What is a little known fact about your profession that would surprise people when they would know?

13 comments

1. I’m retired but I worked at a men’s prison. There were more drama & chaos within the staff than there ever was with inmates.

2. I’m tired of getting the reaction “good for you!” Or “that must be so harrrrd” (social worker here.) I understand it’s well intended, but I don’t find my job hard or see it as some self sacrificing thing, I actually love it. I worked a mind numbing corporate job before this and helping people makes me feel energized and fulfilled.

3. The majority of your health insurance claims are processed and paid by a computer, not by a human.

4. The more skilled and experienced you are, the better for your clients but the less you’re valued by your administration. (This is education in the US, sadly.)

5. Writing about sex toys actually gets boring after a while, and testing them isn’t as fun/pleasurable as you might think.

6. I’m a librarian and I don’t “check books out”. I don’t touch physical books at all for my job. I only deal with electric resources.

7. [To a large extent, unpaid interns run DC (or at least the foreign policy sector).](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/16/unpaid-internships-foreign-policy-government/). They had us (unpaid 19-22yos) writing pamphlets explaining major concepts to legislators before they would take votes. My job was to explain the concept of *war in space* to 70yo congressmen as an unpaid 19yo, and then they’d go vote on whether or not to take it seriously. It’s just baffling.

8. Sleeping with potential clients doesn’t always guarantee a sale but it’s still fun.

9. Professors aren’t paid well.

10. Honestly, when I was in the service department, I was bullshitting about why your auto insurance rate went up like 80% of the time. It just does, because corporate greed, that’s why. But I can’t *say* that.

11. Welding is generally considered to be a man’s trade, yet women are typically better welders than men. There’s always exceptions to the rule, I personally know of a few. But women generally have steadier hands, higher pain threshold, and greater patience. Being physically smaller is always a bonus, but not a significant factor.

    Female welders are a minority at the shipyards, yet are often at the top of the trade.

12. I do income tax preparations, and representation of individuals before the IRS. I know much of half the town’s personal business

13. It seems generators almost never work when you need them to.