I’m a big believer that your job has to be fun! I can already hear some of you mumbling, “But work isn’t supposed to be fun—it’s work,” so let me clarify. You spend a third of your day at work which is a huge time investment, so what you do needs to be engaging and challenging, something that you’re passionate about, and a vocation that makes you grow as a person,

Of course, money is always an issue, but in the long run, you should strive to find a purposeful calling that also pays well. However, many jobs that people think are very enjoyable turn out to be fun only on paper and can be complete nightmares in real life. Reddit users have opened up about the dark sides of their seemingly ‘fun’ jobs in a viral thread on r/AskReddit, and we’ve collected some of their best answers.

Have a read, upvote the answers that you agree with, and let us know if we’ve shattered any illusions about some of these vocations. Want to share the main pros and cons at your own job? Drop us a comment at the bottom of this article.

#1

I'm a marine biologist. I spent the last week measuring defrosted fish heads.

Image credits: smileedude

#2

Video game tester.

You aren't spending your time playing completed fully realized games. You are playing the same level of a game over and over seeing if there are bugs.

Image credits: Mr_frumpish

#3

Being a Character Performer at Disney.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing perks and truly magical moments. I know I’m super lucky and tons of people would love to be in my shoes.

But the day to day work is EXHAUSTING in ways I never thought possible. Guests are ridiculously abusive...I’ve had things said and done to me I never would have imagined. The company isn’t always great - it highly depends on your leadership. And there’s so much focus on your body and face (good and BAD) that it can be incredibly depressing and difficult emotionally.

Plus, you have to accept that there’s very little upward mobility. Most people “grow out of it” and it’s rough to know that one day you’ll get “too old” or “too fat” and you will have to start all over in a new career field. So you constantly are thinking either, 1) what you’re going to do when you leave, 2) how you’re going to keep yourself there. I personally knew it would be temporary, and I now only work there seasonally while I have a “normal career”. But Disney has a way of sucking you in.

Image credits: TheMarvelPrincess

Redditor Bwee21’s post on r/AskReddit was incredibly popular. The thread was upvoted nearly 90k times and even got the ‘Top Post’ award. What’s more, the intriguing question about which jobs aren’t as fun as they seem got a whopping 30.5k comments. That just goes to show how much people resonated with the post (and how much some of them wanted to vent about their jobs!).

Sometimes, it’s not the actual job itself that’s the problem but the stressful workplace environment that you spend your days in. Previously, I spoke with life coach Lindsay Hanson about what to do when they realize their workplace is toxic. According to her, we’re all responsible for setting the boundaries for what we’re willing to tolerate.

#4

Working in an animal shelter. For sure, it’s probably less intense than zookeeping, but the amount of people who apply or volunteer expecting to come in and play with cute puppies all day is absurd. We’re basically animal maids. You deal with animals of all sorts of behavioral and developmental stages [pooping] and pissing everywhere and then you look over and this dog named Chumbawumba swimming in his water bowl so you gotta fill that up six times and dry his kennel out and then you go and mop up the cat room around 10 kittens who want to eat your mop and also four children who are all yelling that there’s puke in the floor and I MUST clean it, NOW. Not to mention all the extra behind the scenes work that the public never sees. How in the summer, during kitten and puppy season, the shelter built to house 500 max has 750 and I didn’t take a lunch or sit at all for any of my shifts for the past six days. How the courts force us to put down animals that we know can be rehabilitated, but we don’t get enough funding to fight it. How animal control just showed up with the fourth pregnant stray of the week but intake is full and even double stacked in some cases, so your coworker fosters the cats on her own. Not even to mention the [awful] people who do dumb [stuff] and end up getting bit or scratched and the animal is the one who bears those consequences. I am the proudest shelter worker in the world. I adore my job, even at its hardest. I didn’t sit for 9 and a half hours today and I found a cat turd in the cuff of my jeans but it doesn’t matter because a bonded pair of adult cats got adopted today. I took six applications this morning and the cat in bank 4 with the goopy eye is already looking better, and we sent a mama out to foster. The hard work is always worth it for these babies.

Image credits: highschoolvevo

#5

Dog hotel. Thought I’d get to play with puppies all day. Instead I cleaned diarrhea off kennel floors for 5 hours a day and stopped tiny dogs from humping each other for the other 3.

Image credits: rafflesthegreat

#6

Baker. Coming into work at 3/4 am so you can have a six am baked goods is miserable.

Image credits: haireypotter

"If you feel that there's nothing you can do to change the situation and the company or people involved are unwilling to change, then you have to decide whether you're willing to stay in that environment or not," coach Lindsay explained to Bored Panda earlier.

"A good question to ask yourself is, even if this toxic situation were to change, would I still want to work here?" she said that the ball’s always in your court and you make the final decision about whether to stay or to move on.

#7

Librarian. It’s not all books and being quiet. There are also spreadsheets.

Image credits: math-yoo

#8

Gamemaster at an escape room.

It's the same repetitive script, resetting the same stuff, giving clues and hints about the same things. The patrons are often competitive families who argue, obnoxious impatient 13-year-olds, college students who have been drinking, idiots who break [stuff] and touch [stuff] that I SPECIFICALLY TOLD THEM NOT TO. They never remember your initial instructions. If something gets broken during one group, you have to hurry and fix it before the next group.

Image credits: [deleted]

#9

Google Street View driver.

You're all alone for 8+ hours a day, can almost never take a break, need to constantly be "on" and focused (lest you crash the $25,000 Subaru with $60,000+ worth of camera equipment on it), you end up becoming an amateur meteorologist to keep track of weather patterns and cloud cover, and in my experience there are a lot of people who just get insanely upset at you, at Google, and the job in general for a wide variety of reasons. I enjoyed myself when I did it, but it was nowhere near as glamorous or fun as I or my friends & family assumed.

Edit: Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in my summer job from almost 10 years ago. I'll just answer the most asked questions here real quick:

Pay? $15 an hour, but contingent on hours driven, which were themselves dependent on clear weather to ensure optimal image quality

Why not drive every day no matter the weather? Google got around this problem by making you re-drive routes whose pictures turned out subpar. To prevent people double billing by driving the same easy route constantly, you also had a weekly quota of unique miles driven, so no double dipping.

What could you do in the car? As long as the camera and the napping software (Edit: MAPPING software, thanks for the heads up) was running properly I was on my own. I listened to music, the news, and lots of books on tape. I could stop for short bathroom breaks whenever I felt like it, and had an hour guaranteed for lunch whenever I wanted to take it, which usually amounted to eating in the car on the side of some lonely rural road 90% of the time.

Who would ever think this was fun or glamorous? All I can say is, back in 2012 most people I talked to were pretty excited, myself included, about getting the chance to do any work with Google, let alone this cool new project that would let you see what any place on Earth looked like at street level from the comfort of home. This was the era of Google Plus being a potentially exciting new thing, of Google Glass being the future of tech, and overall it was a different time. That's why everyone I knew thought this was a cool gig.

Image credits: TheUnknownDouble-O

According to Lindsay, everyone has two options available to them. The first is choosing happiness (or at least contentment) in the job position you’re in. The second is searching for a way out of your current predicament.

“The idea that you can't change your situation due to the pandemic is very limiting. There are still companies hiring. There are still ways to make money on your own. There is always a way to change your current situation—telling yourself you're stuck feels very limiting," the coach said.

"Again, it comes back to what you're willing to tolerate. You can do everything in your power to bring attention to the toxic situation and attempt to change it. And at the end of the day, you always have control over your own mindset, how you're reacting to the situation, and how much you let it affect you.”

#10

Zookeeper.

Don't get me wrong, it's awesome to be around so many amazing animals and care for them...

But the smells are ridiculously, insanely foul.

I have a really strong stomach and it's still tough for me...we've had some interns quit over it.

I was warned about the smells when getting into the field, but thought "oh I've volunteered at animal shelters, I know what animal stink smells like"

Nope. Not even close.

Image credits: wekoo9

#11

FLIGHT ATTENDANT. 1) You are on call (on reserve) forever, have a terrible schedule, have no life, and make no money for 5-10 years. 2) While you work for peanuts, you can’t afford to use your flight “benefits” in any substantial way. 3) Then, when you finally get a chance to use your benefits for a trip, you have to fly standby which means you aren’t guaranteed to get on the flight you want. 4) Then, if you do make it out of town you better have like a week off so you can make damn sure you’re back in your base city in time for your next work shift. 5) Did I mention there is an act of US legislation (Railway Labor Act) that allows airlines to exploit so you don’t get paid for certain work hours that you actually need to be working? For example, FAs don’t get paid for boarding, or any time the plane is at the gate. WORST JOB EVER.

Image credits: y0r0bin

#12

Nurse. Just kidding no one thinks that sounds fun.

Image credits: slothurknee

#13

Teacher. Children are psychic vampires.

#14

I'm a Forensic Scientist and it's literally the only thing people ask me about on dating apps. It's very technical work and it's extremely routine.

Image credits: Altephor1

#15

Trimming weed, Idk why people think working with weed is like working in the willy wonka factory, it’s not. You literally get to make tiny cuts with sticky scissors for 8 hours.

Image credits: Ari_AK

#16

Being a writer. I always thought it was my absolute dream job. But the only job I could get after college was working in a content mill as a blog writer. I used to work 70-hour weeks staring at the computer in a basement of an old bank writing nonsense articles about the dangers of mold, fence cleaning, and why you need a commercial awning and the dream turned into a nightmare.

While I still write occasionally, I am now working as a communications person so it is a bit less heavy.

Image credits: Impossibly_me

#17

Demolition

Everyone wants to break [stuff] with a sledgehammer. Everyone is tired of lifting that sledgehammer by 5 swings.

Nobody wants to load the broken stuff into bags or a wheelbarrow and take it to the dumpster.

Image credits: Bill_S_Preson_Esq

#18

Lawyer, no it isn't like they show on TV.

Hey, finally case is before the judge, damn the other party didn't show up. Next date that judge has given is 3 months away.

Image credits: Lousy_Lawyer

#19

Veterinarian —

TRULY shocked that nobody has said this one yet. We have the highest suicide rate of any profession.

It’s a lot more talking to people about money and a lot less doing medicine and saving animals than people hope going into it. Not all of the animals are grateful, some of them want to bite you because you’re hurting them and they don’t know it’s in their best interest. Clients can be hugely manipulative jerks. There’s lots of student debt. And don’t get me started on near constant exposure to low levels of anesthetic gasses.

Image credits: Savesomeposts

#20

Accounting isn't the adrenaline rush that most people think it is

Image credits: PM_Me_Cool_Cars_

#21

Working in a thrift store? Well I always thought it sounded fun but it's basically just the retail experience but on top of that people think they can haggle with you. I specifically worked in a non-profit thrift store (charity shop) so it was extra infuriating when people tried to return things or talk us down from a $5 shirt. THIS ISN'T A GARAGE SALE.

Image credits: red_death_at_614

#22

Engineer.

I grew up loving planes and space travel and being interested in how things work. I loved cars and motorcycles and anything mechanical or electrical.

The reality is that you sit behind a desk likely making subcomponents at best, and dealing with issues that arise when it doesn’t work with another component for the final product. Most engineers will not use even half of what their degree was for.

Please note that of course there are exceptions, and many engineers get to do really cool things for their whole career, I’m just saying that most don’t.

Image credits: StolenCamaro

#23

Programmer.

People see it as an anonymous figure typing a few lines of code and gaining access to top secret files.

In reality it’s 10% coding and 90% searching your problems on Stack Overflow.

Image credits: [deleted]

#24

Working in a music store ( musical instruments )

Your days are spent listening to 50 different people play 50 different riffs poorly simultaneously, as if they're all putting on their own concert.

Image credits: InternetKidsAreMean

#25

Being a chef. All the flare and awesomeness they show on vice and Netflix is far from what actually happens in the industry. It’s not all fancy plates and tattooed/cool haired guys doin their thing. It’s a drug infested, law breaking work environment that only benefits the owners of a restaurant

#26

Lifeguarding. Everyone expects baywatch, act, saving lives all the time. But It’s usually just sitting there blowing your whistle telling little kids to stop [messing] around.

Image credits: Theholynun

#27

Paleontologist. You don’t get to work with full dinosaur skeletons and do all kinds of awesome expeditions. You’re mostly sitting at a desk looking at some pictures and logging stuff on your computer, maybe examining a fossil occasionally. If you’re lucky you can go on a real dig, and OMG SPEND HOURS IN THE HOT SUN DUSTING OFF ROCKS!!!

Image credits: MidwesternMonkey

#28

Professional photographer.

Not like, hobbyist, but business-owning photographer. Sucks the love right out of your work.

Because you started the business to take pictures.

Then Karen doesn't like the way she looks in one of them so she wants the whole set for free plus a reshoot for free plus those images for free.

Then the two high school kids getting into a very ill-advised marriage at EXACTLY 18 years old wants to book you for their wedding but their budget is only $50.

Then Karen calls back because she loves your work and wants to pay for another shoot, but only if you agree to do her friend's daughter's destination wedding for free.

Then you get a call from your last bride. It's been two weeks since their wedding. WHERE THE [HELL] ARE HER PICTURES?

Then you get no leads from a bridal expo.

Then a client finds out you don't support their candidate and tries to take you to court to get her money back.

Then some insta thot who thinks she's influencing people offers a "collab" where you take pro photos of her and she adds insta filters to it and claims her friend took them. And she's not gonna pay.

And then you get some entitled mom who wants you to photograph every day of her newborn's first year of life for $100.

I went back to being a hobbyist.

#29

Cyber Security. Bro, the movies do us no justice. Hacking is not as fast nor is it as easy as the media makes it. It's a great field but you spend a lot of time researching or watching paint dry, especially in the gov side.

Image credits: [deleted]

#30

Acting.

All the ones we see on TV and movies are the 0.0001% of incredibly lucky and talented people who managed to thrive in a hostile and overcrowded industry.

And even when you are working, the actual job itself is 99% sitting on apple crate in hot makeup waiting for some grips to move a lighting fixture. Then you say three lines over and over again for an hour, and then you wrap.

Image credits: Wazula42

#31

Well I’m a scientist. I don’t know if people usually think of that career as fun, but I think people think it’s a lot more “Eureka!” and a lot less “this data’s has to be manually processed for 600 hours before I can analyze it.

Image credits: JeremyTheRhino

#32

An artist, time management is very hard. And it becomes more of a job instead of fun hobby.

#33

Bar bouncer. Hours of tension and boredom interrupted by moments of adrenaline fueled fear for your life. Then some [jerk] pukes cheap booze on your shoes.

Image credits: Aggromemnon

#34

Working at a Charles Dickens fair is... Interesting, but not incredibly fun. It is hard to stay in character, and people get so mad when they see the Alice in Wonderland area. Yeah, we know it's not Charles Dickens, but we can't have a kids play area in the world of Oliver Twist, okay?

Image credits: Foxwix

#35

programming. please help me. I need a hug. why did I need to be such a nerdy kid when I was younger.

#36

Flight attendant. I did it for a year.

Think you’re going to have a week long layover in Paris? Guess again! You’re working the red eye to Detroit! Don’t get too excited yet! You’re laying over in Cleveland tomorrow!

Couple that with the job being boring AF (you just sit around for hours at a time on the flights), and it certainly is much less exciting than you would think it would be.

Image credits: TJeffersonsBlackKid

#37

Not a specific job but traveling for work. I’m in tech and a lot of people starting out talk about wanting to go to customer sites and get “out in the field”... I love to travel for fun but it’s hard to fit in the fun stuff when you have presentations and stuff to worry about and a lot of times your customers aren’t in the fun cities anyway. I also think I prefer the stability in day-to-day schedule of traveling less frequently.

#38

Farming. At least in my experience it's a rough and thankless way to make a living with no days off and no management to cry to when there's a problem.

You: My dad is in the hospital and isn't doing well, can I take a couple days off? The plants:

Also everyone thinks you have the cushiest job ever. Everything is automated now, isn't it? You get tons of bailouts and subsidies and whatnot, right? You get 3 months in winter off, right?

Maybe out west where they're growing a billion acres of corn in one field so the robot tractors can't really get confused and such a machine would actually pay for itself.

Only if you're in Iowa growing ethanol corn.

It's 3 months of building and equipment maintenance with no pay. It's the exact opposite of a paid vacation but it goes for months. No we don't go to Hawaii.

#39

Video Game Developer (non-Indie)

They're notoriously overworked, especially during crunch time. The field is highly competitive too, so I imagine if you have the slightest issue with work being your entire life, it wouldn't be hard to replace you.

Voice Acting is also pretty brutal. Voice actors generally don't get paid very well and they're straining their throats or whatever.

Image credits: d0n7w0rry4b0u717

#40

barnes and noble, your job has literally NOTHING to do with books & it obviously attracts a lot of that type, myself included

#41

Event planner, it’s hell on earth when you have a million things going on and your waiting for everything to come together

#42

Casino Dealer/Croupier. That’s the place where the worst humans come to do their business.

#43

Beer taster

So first of all, no-one actually wants to drink beer at 9.30 on Monday morning in a corporate office. But you rock up to a dozen glasses of beer in front of you, you make small talk about what your colleague’s kids did on the weekend, and then you’re tasting.

Things you’re tasting could involve:

stuff that’s come back from consumers because it “tastes weird”. Usually because they left it in the back seat of their car in full summer sun for two weeks, and cooked the [hell] out of it

stuff that’s come in from the breweries because something has gone wrong and they can’t figure out what

stuff that the R&D team are working on and haven’t gotten right yet

stuff that the lab team have aged well past the best before date. Just to see how bad it really gets (very)

Other problems (these aren’t all me, they’re a collection from a bunch of colleagues):

if you’re at the breweries, it could be 30 odd samples of exactly the same beer, just from different storage tanks you have to check is ok

if you’re tasting at beer festivals, there are 200 odd whack craft beer samples. Which means by the time you’re done, your palate is wiped, you’re too drunk to enjoy the festival, you have to network with the rest of the industry who are sober, and you spend the weekend recovering. Worse if you’re a small woman and the other tasters are faring better than you

if you go out to client sites to work on new developments, and there’s more tasting involved than you expected or it’s high alcohol content, you end up leaving your car in the middle of nowhere and have to get home and back again. Especially embarrassing when you’re a small woman and the other guys are ok to drive

there’s always one guy who spits and it’s gross

you go out to a bar on the weekend with your mates, and they all ask you for opinions on beer when you’re just trying to enjoy one. Or if you want to switch off from work and order a nice girly cocktail and get given s**t for it

the looks of judgement from the doctor when they ask how often you drink and you tell them the truth

if you want to lose weight, good luck calorie counting that

Don’t get me wrong, there are worse jobs out there. But I don’t even like beer

#44

A pediatric nurse, being a nurse for children and adolescents. Everyone in nursing school talks about how much they want to work with kids. The reality is that a pediatric nurse sees more cases of abuse and neglect than any other specialty. Doesn't matter where you are in a pediatric hospital, it's the thing you see most.

I've seen so many DCS (Department of Child Services) caseworkers that I've gotten to know some of them and became acquaintances with them. Sure working with children and adolescents is great, but people don't think about the most essential piece of that puzzle which is their families. It doesn't matter how good of care you give to those kids, if you don't loop the parents in to that care you may as well just not be doing anything for them.

#45

Working at Victoria's Secret. People think it's a lot of hot women coming in to buy underwear, but it's mostly Karens.

#46

I always say the more fun it is to go somewhere the worse it is to work there like amusement parks and arcades

Image credits: nightowlscrolling

#47

Surveillance officer in a casino. Locked in a very small room with another officer who generally spends his time looking down women’s blouses while you answer the phone and watch the millions in cash and chips. The employees are your biggest thieves. Always loved catching them red handed. Hundreds of VCRs had to be changed on a regular schedule and then kept for a certain period of time. 90% boredom. 10% go time!

#48

working in a museum as a docent, teacher, or presenter. there's really a lot to enjoy, but it's the other stuff that makes you want to tear your hair out that will eventually push you to spruce up that resume. i got asked by family members, friends, and colleagues all that time, "wow! i bet that must be really fun! do you know if they're hiring?" depending on the relationship and how likely they were to get back around to the people i was working with, i wanted to say, "run far away while you still can. it's too late for me. save yourselves." you know when you go to a museum on the weekend or pop over some night for a cool themed open house event or visit to do stuff or look at stuff over Christmas break? yeah. the museum is open then. when everyone else is off from work on holiday or the weekend, you're probably working. and as a non-profit, they will then try to pay you a little as possible while dangling promises of "yeah, we're looking at the pay structure. i'm really pushing to get you all more recognition." then that person leaves. and if you have a really go-getter type of boss who is looking to set the world on fire, then you're subjected to micro-management of the worst sort and expectations of really bad work-life balance. (of course, your mileage may vary.)