What’s an innocent or common misconception about your profession or your hobby that just drives you up the wall?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

Office worker here. I don’t get many misconceptions from ordinary people, but from various training organizations trying to make my work more efficient. Like how to get more out of a office meeting or how to be an effective team player, or how to make that next big presentation.

Folks, my job is to enter and check data in the various accounting systems on the company computers. I go to an office meeting maybe once every three months. I barely have work related reasons to speak to my co-workers. I have never in my life made a presentation of anything.

But every time someone tries to improve my job it’s always, “Would you like to spend less time at meetings? Here’s how to really get your co-workers’ attention when you speak.”

Some people seem to think all office workers do is attend meetings and show slideshows. That’s not how it is for most of us.

102

I’ve been in the corporate security and life safety business for over 40 years. I even serve on technical committees that write and revise national codes.

When people learn this, they frequently ask, “So,what kind of burglar alarm system should I buy for my house?”

Buddy, I don’t even have a burglar alarm system in my OWN house. I have two big dogs. And I don’t have many Fortune 500 clients who are installing wireless residential systems in their Singapore sales offices.

(OTOH, I DO know where smoke alarms are required in residences, but didn’t your house COME with them?)

103

To be fair, unlike Busby Berkeley musicals, a good portion of Americans have actually played Monopoly and copies are available for purchase in many retail outlets. I also play boardgames frequently, and when someone asks, “Like Monopoly?” I’m more than happy to say yes.

104

People look at me and they see a very good looking man, therefore they assume that I’m not intelligent! Turns out they’re correct, but I hate that they assume it.

105

Story of my life. Well, except that I’m a woman.

106

In a bit of a twist on who has the misconception, I get frustrated with many musicians who just don’t understand that there is a continuum of talent and expertise, and what comes naturally to them they often assume is common to others.

Example: I can happily play competent bass for professional-level musicians–I jokingly say that I only need to play one note while they play everything else. But it is super common to be asked “do you play by ear?” in the heat of the moment. No, I don’t. So please at least whisper the key to me so I can have a fighting chance at figuring out what you are doing. Part of my own homework is to be familiar enough with popular chord progressions that I can jump in with you as you improvise, but if I don’t know you are in Eb, I’m lost.

It’s not that they look down on me for it (at least the ones who were taught proper manners!) but they just assume that what is natural for them would also be natural for other musicians.

There is an outdoor event this weekend for our church organization that I will be playing at, and the setlist looked just fine, with Christian standards, but I had to kick up quite a fuss until someone finally said “This one will be G, that one in F, the other is in Ab.” and so on. That’s all I needed.

I won’t even complain when you randomly toss in a few crazy fills and then hop to the middle of the third verse again without warning–nobody notices when the bassist drops a few measures!

Aside from musicians assumptions, everyone else assumes “play by ear” is some magical thing that involves perfect pitch and the ability to play like Elton John at the drop of a hat. The reality is that even playing by ear is a continuum–though I say I don’t have this ability, I still do “play by ear” to some extent: I can recognize the sound of super common stuff like V7-I, ii-V7-I, I-vi-ii-V7 as they come around, and that informs my playing, but I most certainly wouldn’t be able to tell what any specific note was without noodling around the fretboard until I found it.

My wife, on the other hand, has some degree of perfect pitch, if she is calmly listening to someone playing a note by itself, she will say what it is, and she definitely perceives the same song in different keys as having different emotions or colors (baffling to me). She would not say she plays by ear though.

107

You certainly have my vote for sexiest username here.

108

I’m not bad; I just post that way.

109

Criminal defense attorney here:
If the cops are at your door, I can’t make them go away. Even if you’ve already hired me. So if you call me and ask what you should do, I’m going to say “cooperate”. That’s it.

When we first meet, I’m going to ask you all sort of questions because I’m trying to get a sense of the sort of legal issues and facts that your case will entail. It’s sort of like a doctor trying to make a diagnosis. But, after that, I’m going to want to see what the evidence looks like: I’m not your therapist, and I don’t have the time to hear about your worries.

And while I am polite with the prosecutors, and see them regularly (so they know my name), we don’t hang out. Judges either. Maybe that’s just me.

Oh, and I’ll definitely echo the others who say that being a lawyer doesn’t make you rich. Far from it. And the ones I’ve worked for who did get there weren’t the best lawyers. Business acumen translates to financial success far more than legal skill.

As for hobbies…

If you are in the gym, and see a guy finish a set and then pose in the mirror, he’s not necessarily being vain or conceited. Flexing your muscles hard (which is what posing is) right after finishing an exercise that targets those muscles is part of the workout. Try it without being conditioned and you might get a cramp.

110

This thing is HUGE for me, as an attorney, too. I cannot tell you how many times I’m sitting there with a client who is on the cusp of being sued upwards of a few hundred million dollars for some sort of breach of contract issue and I am asking them to share with me everything they can to help me prepare our arguments and negotiate some way to resolve the issue…and when I say everything, I don’t mean a venting session about how unfair the other side is, nor do I mean “don’t tell me the bad stuff you did that makes you culpable”.

It is so much worse for them (and me) when that bad stuff comes out halfway through negotiations. to piggy back on your comment, this would be like going to a doctor for a diagnosis and telling them some of your symptoms, but failing to let them know that you’re allergic to a certain kind of medicines or something and then only telling them that fact after they’ve pumped you full of that exact stuff. It’s stupid.

111

I love it when people who are arrested for a crime come meet with me and want to talk about suing the police. “Yeah”, I nod, “they aren’t known for their customer service.”

I always start my consults with a reminder that this is an attorney client communication since they are a potential client, and the only exception is if they tell me about some future crime they intend to commit
“…but if you tell me your friend is dead and hacked up in your freezer, that’s between you and me.”

Hopefully, if all they have in front of them is a DUI or a misdemeanor battery, that gets some sort of chuckle.

A doctor analogy is also my answer to “how can you represent criminals?”

That’s like asking a cardiologist “How can you treat people who eat donuts and smoke cigarettes?”

They are the victims of their own bad choices. I can try to guide them through the process, and they deserve somebody to show them the way, but if they do themselves in that’s on them.

Also, I don’t defend people, I defend rights. I had a public defender say that once, and it stuck with me.

112

I love this analogy, too. I’ve heard similar when I worked for a defense firm at the start of my career. I always focused on the fact that every one deserves the right to have an attorney, and deserves to have their rights protected. I always said I wasn’t necessarily “representing criminals”, but making sure the government/prosecution didn’t overstep, because that’s bad for everyone, too.

113

I work as a planner for a municipal government and for some reason everyone that makes my acquaintance seems to assume I’m personally in charge of every aspect of government administration. Problem with cops giving you a speeding ticket? Call me. Your property taxes are too high? Call me. Potholes in front of your house? Call me. Fire response times too slow? Call me. Your park reservation got bumped? Call me…

114

I’ve got to say, it’s the same in IT. If you did something stupid that broke something, tell me! It’s much likelier that I can fix it if I have some clue as to what might have happened.

Perhaps the misconception is that you’re going to fool me?

You lost some files, cool, we can work on that. I’m going to think much more highly of you, if when we find them you say, “oh, I thought that was stored under a different name, I must have misremembered, thanks for finding them.” Than if you say, “I must have a virus, or somebody changed the names, I’m sure the directory was called ProDev2, not Product-Dev.”

115

I agree that Monopoly is definitely a boardgame and it’s one people are most likely to be familiar with. So it’s a good reference point in that sense. But it’s annoying when people assume Monopoly is a typical example of what boardgames are. A game like Ark Nova compares to Monopoly in the same sense that Avengers: Endgame compares to Broadway Melody of 1936.

116

Perhaps it would help if you could name an example of a modern boardgame that they might have heard of. Are there any “typical examples of what boardgames are” that anywhere near as many people would have heard of as know about Monopoly?

117

Another Computer Science prof thing.

I had to repeatedly tell students “I’m not preparing to get a job now. I preparing you to get a job 20 years from now.”

I remember back in the mid 80s getting grief from industry types. “Why are you teaching Unix and C, nobody uses those.” Ten years later that was exactly the types they were looking for. But we were moving on to OOP, IDEs and such.

In a field like Computer Science it’s all about teaching for the future, not just the now. Pretty much nothing I was teaching in the 90s had existed when I was in college. I taught myself those things. Because I learned how to learn this stuff.

Virtually all the people I taught didn’t understand this “learning to learn” concept.

118

I get that question too (though not always specific to monopoly), and my response now is to say something like, there was an explosion of board games that started in the 90s, there are now literally A few thousand new ones every year, games like settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. At that point, I will usually get a blank stare, and we will move on.

Once, in a blue moon, I do get someone who is sounding me out to make sure we’re talking about the same thing, and not say, Pictionary, or Telestrations…

119

Cones of Dunshire?

120

Actually during the recent COVID crisis— I have ACTUALLY heard that.