Military. It's 99% standing around waiting to hear orders from a bordering-on-inept superior. The paperwork is Neverending. You'll long periods of time away from home and will probably get divorced. Also, your knees and back will go to sh*t.

Chef. It involves getting screamed at, and it takes a really big person not to pass that down the line to younger chefs. It's lots of work and lots of expertise with little pay and little appreciation.

How has this not been said already: Video Game Developer. So many people want to go into video games thinking they will get to design a game. The reality is 99.9% of people that work on video games get no creative input at all. That just make/place/test assets exactly as they are told. All the while being forced to work 60-70 hours a week in a terrible work environment.

Journalist. Long hours, weekends, holidays, middle of the night. Pay sucks (especially in non-profit journalism) and being so plugged into the news every day is depressing. I worked in journalism for 16 plus years, maybe I did it wrong but never once did I sleep with sources to get information nor did I ever blow some giant story wide open, and worst of all - I met zero super heroes. Tv and movies lied.

Film worker. Hours are grueling, production doesn’t give a f*ck about you, good luck spending time with your kids, and most of us are addicts/drunks.

Working at an animal shelter. Everyone thinks that you get to sit around and love on animals all day, but in reality you are exposed to a lot of death and the worst of human nature. And the pay sucks because people just can't quit it because they want to help.

Teaching. Yeah you get summers, nights, weekends, and holidays off but it’s the most frustrating, mentally and emotionally draining job I’ve ever had. You aren’t paid enough for what you have to endure.

Airline pilot. People think you area like Leonardo Dicaprio in Catch Me if You Can; swaggering through the airport, wearing sunglasses, surrounded by hot flight attendants. In reality, we're like glorified bus drivers whose job is 1% excitement and 99% absolute boredom just sitting in a cockpit waiting for life to pass by.

Fashion. "Why don't you have your own brand?" "B***h, do I look like I can afford to ship a container of t-shirts made in Pakistan for 3 cents to compete with some fashion conglomerate?" Everything abt fashion sucks...anyone can do it with no degree, pay is sh*t, hours are sh*t, people are b***hy and souless, the industry is shameless and zero conscious about sustainability. You will work and study very hard to lose a position to a model looking daughter of some rich guy. Its basically become a profession for rich girls who don't know what to do and like consuming goods. The very few people who make it, usually do it for reasons other than talent.

Video game testing. I had a boyfriend who did it for several years, so I know all too well that it's a horrible job. You play the same five minutes of game over and over again, hundreds of times (sometimes thousands). The job kinda killed his passion for gaming, and as far as I know, he still doesn't play anything for fun.

Architect. Seems like lots of good romcom boyfriends are architects. In reality, the hours are long, the stress is extremely high, and pay is really poor for a skilled profession.

Academia. First of all, most people undergrads call "professors" aren't at actual professors (by rank). And people who aren't professors are likely not getting paid a whole lot above the poverty line, have few to no benefits, have little to no input on what they teach or how, not to mention having to put up with nonsense I've not seen or heard of in any other field. The amount of unpaid labour that goes into getting a single article published is unreal.

For some reason some of my old coworkers got in their heads that my traveling sales job was whisking me away to exotic places and gourmet meals on the company dime. No. No no no. Unless you think Syracuse is basically Paris and eating a poorly wrapped burrito while driving because you don't have time to stop for lunch between appointments is fine dining, sales is not sexy. It's a lot of drinking alone and working late nights in hotels with sh*t internet. If you have a family it's hard on your partner because they're taking the kids several nights in a row. You'll miss a lot of you don't have to freedom to schedule around your personal life. I'm glad I got out.

Librarian. It's not quiet, we don't read all day, we clean up our fair share of bodily fluids, plunge many toilets, and interact with homeless/mentally ill patrons fairly regularly depending on our location. Sure a bulk of our job is recommending books to readers and coming up with fun programs, but sometimes I feel like a community secretary who had to get a Masters to have any chance of a decent salary. Or a social worker, which I did not sign up for. One day I'm looking up phone numbers for psychics for a man who called around to police stations and threatened to kill cops in our town and making 60 copies for a rude lady who's rushing to get ready to teach a yoga class and I'm thinking what have I done?! But then the next day I'm getting picture books for an adorable kid and their appreciative mom, or 3D printing a missing piece from one of the board games we lend out instead of having to charge the patron to replace it, or helping a lonely old woman with no children nearby with her phone and having her look at me like I'm a genius, or helping a lady with her sister's visa so she can come to the US from a war zone (she made it here by the way and the lady told me she loves me for it). I love my job, but it is absolutely exhausting and gross and stressful and scary sometimes.

Private Investigator. I worked for a PI a little bit. It was nothing but sitting in a car watching people who were supposed to be on disability, doing stuff they claim they can't.

Trucking. In over 42+ years I saw the finest warehouses in 43 states and 2 Canadian provinces. There are ZERO shows/movies accurately showing trucking for what it is. It's a soul sucking exercise in frustration. There are positive aspects in that you can generate a decent paycheck without extensive education or advanced training. All it will cost you is your soul, your friends, your family, and your health.

Writer. You picture yourself at a typewriter in a cabin by a lake, crackling fire in the fireplace, a golden retriever asleep at your feet and a glass of lagavulin in your hand dreaming up the next great American novel. Contrast that to reality where the writing jobs that actually pay the bills usually involve long nights and weekends sitting in a cube farm writing the instructions that come with a toaster that nobody will ever read while your spouse f*cks her coworkers.

FBI Special Agent. I dated a woman who was with FBI and she enjoyed what she did most of the time but wow was it dry. Imagine sitting in a car watching a house for 6 hours then going back to the office and spending a few hours writing a report. Or looking through 10 years of purchase records and receipts that you pulled out of the trash to build a case. Or sitting in a room at midnight listening in on a dude having phone sex with his mistress. The overwhelming majority of her job was writing reports, status updates, and reviewing financial documents in an office. The hours were terrible, the work seemed boring, and the bureaucracy was thick.

EMS(I.E EMTs and Paramedics). We're not some heros who save lives. Saving lives is about 10 percent of the job. The other 90 percent is dealing with a broken Healthcare system, getting paid minimum wage, dealing with patients who don't need help and abuse the already broken Healthcare system, and if your lucky working for a company that doesn't give a sh*t about you.

Zookeeper. You spend most of your time cleaning poop and you're paid like sh*t.

Youtuber. I remember reading about how Pewdiepie and a handful of other Youtubers made millions of dollars a few years back and thinking "Oh, cr*p. Now kids are going to think they can easily make big money doing this." And I was right. Now I know kids have always wanted fantastical jobs for money and especially for fame. I myself wasted a ton of time imitating martial arts movies and TV shows in hopes of becoming a Power Ranger. I am not a Youtuber, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But unless you have millions of subscribers who watch every single video you make and share them on their social medias so they get even more views, I doubt you'll be making those big bucks anytime soon. Plus, Youtube's rules or whatever you call them seem to change constantly. You can spend a long time editing a vid to fit their standards only to find that you let one f-bomb slip through. Or maybe they change their policies and that video you made 2 years ago violates the new rules. Whoops! Now you can't make money from this video. But Youtube can still put ads on it and make money through it. I know there are many Youtubers who are successful and rich, but I know there are tons more who fail, even if their content isn't bad. The amount of young people I know who genuinely think they can forsake education and career prospects for Youtube fame is staggering.

Playing movies at the cinema. Everybody thinks this is a dream job-relax, watch movies, and get paid. Its actually very boring and you do plenty of other stuff.

Small Business Ownership. I can't in a million years recommend it. For most people, they 'switch' off at 5pm and go into a mental state that isn't work. That's not the case for small business owners. You're always "On". For many of us, that also included working 7 days a week in the first few years of opening up shop. Everything is our problem. The toilet is broken. The employees drama. The internet is down. Customer complaints. Inventory. Marketing. Most people have one role & responsibility; not the small business owner! No paid holidays or vacations. No PTO. No "mental health days". No sick days. I probably work the most hours out of all my corporate friends & family. Lots of disgruntled employees often get recommendations to "open up their own business". I always chuckle at those comments. As if opening up your own business means you'll work less or have less stress. Quite the opposite!

Geologist. In school you go camping, learn cool stuff about the earth and get to have all these ideals about saving the world. In a career you manage construction workers who dislike you at best and are often a field b***h to collect contaminated dirt or test soil compaction on construction sites. Good luck getting a job without a very rough field component. I lucked out and work in mining, and at least get to do fairly interesting work often, but it still is a drag compared to what I thought I’d get to do and the people I went to school with are drowning in rough jobs or unemployed.

Working in music. Most of the industry runs on contingent and part time workers. Full time jobs are difficult to get so if you’re one of the others you’re constantly chasing your next gig. During busy parts of the year you’re too busy to have a life and the slower parts of the year you’re broke. I worked in it for 4-5 years, it was a lot of fun though.

Touring professional musician. I’m not talking about the guys on top who fly in private jets and stay in five star hotels although it’s not always easy for them, believe it or not. I’m talking most of the bands you’ve seen anywhere. It’s often grueling and lots of running around catching flights (if you’re lucky) or getting in the van or bus at 5:00 am after a sh*tty complimentary breakfast at the hotel where you shared a room with the bass player then driving all day with a break for cr*ppy fast food and getting to the venue just in time for load-in (which you often have to do yourself). Then there’s sound check and a quick dinner at another fast food chain with no time for a shower before you rush back to play the show. You put on your stage outfit, which smells like sweat, beer and grime from the last three cities. After the set you man the merch table and talk to a few fans, sign some CD’s, count the take and try to find wi-fi to catch up on emails, pay bills, etc. Speaking of bills, you count the take from merch and have almost enough for that. You hang around forever for the venue to pay you. If you’ve got a tour manager, he’ll do a lot of this stuff for you but it’s still a pain. Good news though. The hotel has laundry machines so you can either get your clothes clean or catch up on sleep - you can only choose one Get up and do it all again. Yes, it can be fun but there is a lot of work that goes into it and it’s not always glamorous. In fact it’s almost never glamorous.

Ultrasound tech You don't look at babies all day.

Working for USPS. I worked a few different positions over 6 years. When I told people where I worked they always had the comments about being a decent job and how it’s good I got my foot in the door assuming I would advance. 6 years and I was never considered a permanent employee. The positions they would put me in, while they transferred me to different posts offices, were always temp positions. Once a year they would force me to take a week off without pay taking me completely off the books then essentially re-hire me. My next check was always messed up so they paid me 60% of my check with money orders, then they would add the full amount to my next check and I would have to pay them back with money orders. Every single year the district would do this to me. My last year I ran a post office by myself as an officer in charge. I did everything a postmaster did but without the decent pay and benefits. I was a single mom and for a half hour a day I had to have my son at work with me, the preschool bus dropped him off with me and a half hour later I would bring him to daycare on my break. I did this for one week and I got written up for that so I quit. My son was 4 at the time. I got written up even though my boss had me bring him to work when he was a baby because he would sleep and no one knew he was there. I quit and the next year the post office closed because they couldn’t staff it so they cut it.

Animator. The field is unbelievably competitive and the work is more difficult and mentally draining than anyone outside the field would ever guess. ... Wouldn't trade it though.

Museum worker. Fresh of my bachelor in history I had the view that museum worker is very educational and sociable. After only a few years I'm already planning a career change. It isn't so much about holding tours, answering questions etc. It's 50 % dealing with costumers who, paradoxically, wants there to be cultural heritage and that it should be care for BUT also gets extremely aggressive that they have to pay to enter said cultural heritage (yes, it is surprising, but we need the money to keep old buildings alive, up and running). Half of these clients also mistake museums for amusement parks and gets appalled when we have to kindly ask them to look after their children because the environment they are in is incredibly fragile. The other 50 % you will spend realizing that most museum bosses are Karens with god complexes: in my time me and my coworkers had to fight for the right to sit (you heard that right, to sit, we could work shifts of almost 9 - 10 hours where we were expected to be on our feet, in badly kept historical shoes, my own feet deformed and this rule was only dropped when another coworker brought a lawyer into the picture), constantly picking up the slack that our boss was creating by never delegating the right information and getting aggressive meetings about how we shouldn't be "correcting" our costumers WHILE also getting reprimanded for damage said costumers were causing to the building. It was after a few of these that I realized why so many of my coworkers (who were all freaking legends in their own right and wonderful to work with) were quickly leaving for any job that paid better/better hours. Historical work is wonderful but it is not worth the hassle to deal with the clients and bosses. I dearly hope that this is not universal though and might be just in the boarders of my home country.

University Professor If you work at a non-research institution, it's not all that bad, but it's when research is expected, it becomes a slog. There is so much work to be done and so little time to do it. You're almost always working late, grading papers and exams in your own private time at home. Academia is a huge d*ck measuring contest, too. Everyone is fighting to prove they're the smartest or that their intelligence is valid. It can quickly become a cesspool of narcissism. The environment is incredibly cutthroat. Even worse, any profit gained from research or whatever almost exclusively goes to publishers and administration. Professors themselves see very little of it.

Pizza delivery. TV and movies make it out to be a fun, quirky job for older teens and young adults to want to work late hours cruising back and forth around the neighborhood with a a few joints pre-rolled in the car cupholder. In reality, you are (more often than not) making minimum wage or less to put mercilessly-endless miles on your vehicle. Less than half of the customers under-tip or don't tip at all, and more often than not you're under-staffed so all the pizzas are getting sent out later than projected and the customers are mad and they take it out on the delivery driver. I saw some of the wildest, weirdest sh*t as a pizza delivery boy. Sometimes it was really interesting but more often than not it was just miserable. One time I delivered a pizza to a seedy motel and the door was answered by a man wearing nothing but jeans and a cowboy hat, and a big leather belt with a revolver tucked into it without a holster. He was paying cash and took it out of the boxers. Another time I was sent with 5 pizzas and a metric f*ckton of wings to a little house that looked like it hadn't been painted in years. The woman who answered the door was supposed to pay cash but she didn't have any, so she asked if I could run a card over the phone. To do this I had to call the store and read the card off to my boss and have her enter it into the computer manually. The first card declined. So did the second, and the third. After the fourth card she told me to wait and slammed the door. I waited about 5 mins before I decided that I needed to keep moving with my deliveries. I was halfway back to my car with the pizzas and wings when the door swung open and a short, chubby kid in his underwear out with a fourth credit card. This one worked and I was extremely glad to be out of there. One of the worst encounters I had was when I knocked on a guy's door and he answered it by kicking it open (his hands were busy with an Xbox controller, I could see his TV with some FPS going on in the background) and as he did this his huge dog ran past him and came at me barking and snapping. I shoved the pizza box into its mouth and bolted for my car while the as*hole screamed at me about his pizza being ruined now. Another time, I made a pizza delivery to the front door of a nightclub where as I was waiting FOREVER at the front door for the customer I saw a policeman get out of his cruiser, in uniform, and solicit one of the dancers who was also standing outside. Their brief conversation gave me the impression that this was a regular thing. It wasn't all bad though, I'd say it was about 10% to 15% pleasant. Consistently my best tippers and nicest customers in general were working-class immigrants.

Knight at Medieval Times. Those guys start as squires and deal with tons of grunt work and when they become knights, hours are still terrible but now you risk very serious injuries during practice or during a show. All of my friends that have worked or work there have had multiple surgeries, broken bones, you name it. They do like having the spotlight on them and they’re like brothers but usually hate it after a while.

Lawyer. The job inherently sucks. It’s boring, detail-oriented, stressful work for which nobody wants to pay a fair rate. And on top of it all, the job is actually so important that your failures are all possible career ending violations of your professional duties.

Pilot, the job is demanding, airlines will abuse you and you will be thrown out at the slightest f*ck up/medical issue. However its a very rewarding field, despite the being away from home and being worked like a dog. If you like work, then its a great job for you. Most pilots you see as airline pilots, cargo pilots or other commercial jobs have worked years to get to their position for seniority. That alone is a great accomplishment because it means they spent countless hours in the seat while spending more then what should be for even a college tuition. Behind the glitz and glamour of a proper uniform is a tired, overworked person who went hungry last night before bed because he arrived when all the places closed. However he loves where he is at because he can say he did it with a good salary too! Everytime I think about how far I have come, I keep bringing up that quote JFK said... “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” I never really understood what he meant by it until I started working and flying more. Working to fly, Fly to work.