displayed there.

I don’t know where all the restrooms are in the airport, and I might know how to get to gate 47J from terminal BFE, but then again I might not. I see the terminals of 20 or more airports a month and I am more familiar with some than I am with others.

Despite my passion for flying, I don’t know everything about every airplane. In fact, because of my Air Force/airline career path I know very little about single-engine private flying (thank goodness for Broomstick!)

The one I get the most from friends is…gee, you can travel for free? If I were you, I’d be going all over the world on my time off!

Well, I’ve seen most of the world already. And now I spend anywhere from 12-18 nights a month in hotel rooms and I spend my days at work in airport terminals. For me, going BACK to the airport to fly somewhere to spend the night in a hotel is not exactly my idea of fun. Yes, I go visit friends all around the country and take trips overseas when I want to. But I plan those trips just like most of you would. On my days off I want to sleep in my own bed, buy food at a supermarket instead of a hotel restaurant and act like I have a normal life!

142

I’m in telephone customer service for a bank.

Here’s what I do:

I answer the phone with a cheery “Thank you for calling X Bank! My name is Detritus. How may I help you?” I do that hundreds of times a day. I provide customers with their balances, make transfers and loan payments, let them know about items that have come in, sort out their errors in bookkeeping, patiently explain “how to balance a checkbook” “how your checkcard items are processed” and “how to get to this branch I’ve never seen in a town 300 miles away”, refund overdraft fees, make sure customers have the right kind of accounts for their needs, help customers with our website, turn upset callers into happy callers, and know off the top of my head or know how to quickly find the answers to all the questions that the tellers and personal bankers in the branches call us to ask.

Actually, I love my job.

Here’s what I don’t do:

–I don’t have “banker’s hours.” I am personally there from noon to 9:00 pm, although our customer service line is open 8:30 am until 9:00 pm. (This is especially frustrating when someone calls in at 8:45 PM and then makes a disparging comment about how “y’all have those great banker’s hours.”)
–I don’t “play with money” all day–the only cash I handle is my own, and your clearing checks don’t cross my desk–they are processed by machines.
–I don’t get paid a lot. People always make comments to us about how much bankers must get paid. Maybe the branch managers and the high-finance business bankers and the investment bankers do, but not telephone customer service. Pay-wise, we’re barely glorified secretaries.
–I don’t have the foggiest idea how to invest your money or what to do with your 401k. We have people for that. They’re called investment bankers.
–I don’t know everyone that works for our bank. We have branches all over the state. I haven’t been inside a fraction of our locations, let alone chatted with each teller, so I probably don’t know your bf’s aunt Clara who worked in such-and-such branch 10 years ago.
–This is a favorite. I love it when people ask “Have all my checks cleared?” without telling me what checks they have written. I don’t know if you wrote 4 checks yesterday or 40! Or they ask “When will my check clear?” or “Why hasn’t my check cleared?” If you had written the check to me I could tell you exactly why I haven’t cashed it yet, but I can’t speak for WalMart. These are the kind of questions that started our “Thank you for calling Telepathic Banking! All your checks have cleared and I predict you will earn $1.19 on your variable rate money market account next quarter!” jokes.

Did I mention that I love my job? I really, truly do. It’s crazy.

143

Pilots are allowed to use the word “normal” to describe anything about themselves? Woooooow

:stuck_out_tongue:

144

But you just sit around and play with your kids all day!

Kidding! I work part time. The days I work, I just do my job. The days I am home, I am mom, chef, chauffer, maid, entertainment crew, referee, etc.

For my paid employment, I am a career counselor. I think the only misconception I have encountered thus far is those people who think I can get a job for them. Before I did this, I was a psychotherapist. Don’t ask me to give you free therapy or, worse, to give your family group therapy. If you think that therapy is “a bunch of feel-good hooey”, why not keep that opinion to yourself, 'kay? And don’t ask me to diagnose you. You probably don’t want to know.

145

Do you really get this a lot?

I just find it hard to believe, given that therapy, and group therapy in particular, is some of the worst experience I can imagine. Not that it isn’t effective or useful. Just that it’s exhausting, emotionally traumatic, and intellectually demanding.

146

It’s most often phrased in the form of, “Oh, I don’t believe in therapy. People should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and not indulge in all that ‘wallowing around in feelings’ crap.” Or “just forget about your feelings and get on with your life” kind of thing.

147

You’re one of them?

vi forever!

I hope I don’t marry a physicist. My dad would be the exact same way.

When I was in college (very recently) and an undecided freshman considering studying psychology, my friends all thought I was a Freudian psychoanalyst dream-analyzer/relationship-solver without having ever even signed up for classes.

My dad did this. I once had an IT internship at a prestigious law firm. I got a speeding ticket and my dad insisted that I go in to my boss–herself not a lawyer but an IT specialist like myself (only that she was a professional and she actually did some work every once in a while :smiley: )–and bring my speeding ticket and ask her what to do about it. Yeah, I’m going to go into the law firm I intern at, with my court order in tow, asking another non-lawyer how to solve my problems, making myself look stupid and jeopardizing my already lame standing in the firm. No thanks. The firm itself isn’t even remotely close to dealing with traffic violations; they’re an intellectual property firm, and although I won’t disclose their clients’ names, suffice it to say that products by many of the companies this firm defends can be found in your home and the homes of everyone you know.

It’s this sort of thing that puts people in therapy, or, worse, keeps people out of therapy who desperately need it. An old friend-with-benefits of mine is now an anorexic cutter; she wanted to go see a therapist when her problems weren’t as severe, but instead of taking her to one, her parents made fun of her for not being able to just snap out of it. She works but doesn’t have the money or time to see a therapist on her own. So I, an untrained (other than having taken one semester of psychology class with her in high school) college dropout, have to try to help her solve her problems. I’d make her well if I could, but the sad truth is that I can’t, and she’s only going to get worse until she sees a professional, and she can’t because the only people who can take her there would rather berate her. Meanwhile, her/my friends give her shit for having problems, as though she could just wake up one day and say “I’m ready to not have problems!” and toss all of her issues in the trash bin.

As for job misconceptions, I’m currently in the process of enlisting in the Air Force. Most of my friends think I’m going to fly planes and/or get shipped off to Iraq next week to get blown up by terrorists. Nope, the only people who fly planes are college graduates who can see. As a glasses-wearing dropout with a total of 15 credit hours and one semester of college experience, I meet neither of these requirements. And the way I understand it (as has been confirmed by my recruiter), the only airmen who see combat are pilots. Shipped out to Iraq? Nope, my next stop is Texas for boot camp, and beyond that I’ll most likely get shipped out somewhere in the southwestern United States for A-School.

The questions as to whether or not I’m going to see combat don’t bother me, because they’re generally from friends concerned about my longevity. The flying thing doesn’t bother me as of yet because any other guess as to what I do in the USAF would also be inaccurate, since I have not even started basic training yet and have no idea what my career in the Force will be.

148

Wimps … :wink:

All kidding aside, try this on for size:

Pour 52,000 pounds of liquid cargo (specifically: oil) into a 28,000 pound cylinder mounted on wheels.
Add one slab of poorly designed and maintained concrete roadway called the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System.
Mix liberally with several thousands of totally self-absorbed motorists who slept through their ‘Introduction to Physics’ class in high school.
Just to make it a little more interesting, toss in a few more 80,000 to 129,000 pound commercial vehicles operated by inexperienced drivers who have had 3 weeks of training (and who, incidentally, also slept through their ‘Introduction to Physics’ class in high school …)

Blend all ingredients on high until all components are traveling at unreasonably high speeds and ridiculously close quarters. (Analogy for Professional Pilots: try doing what you do without the benefit of the 1 mile separation rule or ATC [a.k.a. free-for-all] …)

Now … Toss in one unpredictable blow out on the car that just pulled in one car-length in front of you at 65 mph and what do you get?

Everybody gets home late because the* truckdriver * was tailgating … :eek:

“WOW! You’re a Professional Driver? 'Ya mean all you do is drive around all day and get paid for it?”

Yep!

Try it!

Guaranteed – you’ll love it …
… or die trying. :frowning: