is your field accurately portrayed in movies and on TV?

by Alison Green on February 16, 2023

Let’s talk about how your field is represented — or more likely, misrepresented — on TV and movies or books. Are you a lawyer who’s horrified by legal dramas? A nurse who can’t stand to watch ER? A teacher who is trying to wrap your mind around Glee? Is there any media that does portray your profession correctly? Let’s discuss in the comments.

(This came up on a recent open thread and I thought it deserved a wider audience.)

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  1. Honor Harrington*

    My field (project and program management) isn’t portrayed on TV. Things just magically happen without any planning – and definitely without any realistic times.

    1. Cakeroll*

      I thought some of the depictions of project and product management in Silicon Valley (though played up for humor) were pretty spot-on!

      1. Cookies for Breakfast*

        Yes! The episodes where the sales team dictated what the product should do were some of the ones I laughed the most at, because at the job I had while I was watching it, those same dynamics were making me want to pull my hair out.

        Also spot-on in that show, the insistence on a boilerplate “making the world a better place” as a tech company mission.

    2. Cold and Tired*

      Agreed – it’s rare that the full scope of being a PM is shown on tv at all, probably because all the meetings/deadlines/budgets/status checks/readjusting deadlines/etc wouldn’t make for good tv. I feel like it shows up most in humor when they’re laughing at how meetings can swirl or how people throw random wrenches into projects thinking they know what is best when it’s completely unrelated and will actually pull the project off track.

      Also, since I work in healthcare PM primarily with radiology, I have the added benefit of wanting to cry inside every time they show actual physical film x-rays in shows and call them a CT. 1. No one has done actual film for at least 10-15 years in the us outside of a few very limited specialities/small clinics. 2. X-rays and CTs aren’t the same at all besides the fact that radiation is involved and it sees inside you. But the mechanism and output (and reason why you’d do each scan) is completely different. Sigh…….

      1. C*

        ooh hard agree I am a Medical Physicist; my specific area of Nuclear medicine imaging and radionuclide therapy just never come up in TV but seeing x-rays on lightboxes in anything set in the last decade drives me barmy. Also when they say something is a CT or CAT scan and it is clearly an MRI or the other way around.

    4. Ace in the Hole*

      Same here. I work in solid waste management (aka trash).

      You’ll see the occasional garbage truck driver on TV, but never the folks working at landfills/transfer stations/MRFs. Garbage just magically disappears with no work or environmental impacts.

      2. Ms. Yvonne*

        Ohhhh, solid waste management. “How many garbage men do you know who live in a house like this?”?!

      3. knxvil*

        One of my favorite movies is about waste management: Men at Work. It stars Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez. Highly recommend. :P

      4. MigraineMonth*

        I hope the part about constantly finding dead bodies in the garbage dumpsters isn’t accurate, either.

        1. Ace in the Hole*

          It’s rare, at least in my area, but it does happen sometimes. I expect it’s more common in places with very cold winters.

      5. Me ... Just Me*

        There was one episode of a mid-90’s show, “Monk” where the waste management folks were on strike and it was hilarious (and eye opening) about how quickly things turned into chaos as trash piled up.

        1. kicking-k*

          This happened in Scotland last summer and it was no joke. It was the height of the tourist season, so Edinburgh was full of visitors who couldn’t easily take all their rubbish back to a hotel room or whatever, and the place rapidly looked appalling. So yeah, it really did make a big difference.

    5. Ophelia*

      What’s funny is that my field (aid work/international development) IS portrayed in media, but always as war, espionage, or like some sort of crazy adventure when…90% of it is–you guessed it–project management.

      1. Crazy Plant Lady*

        YES! At least 50% of the time is paper pushing – grant proposals, report writing, external communications, etc. – even for those working in war, disaster, etc. And the rest of the time is meetings. It’s far less “sexy” than the media makes it seem.

    7. Abigail Hearns*

      Sorry, have to chime in to say I love the name – and that there are other David Webber fans here.

    8. Keyboard Cowboy*

      There’s an anime called “Shirobako” whose main(ish, it’s ensemble) character is a program manager at an anime studio. Highly recommend, I’m not a PgM but I work closely with them all the time and moonlight occasionally at $DAYJOB and I thought it captured the stresses and frustrations pretty accurately.

  2. Judge Judy and Executioner*

    The Office perfectly captured the highs and lows of working in an office. “If I don’t have some cake soon, I might die.” — Stanley Hudson

    1. Sloanicota*

      Yeah to be honest, as an office worker I have had plenty of moments where I feel like I work in The Office *looks directly at the camera.*

    2. Mark*

      Completely agree. Many people I know who work in offices love that show; friends who have never worked in an office generally don’t like it because they don’t “get” it.

        1. Event coordinator?*

          Yep the jokes hit a little too close to home. Dwight is hilarious because I’ve never had to deal with someone like him, but I’ve had a few Michaels and it’s just too cringe to enjoy.

      2. Weaponized Pumpkin*

        I watched Office Space with a guy who didn’t think it was funny at all, and while (of course) tastes vary it seemed to me that it was because he’d never worked in an office environment

        While I liked The Office, I didn’t love it because it was so cringe-y. Cringe humor sets off my body’s awkward-empathy alarms.

        1. Unkempt Flatware*

          It takes me 2 hours to get through one episode of I Love Lucy. At several cool-down laps around the house.

          1. Weaponized Pumpkin*

            Oooof. While watching something yesterday I actually said LA LA LA LA LA, loudly enough to drown out the volume, until the character finished embarrassing themselves! I do a lot of 10 second skips in streaming.

          2. Cold and Tired*

            I genuinely don’t know how I watched tv before I could pause it. The secondhand embarrassment gets so intense I also have to take breaks, so I’m with you on the cool down laps.

      3. kiwiii*

        I’m the opposite; the thought that there are early season Michaels running around somewhere cringes me right to nausea.

        1. Alexander Graham Yell*

          I worked for one and I had to take a break from The Office re-runs at the time – I loved the show but I couldn’t handle living with a mean Michael Scott and then watching one on TV.

      4. RussianInTexas*

        I’ve worked in the office my entire work life and I do not like it at all.
        I don’t like cringe humor.

    3. Manic Pixie HR Girl*

      I love it and it regularly makes me laugh, but as an HR manager some of the scenarios make me cringe! (And how Toby AND Holly were able to keep their jobs, I really don’t understand!)

    4. Snow Globe*

      I’d add the movie Office Space. “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.”—one person in every office I’ve ever worked at.

      1. NeedRain47*

        Also one person who’s really weirdly possessive about their office supplies even tho they belong to the employer….

        1. Chinookwind*

          Spoken like somebody who has never had their “good stapler” borrowed by someone only to have it replaced with a cheap one that breaks after every 3 uses or only staples less than 5 pages. I totally understand wanting to lay claim to a top of line Swingline.

        2. Mr. Shark*

          It’s not just one person, though. I think especially in places where you have cubicles, everything you have is what little you can scratch out. I’ve had my chair stolen before. Why? Because it was better than someone elses apparently. You should have some personal property for you office space. There’s no harm if someone borrows your stapler at your desk, but to take it? No, that’s not cool. I’ve had people try to steal my pens (which I brought from home). USB fans, other things like that, which may or may not be the company’s property.

      2. Corkey's Wife Bonnie*

        Oh gosh I worked with a guy just like that water with 37 pieces of flair but in an office setting…which was way worse. Heck he even looked like the actor.

    5. BBB*

      the office (and office space) are far too relatable for us corporate cogs
      i once worked in an office that held a meeting to talk about how we all had too many meetings…. the resolution was to add another regularly occurring mandatory meeting. I wish I were joking.

    6. Blinx*

      Exactly! Before the US version came out I binge watched the UK version. It took me a few episodes to see the humor because it was so depressingly accurate!!

      1. SweetTooth*

        Yes! The British version definitely leaned into the bleak side of things, whereas the American version has more levity. I wouldn’t have wanted to see more than the 12 episodes plus a special of the British office, but I fully enjoyed the American office all the way until Michael left.

    7. LU*

      When I got my first job out of college (customer service for an IT reseller), my little brother’s friend asked me what work was like. I told him it was like The Office but not funny.

    8. beanie gee*

      My husband, who has never worked in an office environment, said he didn’t like The Office because “it’s not realistic.” Me, who has only worked in an office environment, feels like it’s entirely too realistic.

    9. SurlyAF*

      Years ago I called in sick on a Monday because I was still feeling terrible after having oral surgery on Saturday. When I returned to work the next day, my boss asked if I was feeling better, requested details on the procedure, and then asked me to open my mouth so he could see what was done!! This was probably 2002, so before The Office aired. I hate the dentist named Crentist episode because that scene reminds me of that toxic boss.

      1. TeenieBopper*

        I think there’s a show called The Librarians. Don’t think they shelved a book that whole series either. Is your job like that?

          1. kicking-k*

            My kids have a running joke that this is what I do. I’m not even a librarian ! (I’m an archivist.)

        5. 'calla-Kid*

          Well, Libraries and Librarians are magic to me, but not the way The Librarians portray them!! That would be so cool….

          1. janestclair*

            Fellow archivist here! I usually find myself saying “that’s not how any of this works” when I see archives-related stuff in pop culture. Parks and Rec is one of my favorite shows, but the episode where Chris sends Tom to “digitize the entire city archives” makes me ragey every time.

      2. Lavender*

        I work part-time in a university library—my title is literally “shelver” and I don’t shelve as many books as librarians do on TV.

        1. Onelia*

          I used to oversee shelving in an academic library, but that work was mostly done by students and very little volume. I still work in the library but now my life revolves around Excel sheets, budgets, and intellectual property concerns. Not at all what people would expect!

          1. Lavender*

            Yeah, all the shelvers where I work (myself included) are grad students. Mostly I just do miscellaneous admin work, some of which is shelving but there’s a lot of other stuff too.

          2. Sara without an H*

            I recently retired from Tiny College Library. We hired students to do all the shelving. The cataloger who supervised them developed a pretty nifty training program to get them up to speed in Dewey.

            1. Firestar*

              Dewey Readmore Books?

              anyone else know who im talking about here? knowing this site there has to be

        2. Elf on Which Shelf*

          I’m glad it’s called a shelver now. I used to be a “page” and lost track of how many times people asked, “In which book?”

          2. Snoozing not schmoozing*

            In the research library where I worked, pages fetched books from the shelves and shelvers returned them. But with a small staff, everyone shelved first thing in the morning before we opened to the public.

            My son is a shelver in a public library, but I think he does some other odd jobs, too.

      3. ASneakierMailman*

        Also a librarian who rarely sees librarians accurately portrayed in media (more as obsolete boring desk-warmers). HOWEVER. The movie “The Public” was pretty spot on in my opinion, the major exception being that there would be far fewer men staffing a public library from my experience ;-)

          1. Seal*

            I attended a screening of “The Public” at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in 2019. The audience of mostly librarians loved it, which is a pretty good indication. Emilio Estevez did a Q&A afterwards and he was great. Highly recommend.

        2. Carol the happy elf*

          With glasses. Older librarians also have sweaters buttoned at the top, arms out, and the glasses have a chain that holds them like a weird necklace.

          I did work/study in college, and worked in the Children’s section. (The education majors, the psych majors and the early childhood development were always in there, as were the kids who were in the college’s “Daycare and Guinea Piglet” program.
          I must have shelved 500 kiddie books a day!

          1. Firestar*

            wait did they get to meet baby guinea pigs? THAT’S AMAZING!!!!!!

            no I’m not deranged, no matter what Terry Pratchet would have you believe

            1. kicking-k*

              Despite the five, no, six exclamation marks?

              I’d sign up for anything that involved baby guinea pigs.

      4. another Hero*

        I’m a librarian too and the first thing I think of is the movie The Librarian, which my school librarian when I was a kid showed us every year. yep I definitely hang out with Excalibur. (but in any case, no lol I’m a programmer; sending emails to all kinds of random people and showing members of the public how to attach things to their emails would be boring tv)

        1. Lenora Rose*

          I think the show the Librarians is actually spun off the movie, but the movie is much less known, and I haven’t seen it to be sure.

          1. David*

            There was actually a whole trilogy of movies! Plus the show, which was indeed spun off from them. They’re all quite silly (I mean, not remotely realistic or even logically consistent), of course, but very entertaining if you like that kind of fantasy content.

            1. LobsterPhone*

              Stana Katic is a vampire in one of them – highly recommend a watch just for her having some fun with it :)

      5. Snarky Librarian*

        Same. Nor have I ever sat and read a book while on the job, unless you count the manuals for the various printers that have haunted me throughout my career.

        1. ConstantlyComic*

          I very briefly read at the desk while we were curbside-only during the pandemic, but once we opened the building back up to the public, out branch manager put the kibosh on anything not strictly work-related happening where patrons could see

      6. baffled*

        Library staff does that. All the work people think librarians do, while librarians at my workplace tend to hide from anything hands on.

      7. Felicity Lemon*

        I always liked how Desk Set – the 1950s Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy film – captured some of the vibe of working in corporate libraries, and also remarkably anticipated the question of how automation could change & even eliminate the job. Now, many parts of the plot (drinking/ parties/ romance) are way out of date, but the portrayal of how the staff comes up with ‘magic’ answers, the teamwork involved, and even the office politics, were nicely captured, I thought.

        1. Grey Panther*

          Seconding you re the teamwork/politics, Felicity. This is one of my favorite films, and I also always liked the fact that Tracy’s and Hepburn’s characters were at least in their mid-30s.
          Have to say, though, that I was in the corporate world in the early-mid 1960s, tangentially entertainment-related, and that Christmas party does look kinda familiar …

      8. whyisyourbooksticky*

        School librarian here. Pretty sure if I showed what my day actually looks like in a middle school it would be less believable than anything Hollywood could come up with.

        1. Water is the enemy of books*

          School librarian. Exactly. And let’s talk about the stress and anxiety of book challenges. From the Right and the Left.

        2. Mrs. D*

          +1000

          High school librarian here. There’s so much more that happens here than I’ve ever seen portrayed in any movie or TV. This is definitely not always a quiet space.

      9. Numbers numbers numbers*

        Amazed no one has mentioned Party Girl yet on the librarian front! The only super accurate bit it as the end, though, when Parker Posey is whipping out all the big old reference books.

      10. ineedaname*

        Rural librarian. I’m actually astonished how many librarians don’t do any shelving. Here, everyone shelves when it gets busy.

        I’ve never seen a movie that accurately reflect small, rural libraries. (To be fair, I don’t watch much TV.)

      11. wendelenn*

        Fellow non-shelving librarian here. I love the movie It’s a Wonderful Life but despise that the worst thing that could possibly happen to Mary without George is that she becomes a stereotypical “spinster librarian!

        1. Jules*

          “She’s just about to close up the library!” is a running joke in our family as my mom retired a couple of years ago from being the county librarian in our small town.

      12. Anon for this*

        I started my career as a trainee in an Oxbridge college library (basically a library assistant who’s given additional professional training). Being junior, my job did involve a lot of the things people think of as librarian stuff – shelving, stamping books, and not exactly shushing people but definitely sticking my head round the odd corner and giving students who were being too loud a ‘look’ so they’d settle down and let their fellow students study in peace. And there were definitely some eccentrically dressed colleagues.

        Currently a corporate librarian and we don’t own a single book – it’s all research, databases, business cases, and myself and my colleagues are indistinguishable from our professional colleagues. I love my job and coming up with magic answers to research questions, but do sometimes miss the uniqueness of where I started out

        1. Librarian beyond the Shelves We Know*

          Also a librarian, and I always feel like my entire job is spreadsheets, emails, and asking “Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies?”

    3. Dust Bunny*

      I think the closest I’ve seen is on PBS and even they seem to always find what they need in a few minutes instead of spending hours/days/weeks/months/lifetimes combing through stuff. Or completing their search quickly but only because none of the material available was relevant.

      2. Snoozing not schmoozing*

        Our library was used for an episode of one of those PBS shows. Of course our staff did all the research ahead of time, and the cast of the show just pretended to do it from the material we had pulled and flagged for them, and showed it to them and coached them before filming began.

      3. Aitch Arr*

        This is what annoys me about most of those ‘Find Your Roots’/’Who Am I?’ shows.

        We know the librarians/archivists/genealogists have been researching for months in advance!

        1. Also Cute and Fluffy!*

          Movies and television that perpetuates the invisibility of archival labor is a major pet peeve of mine. “I discovered it in the dusty archives” sets my teeth on edge.

          And nobody even thinks about how archivists who are responsible for acquiring collections can have an emotional component to the work, when the creators themselves are actively preparing for their archival legacy they are at the end of their career or at the end of their life.

    4. I'd Rather Be Eating Dumplings*

      There’s a film called Shooting the Past that might be interesting to you. No idea if it’s an accurate representation or not, but I remember really enjoying it.

    5. Similar Sitch*

      Another archivist/librarian here. And yup, nobody portrays what we do properly.
      I’ve shelved plenty of books in my life but *never* when I had the title of librarian ;)

    6. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

      Wait, you mean you don’t, like, fight evil magical entities to locate and protect ancient documents of great power?
      (I’m a librarian. I feel your pain.)

        1. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

          It’s mostly a joke (mostly?)…they’re monstrous beings who guard the Public Library and make entering it a dangerous endeavor. The kids who survive the Summer Reading Program end up forming a teen militia and Book Club (where they use Books as Clubs). In some later episodes, though we find out that part of the librarians insatiable bloodthirst is due to unfair workplace practices (like changing their job descriptions without even a review or pay raise), and they decide to form a union.

          1. My Cabbages!*

            In the book series “Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians”, the Librarians secretly control the world. They also have an enormous vault under Washington DC that holds a copy of everything ever written, which has a self-destructive system that floods the place with lava.

            That’s accurate, right?

          2. MigraineMonth*

            I was part of a post-apocalypse role-playing game where the Librarians were a warrior cult that lived in the Library, scoured the world for surviving books, let anyone read any book in their collection, sent expeditions into the incredibly dangerous stacks, periodically had berserker rages where they harvested town folk to use their skins as parchment, and tattooed their life stories into their own skins for later binding into a book.

      2. SW*

        As a librarian I second this. Or maybe it’s just how I’m demonized from the outside when I tell people they can’t eat lunch in our academic library (bugs like cockroaches will eat paper if hungry enough so it’s important to keep them out).

      1. Professional Lurker*

        And another! Whoo!

        More seriously, though, never seen an accurate depiction of our job, and rarely of a researcher in an archive. Even my beloved LotR makes me *hurt* with the scene of Gandalf smoking and drinking in Gondor’s archives.

        1. kicking-k*

          They actually showed that scene during my archives training as a “how many no-nos can you spot?” exercise.

    9. MagentaPanda*

      Academic librarian here: I rarely reshelve a book; don’t read the books in our collection on the job; I don’t think I’ve ever shushed anyone in my career; my hair isn’t in a bun; I like to think I’m not uptight; and I don’t wear support hose :-)

        1. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

          There are definitely times I have Committed To The Aesthetic–cardigan, bun, glasses, glasses chain.

        2. MagentaPanda*

          Good question, Richard. Even though I am *ahem* over a certain age, I don’t need reading glasses. My glasses are primarily for distance, and they’re not on a chain :-). I tell you, it’s fun trying to teach or chair a meeting where I’m constantly flipping my glasses on/off (off to read the agenda/notes; on to see students in the back row).

          1. LobsterPhone*

            I have just this week started wearing reading glasses and feel like I have entered my final form as a librarian. Enjoying looking over the top of them at colleagues, waving them around as I talk, whipping them off in exasperation when interrupted and anticipating the deployment of a thoughtful ‘hmm’ while tapping them against something.

      2. Sara without an H*

        Same here. But I do wear wrist braces, since all the years I spent online left me wrist issues.

      3. Kaisa (The Librarian)*

        Public librarian, and I’ve actually been shushed by patrons (more than once)… I work with teens though, so I have had to ask them to keep it down, but that’s usually when it’s getting to the dull roar stage.

        1. Jean Pargetter Hardcastle*

          I have never once said “shh” when asking a patron to lower their volume. I have had multiple patrons tell me to shush.

      4. Tuna Casserole*

        We actually had ‘no shushing’ put into our policies, and the director had signs made that said so.

    10. Kash*

      I am a librarian for a law firm, and I cannot think of a legal drama that knew we existed despite law being a research heavy field a lot of the time.

        1. boo bot*

          They definitely had archives, but I don’t remember if there was a particular archivist/librarian character apart from maybe Wesley in season 5.

          But I realize as I type this that, of course, Buffy had a librarian character, although Giles’ workday probably involved more combat training than is considered average.

        2. kitryan*

          There indeed was an archivist/files person and
          1) the character basically had some sort of mind link to the archive or *were* the archive and could search/find/recite any info from the archive ‘hands free’. They did a cool special effect on her eyes to show the data retrieval happening
          2) they were played by the same actress as Flo from the Progressive insurance commercials.

      3. MedLibinMA*

        Another Medical librarian in a hospital here. Half the people in the hospital don’t know I exist. But when I started 90% didn’t which is still fewer than the 99.9% outside of the hospital. I just told someone last night I was a medical librarian and they said “oh you get books for the patients?” hahahahaha

      1. Timothy (TRiG)*

        The archivist uppermost in my mind is everyone’s favourite Gary Brannon, Gary Brannon, so serious historical knowledge coupled with fart jokes.

    12. old but recently minted archivist*

      I do wear cardigans and cats eye reading glasses, but that’s for Fashion. Afaik, it’s not an actual job requirement.

      1. Critical Rolls*

        I think librarians as a group tend to dress practically. It’s just a misperception that that that also means frumpy!

      2. Kash*

        My favorite moment at work was on Halloween when someone came dressed as a “librarian” and I watched an unknowing librarian walk over to her, tell her how much she loved her cardigan, and then after a long, thoughtful pause and with much despair, asked “That’s your costume, isn’t it?”

      3. Crunch*

        My academic library actually bought the whole staff logo cardigans. Coming over from public libraries where my operational job skills mostly focused on conflict deescalation, biohazard cleanup and public assistance tool navigation it was kind of a pleasant shock.

    13. Mother of Corgis*

      There is a horror podcast called Magnus Archives that is mainly about an archivist, but I doubt its at all accurate given the horror aspect lol.

      1. SW*

        I for one am glad our special collections department said no to collecting books bound in human skin but not every library was that ethical. There’s also the horror of how many libraries and collections still have nonconsensual human remains.

      2. Agnes Montague*

        Exactly none of the archives staff know anything about archives (which does get lampshaded at one point!), but lbr that’s very much by design…

      3. Tim Stoker*

        One time on twitch Johnny (the writer and star) said “I didn’t do any research on archives for this” and the chat was a waterfall of “WE KNOW.”

          1. Tim Stoker*

            oh 100% that’s why I was watching the twitch streams :D light banter, plus he researched nearly everything else

    15. Miss V*

      You mean you don’t put lemon juice on the back of the Declaration of Independence to search for secret maps like they did in National Treasurw?

    16. Holly*

      Librarian here, and yeah same. So many stereotypes, so little time… really though if they showed what my job was, it would just be half of the week in meetings and the other half in word or excel documents. Not exactly riveting material haha.

    17. Bunny Watson*

      Also a librarian, and just love how librarians on TV hand over circulation records to the police without batting an eye.

      1. Ev*

        Or gossip to randos about what people check out! I have to stop whatever I’m watching for a five minute rant every time that happens on a movie/show.

      2. Tuna Casserole*

        I laughed out loud at a cop show where a librarian says they keep a record of every site accessed on public computers and then happily handed that over to the police.

        1. Librarian of Many Hats*

          I have yelled at the TV, “That’s not how this works!” It was an episode of Law & Order. I expect better from them. I’d have let it go if it were any other franchise.

          As for reading on the job…I wish. I’m an environmental librarian embedded in a university research unit. I read a lot for my job (on the clock even) but it isn’t for fun. I mostly spend the day on my computer, which does not make for exciting TV. I’m all about a good cardigan and comfortable shoes though.

        2. TomatoSoup*

          Yeah. I seem to recall a group of librarians very vocally pushing back on legislation concerning that very topic.

    18. Yowza*

      You mean people solving cold cases and otherwise delivering justice to the world aren’t always stopping in to ask the question that leads to the evidence that solves the case?

      1. Another librarian*

        My library totally had a guy working in the computer lab and printing stuff out for his private investigation business. The guy appeared to do mostly insurance fraud and divorce / custody cases.

      1. Myrin*

        The archive I started working in in November is indeed dusty but that’s a bug, not a feature! (And yes, I am slowly working my way through getting everything un-dusted, making sure all the boxes are properly closed (!) etc. but man, the look I sport sometimes after rummaging around there all day only lacks the cobwebs…)

      2. Crunch*

        The FDLP stacks where I used to work had a post it that said “Dusted 6/96” high up on three ranges. I started in October of 2016.

    21. SeluciaMD*

      It’s more of a sci-fi show but I’d be curious to hear your take on Archive 81. The main character is an archivist who works on things like digitizing things previously on film, or restoring and/or preserving old film footage of varying mediums for the Museum of the Moving Image in NYC. Having no idea of what that job might look like in real life, it…..felt…accurate? LOL.

    22. Tomato Frog*

      Best portrayal I’ve seen was in the film Enough Said where James Gandolfini plays an AV archivist. It doesn’t show much of his work, but when Julia Louis-Dreyfus asks him what he does, he says dubiously “Do you really want to know?” in the exact tone I have used when people ask me about my work. When she assures him that she does, he lists some things archivists actually do, which is good. But the delivery of “Do you really want to know?” spoke to my archivist soul.

    23. just some guy*

      You’ve never had to hold things together for a century because your boss got trapped in a magic circle in place of his sister?

      1. Random European*

        Honestly, I spent half the tv show wondering why Lucienne is so eager to keep running things. The library of Dream just reappeared, presumably with most of the 20th century’s additions and all of the 21st’s. And she does not seem to have any staff. There’s cataloguing to do, damnit.

        1. kicking-k*

          Maybe the catalogue appeared along with them? But then again, it might be the catalogue plus all possible catalogues, which wouldn’t be very helpful.

    24. calcifer*

      I’m a public librarian and my favorite fictional public librarians are the terrible ones from Parks and Rec. It’s not a very accurate portrayal unless you have the misfortune of working for a really awful library but I do think it’s funny.

      1. Jean Pargetter Hardcastle*

        I do think Parks & Rec is a pretty accurate reflection in a lot of ways of what it’s like to work for municipal government.

        1. calcifer*

          Agreed! I had a coworker who was a first time municipal government employee and she told me that my work stories reminded her of the resident forum scenes from Parks and Rec.

      2. Ash*

        Saaaaame! The most accurate part of that show is the bizarre animosity between Libraries and Parks & Rec, but that might only apply to our region, specifically.

    25. Safety First*

      I believe Henry from The Time Traveler’s Wife is an archivist. Honestly, I have blocked the movie out, so I have no idea if it even came up, but his love of the collection and interactions with coworkers figures prominently in the (amazing) book.

    26. LCH*

      Ok, I just saw a French show last night that involved the police records department. The storage area, work area, and how to request materials all looked pretty accurate. They also gave a layman’s description of the records lifecycle where some were destroyed after a period of time and some were archived.

    27. kicking-k*

      Me too – I’m always amused by the way that archivists on fictional shows always know whatever they’re being asked right away (I think the peak of this was the archivist on *Angel*, but then she was quite likely either a demon or had a contract with the powers of evil, so…)

      Quite a few archivists I know have been on “Who Do You Think You Are?” which, though a bit more accurate, does tend to give people the impression that even in an archive with a public reading room, we will do your research for you.

  4. EMP*

    My background is in machine vision and while very recently machine learning has enabled “computer, enhance” a lot more effectively, nearly any kind of computer-enabled visualizer is wildly out of proportion. If anyone remembers the Angelator on Bones…I know (hope?) people understood that as a plot mechanic but it still made me sigh a little inside.

    1. Catwhisperer*

      Love Bones, also loved the magical holograms coming out of the Angelatron towards the end of the series.

    2. ScruffyInternHerder*

      Favorite show and yes, I took that thing to be a definite plot device rather than….reality.

    3. Blujay*

      I hear you- There are many things on Bones that made me sigh as someone who studied bio archaeology. I had to be in the right mood to watch it.

      1. Jean Pargetter Hardcastle*

        My spouse and I are rewatching Bones currently and keep saying “This…this can’t be right, right?” (Neither of us has ever worked in anything remotely adjacent to law, law enforcement, psychology, or science.)

    4. Mr. Cajun2core*

      I do remember the Angelator. I was in IT for years but not in that area and it was obvious that it was not accurate.

    5. Anonariffic*

      I do video forensic work and “computer, enhance” is the bane of my existence. There is no magic wand filter that I can wave to get you a readable license plate number on 240p video where the entire car passing in the distance is only 4 or 5 pixels wide! It’s just not there!

      2. Mr. Shark*

        haha, well you’re just not good at your job, are you! :)
        I wish we could have that level of computer enhancement (sometimes). Other time it might just get you into trouble!

    6. Falling Diphthong*

      Castle once had a bit where the suspect’s face was reflected in something, so they tried to enhance it, and… it didn’t work. I’m so used to TV portraying “here’s a smudge with 5 pixels, press a couple of buttons and you have a headshot.”

    7. ChemistbyDay*

      I loved the Angelatron! But even as someone with zero background, I could see it was 1000% not realistic. Especially being designed by an artist….

      1. As Close As Breakfast*

        That was my favorite part of it all, lol. Angela acted like, and was treated like, she was totally different from the other squints and ‘just an artist.’ Yet… she completely developed this super advanced and amazing Angelatron?!?! In my book that makes her a totally amazing super squint!

    8. Twix*

      Mathematical modeling specialist here, and same. My two biggest pet peeves are “Match a low-resolution still photo of a skyline to a location? Sure, this’ll be a great test of the 2D to 3D mapping tool of the entire planet I threw together this weekend” and “Sure, I can run the simulation using a duffel bag instead. Let me just pull up my duffel bag database. Did you have a particular manufacturer, material, and factory in mind?” It drove me nuts that Angela was portrayed as the “normal” one among geniuses even though in the real world she’d easily be the most accomplished.

    9. Snarkus Aurelius*

      I always roll my eyes at Law & Order: SVU where they quickly enhance some blurry ATM photo and it’s crystal clear in five seconds.

  5. Up and Away*

    The HR person I can remember seeing is Toby from The Office!! And he seemed kind of beaten down, LOL. I can relate.

    2. ThatGirl*

      You might enjoy Mythic Quest on Apple TV+, which is a workplace comedy about a video game development company. The poor HR lady!

      1. Amber T*

        I absolutely love Mythic Quest. For me, it’s the head of Customer Feedback (I can’t remember her actual title). Having played an MMORPG for a good chunk of my life, I can only imagine the horrors someone in that role goes through. I love how she’s always so preppy and cheery while describing the awfulness she’s on the receiving end of. No spoilers for the latest season, but she has the *funniest* scene with David.

    3. Bumblebee Mask*

      I work specifically in benefits and the Health Insurance episode almost made me stop watching. I kept thinking that’s not remotely at all how that works.

      That’s also the reason I almost stopped watching Son’s of Anarchy. Murdering people in cold blood I’m apparently fine with, but Tig getting turned away from the hospital ER because they didn’t take his insurance was a line that couldn’t be crossed. :D

    4. Constance Lloyd*

      The au breakable Kimmy Schmidt has a delightful scene in which one of the characters asks to with “Linda in HR” and in response is asked, “Which one?”

      (The overarching plot of the episode can be summarized as, “Who names a baby Linda!?” and all of the Linda’s in HR indeed used nicknames when they were younger.)

      1. Middle of HR*

        I think about the Lindas all the time! I am not one literally, but I feel like a Linda some days, in my HR heart.

  6. old curmudgeon*

    Well, it seems as though accountants are usually portrayed either as buffoons in green eye-shades and sleeve garters or else as criminal masterminds, which I would like to think is not an accurate depiction of my profession.

    But then, I’m just not sure it would be possible to develop a riveting storyline based on designing and building cost allocation definitions, so a certain amount of hyperbole in depicting accountants is likely understandable.

    1. Boring...*

      Ugh, no one would want to watch the true to life portrayal of the most boring job in the world. And, yes I have been accountant for 20 years.

      1. old curmudgeon*

        I’ve always heard that it’s actuaries who have the most boring job in the world, with accountants coming in a close second, but there’s honestly not much difference between the two.

        1. Grammar Penguin*

          I don’t know, actuarial science is about quantifying the likelihood of unlikely events. That could be pretty fun, or at least interesting, if you have the math skills for it.

        2. Elenna*

          As an actuary, I can 100% guarantee that nobody, including me, wants to watch a realistic movie about my job.

          1. EJ*

            I used to use the Ben Stiller movie “along came polly” to introduce the idea of what an actuary is, and then say that it isn’t at all what I do, lol. But now no one remembers that movie! My kids do love that there is a super villain called The Actuary!

      2. RJ*

        I know what you mean. The only times it’s been portrayed in some sort of ‘excitement’ is on procedural shows like Law & Order where some crime has taken place. It’s surprising to note that money laundering wasn’t on my school’s curriculum, but according to L&L, almost all of those accountants studied it. They must have been forensic accounting majors.

      3. Dramatic Accounting*

        The thing about accounting is that it applies to literally every industry and location, and believe me, it can get very interesting at times. Speaking as an accountant whose bank branch was attacked by protesters with flaming tires this morning, in a country whose currency is devaluing so fast that prices are changing daily (if not multiple times a day). But I appreciate that nonetheless, this job is probably still not what the media will choose to dramatise.

      1. Chaos*

        Yes, that was my last job and its not anywhere other than used in that Ben Stiller movie where he used a risk program to tell him how risky a client was for life insurance.

      2. Grammar Penguin*

        Well, there is Double Indemnity, a 1944 film directed by Billy Wilder, co-written by him and Raymond Chandler, is the story of murder plot and life insurance fraud scheme. Stars Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and the legendary Edward G. Robinson. It’s great drama and practically defines the film noir genre, and a detail of the insurance policy is a key plot point and right there in the title.

        Now that I think of it, the protagonist/antihero was an insurance salesman and the antagonist was his co-worker, the company adjuster. Their boss, the one who sweated bullets over every dollar the company ever had to pay out, may have been the underwriter but my memory is unclear. So your point stands.

        1. Luca*

          Not about insurance, but DI contains a legendary visual error that Billy Wilder knowingly did for storytelling purposes.

          Fred MacMurray’s apartment door opens outward into the corridor, which then as now violates fire safety codes. Wilder took this bit of dramatic license to get the scene where Robinson unexpectedly shows up at MacMurray’s apartment, right after McMurray has told Stanwyck to come on over.

        2. Just a guy in an office*

          I was just thinking of Double Indemnity, since I watched it just a couple of months ago.

      3. merula*

        YUP!!! P&C Underwriter here. I have to constantly explain that it’s not Life & Health, it’s like your house/car insurance, but no, I don’t know anything about personal lines.

        There’s a brief bit in The Incredibles where Mr Incredible’s boss talks about how they work in insurance, though it seems to be Claims. And then in Zootopia there’s a kid who says they want to be an actuary, only the description sounds like they meant accountant. But no one’s ever an underwriter.

    3. A Simple Narwhal*

      Any thoughts on Ben in Parks and Rec? He’s an accountant, plus I love Barney/the accounting firm he keeps almost working for and they get so excited and then devastated each time he accepts and then has to back out.

      2. Keeley Jones, The Independent Woman*

        Ben is actually pretty accurate IMO. I don’t work in accounting but do work on a team that does a lot of calculations/math. We were recently at a conference for our entire larger department that included more sales, recruiting, and marketing people. We had recently joined that division after being under finance for many years due to a company report, so we didn’t know what to expect. There was an evening dinner that also had DJ and a Photo Booth, Jenga, and other games like that. It was far too loud for my team, so we found a quiet conference room and my grandboss had brought a strategy type card came and we played that. We did joke we were a bit like Barney and the other accountants when they got Cones of Dunshire.

      3. Mefois*

        I’m an accountant and can confirm that Ben is absolutely the most accurate portrayal of an accountant I’ve ever seen. And accountants do actually love dumb accounting puns. I have a cross stitch hanging in my cube that says “it’s accrual world” and always get compliments on it.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        My SO & I have both worked in local government. So much truth in Parks & Rec about what that’s like.

    5. Warrior Princess Xena*

      An older one that I enjoyed was the accountant from The Untouchables, a movie about the bringing down of Capone. He got so excited about the prospect of bringing Capone down through… taxes.

      On a slightly different note, I thought the Untouchables ALSO did a really good job of portraying Capone & organized crime at the time; a veneer of good citizenship hiding the nastiness that was the crime organization.

      1. Scandinavian Vacationer*

        Loved the movie The Laundromat (Meryl Streep) and also The Queen of Horses. Would be interested to hear an accountant’s perspective on these 2 films.

        1. k*

          “All the Queen’s Horses” is a fascinating movie to me, for two reasons: one, I work in accounting; and two, I’m one degree away (a la Kevin Bacon) from the woman who’s the subject of the movie. It’s also the only interesting movie I know of about my field of work.

          I have long giggled at the very cliche dig at “so-and-so from accounting” as a reference to a stick-in-the-mud coworker or unattractive coworker, and I would love for someone who’s very good with internet searching to tell us when it entered the lexicon!

        2. Warrior Princess Xena*

          I have found that in general the films specifically done to show major frauds tend to be accurate but slightly overdramatized, usually in the scenes where ‘self-justification’ is being portrayed. From my discussion with a forensic auditor college professor and a number of other professionals the slippery slope tends to be a lot more internal and sometimes unacknowleged.

          “The Big Short” was on our syllabus in my upper level accounting class and I think the only reason Queen of Horses wasn’t was because it was relatively new (it came out in 2017 I think?)

    6. Lizzo*

      What about forensic accountants? Surely there’s some possible drama and intrigue in that part of the profession!

      1. kendall^2*

        Not a movie/TV portrayal, but in Carrie Vaughn’s _After the Golden Age_, the daughter of two superheroes, who is not a superhero herself, is a forensic accountant. I don’t have enough inside knowledge to know how accurate the portrayal is (and while it is part of the plot, it isn’t the whole plot).

      2. Hannah Lee*

        There was The Accountant that Ben Affleck movie where I think that’s what his character was. At least the legal side of his work.

        1. Fitz*

          Some accountant friends and I went to see that movie as a joke (I made Bingo cards), but there was ONE scene where he and Anna Kendrick finally find the transactions/evidence they’re looking for and god the excitement felt so familiar.

        2. SINE*

          I worked in forensic accounting for almost a decade years and what got me the most about that movie was how 1) they set him up in a beautiful windowed conference room and 2) all the documents were produced overnight, all neatly organized in boxes. Pretty sure I yelled OH COME ON at the screen.

    7. MJ*

      They only bother portraying us if there’s a specific reason, so it’s either an impediment (buffoon who can’t do anything right) or the criminal mastermind who is skimming funds.

      Never mind that accountant covers a lot of different jobs (auditor, tax accountant, controller, finance manager) that don’t really do the same thing.

      1. Grammar Penguin*

        I read a while back that the FBI employs more forensic accountants than they do field agents. So you’d think there’s some potential drama in their stories.

        1. Warrior Princess Xena*

          Oh there is! The challenge that comes up in portraying it in film is twofold:

          1. Usually we see forensic accounting as it ties to a specific case/fraud – for some good examples, All the Queen’s Horses, the Big Short, Bad Blood, or The Smartest Guys in the Room are all related to recent cases. In a lot of these the focus tends to be on the fraudsters and the overall history of the fraud, especially when the fraudsters themselves are very compelling studies in human psychology.

          2. The actual process of forensic accounting is incredibly tedious. Usually it involves huge amounts of dataset analysis, interviews with office staff, and endless tracking down of invoices, receipts, confirmations with banks, etc. So it tends to be condensed into some snippets of activity, especially the ‘ah-HA’ moments when all the information coalesces, but not a lot of the actual process.

          My read is that it’s not inaccurate, just slightly dramatized for film and without the portrayal of the days and weeks of reviewing documents that actually is behind all those ah ha moments.

      2. SeluciaMD*

        And according to the ridiculous (but entertaining) Ben Affleck movie “The Accountant”, they can not only be geniuses that help criminal masterminds, they can be geniuses that ferret out criminal masterminds, and also be snipers/contract killers?

        I thought the way the forensic accountant investigators from the Treasury Department were portrayed in that movie was interesting, but I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that the primary one was played by JK Simmons and I pretty much love anything he’s ever done.

    8. learnedthehardway*

      I did see a movie once about a forensic accountant who worked for organized crime – The character was an autistic accountant who had gotten put in prison on a manslaughter conviction (I think), and somehow ended up learning accounting from a mob accountant who had been imprisoned.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accountant_(2016_film)

      Anyway, it was somewhat interesting but there was not a whole lot of actual accounting done in it.

      1. Fitz*

        He did handwrite all his figures on conference room windows instead of using a spreadsheet and that was, um, very visually striking.

    9. Esus4*

      There’s a really good Dick Francis mystery starring an accountant. He shows how satisfying the work can be (as he does with all of the professions he explores).

    10. Rose*

      I feel like accountants are always the uptight person in the rom com who meets the wild irresponsible person and their dog and has to learn who to relax

      1. Dedicated1776*

        In my experience, accountants are some wild mfs (been one for 18 years, so I know a few). But there is a hive mind for sure. There’s an early episode of the original Tick cartoon where Arthur is at his accounting job wearing his moth suit and his boss tells him to take it off because his “rampant display of individuality is making the other accountants nervous” and I think I’ve hardly heard anything truer about my people.

    11. Moby Duck*

      You mean to say that you *don’t* run a side hussle as a detective/assassin?!?

      (As in the film The Accountant starring Ben Afflick and Anna Kendrick)

    1. reject187*

      Same. I mourn the lack of professionalism in most TV schools. But I suppose without some type of scandal there wouldn’t be anything to watch. I avoid school-based shows entirely because I keep a running commentary on why it’s completely illogical how “thing” could be allowed to happen.

      1. Meep*

        I am not saying it is a good thing, but some of my college professors have definitely acted like they are on a TV show.

        1. Very Anon For This*

          I don’t know – that time I got high with my thesis advisor reminded me a LOT of the Donald Sutherland scenes from Animal House… but that’s probably not the majority experience.

      2. Butterfly Counter*

        This was my thought, at least with the academic politics and the behind-the-scenes bureaucracy. The drama stuff: not so much.

      3. Alice*

        I came here to say this. The tenured professor who gives a promising colleague a bad review because he can’t understand her teaching methods? The other professor who has no office or no heating or no light? I have seen pretty similar stories.

        1. Grammar Penguin*

          While both are being pressed into early retirement because they’re the highest paid but bring in the least revenues due to low enrollment in their classes. I’m no academic, far from it, but that seemed pretty spot on.

          1. Grammar Penguin*

            (and to be fair, the department really can’t afford to keep them. The dean is trying to keep the entire English department from being cut altogether.)

        2. Blackcat*

          The treatment of a junior female scholar of color was really spot on.

          I also think it captured elements of the fact that colleges/universities are by and large deeply conservative in their actual operations even if run by people who are politically liberal.

    3. UncleFrank*

      YES!!! Anytime a professor even LOOKS at a student on a TV show I immediately start rooting for bad things to happen to them and just generally ranting. I know I’m a broken record to my husband but some things should not be normalized!!!!!!

    4. ferrina*

      You mean Viola Lawson’s character on How To Get Away With Murder isn’t an accurate portrayal? (love that show, but had to suspend a lot of disbelief)

      1. Albert "Call Me Al" Ias*

        I’ve known several law professors (some of them relatives). None of them has ever helped their students cover up a murder.

        3. IDIC believer*

          Our major university college of law had an assistant dean who watched kiddie p*rn on a computer in the support office on nights & weekends. Our IT discovered & provided evidence to police. This guy was convicted of being part of a multi-state ring, and evidence included pics of his twin toddlers.

          No one would have EVER suspected him! The powers-to-be even made a point of modifying his real/nickname after to make the connection to the college difficult.

    5. outdoor office worker*

      I worked at a community college for a long time, and though “Community” just made the college staff members (hilarious) caricatures, I thought it was pretty accurate in its portrayal of students. Community colleges DO serve students from a super wide variety of backgrounds, age ranges, and motivations.

      1. Liane*

        Maybe I should get with my friend (a scriptwriter) to do a show inspired by my community college profs:

        The science dean who was not only wise and personable but once wrote big name biology textbook authors about a pretty obvious error and gleefully showed off the copy of the corrected edition he got as a thank you.

        The biology professor who shot a big rattlesnake outside his house (this was in a very rural area) and we got to watch him dissect it. He also dressed up for a college-wide Halloween costume contest as the biblical St. Peter (yes, Peter was his given name) complete with a 70s decorative fishing net over his shoulder.

        And finally the sociology professor who ended up retiring after a long academic career because he couldn’t prove a lot of the items on his CV. When this came out (the original newspaper article is still online), he claimed all his degrees and credentials were in other names because —
        his first career was CIA Spy!

        1. Chidi has a stomach ache*

          Honestly, the true stories about colleagues I’ve had in academia are good enough that I’m surprised there aren’t more comedies/shows about them! For better (and sometimes for worse) academia is a place where personality quirks are much more openly expressed, which can make for some great stories. Wish I saw them more often, instead of the dour versions of profs we typically get.

          1. Felis alwayshungryis*

            I grew up with an academic parent. Those professors were some of the coolest, most fun people I’ve ever encountered. The parties were great fun for us as kids.

          2. Pierrot*

            I remember having a pretty candid conversation about tenure with my advisor in college about an older professor who had so many inappropriate relationships with students that he was banned from teaching freshman seminars.
            My professor said: “In the 20 years I’ve taught here, only one professor with tenure was ever fired. She was fired for having a gun in her desk drawer and showing it to someone in menacing way.” But the majority of my professors were brilliant, kooky people and I’d watch a show based on that premise!

            Also to be clear, I’m 100% pro-tenure but I do think there are issues when it protects professors with a) a track record of sexual harassment/misconduct or b) professors who are open about being white supremacists (Amy Wax). Neither of those things are “academic freedom” and it’s unfortunate that colleges won’t hold these tenured professors accountable when there are so many talented adjuncts who would love to get tenure.

        2. ferrina*

          I had a psychology prof who had worked for a long time in the prison system. He started his 101 classes by saying “I have been in X Prison, Y Institution, Z Correctional Facility….as a psychologist, of course.”

          He would also walk on tables when he felt class was getting too boring. Wouldn’t even miss a beat in his lecture, just casually step onto the table and walk from one side of the room to the other via tables.

          1. Free now and forever*

            My criminal law professor, whose first name was Loftus, used to speak to the class while looking at an angle out the classroom windows and making and unmaking church steeples with his fingers. I tried to persuade the class to do the same and see how long he’d take to notice. Sadly, they refused to go along. Law students are not a fun-loving bunch.

          2. Esus4*

            I had a wonderful history professor as an undergrad. During discussion sections, when he was trying to get us to talk with each other instead of just listening to him, he would climb under the table. He was not young, either.

        3. Olivia*

          I had this sociology professor who first of all was a pretty bad instructor. He spent class rambling about all kinds of pessimistic nonsense that was only tangentially related to the topic at hand, but his tests were exclusively based on the textbook, so class always felt like a giant waste of time. And that would have been bad enough, but he was also really creepy. I took this class in my first year at age 20, so at the time I didn’t fully realize how creepy and not okay his behavior was. But he mostly called on girls, and sometimes he would compliment how they looked in their outfits. And if I recall correctly, I think his general affect or demeanor seemed weird.

          Whenever I would go to that class in the social sciences building, I would always pass this one office that had a print of René Magritte’s “Young Girl Eating a Bird” (which is exactly what it sounds like, and it is a live bird, not a plate of chicken) on the door. I’ve always loved Magritte but every time I passed it I would think, who the hell would have that on their door? Then one time I saw this professor walk out of that office. Because of course it was his office. Of course it was.

          Definitely the type of character I could imagine being on a show.

          The other title of this painting is “Pleasure”.

          1. heeler*

            I had a prof in undergrad who taught the very large intro psych class who was very charismatic but also gave off precisely that vibe you are talking about, and was notorious for his army of blonde conventionally attractive undergraduate women TAs. He retired too early for Me Too, sadly.

        1. Siege*

          Oh god, I wouldn’t. I’ve been an adjunct and in my current role, I support adjuncts, but not as part of an educational institution. The systemic desperation is awful. I still describe adjuncting at CCs as 2 weeks of happy security and then 9 weeks of incredible desperation as you start on the wheel of “where am I teaching next quarter? what am I teaching next quarter? is it going to enroll? it’s not going to enroll – is it program-necessary? will it get a waiver?”

          And of course the two weeks of happy security is the period where you’re learning which of your students are homeless, which are in rehab, which are actively on drugs, who’s going to turn out to be a lying plagiarist (by the end of my second year of teaching I could walk into my classroom on day 3 and tell you who everyone was, it’s not a great superpower). So “happy security” is not 100% accurate.

          But hey, sometimes the lies are hilarious.

          1. Grammar Penguin*

            What you’re describing sounds like a professional hell. Which would surely make for some GREAT television.

            1. Grammar Penguin*

              I think the more horrible a job is to live through, the more entertaining it is for the rest of us to watch. See: every police or war story ever. Or this blog.

    7. fueled by coffee*

      I don’t know what you mean. Personally, every time I teach a college course, my lecture each day happens to perfectly relate to whatever is going on in my students’ personal lives, though it’s never really clear if my class is Biology or English composition or Art History, it sort of just depends on whatever is relevant to my students. If our campus is often dark and gloomy and kind of foggy, with lots of ravens flying around, I definitely make sure to talk about witches and werewolves a lot so that my students know they’re Definitely Not Real. I assign lots of vague essays like “Write about a time when you showed integrity” or “Tell me about a challenge you are facing.” There are bells to signal the end of class, but my students will stay late because they are so invested in the discussion.

      Occasionally, I am questioned by the police about a suspicious student. They do not come to my office; instead they politely wait outside the door of my classroom until I finish my lesson for the day. I know lots of personal details about each individual student in my 300-person lecture and will share FERPA-protected information with the police in the middle of a crowded hallway.

      I would love the honor of being department chair and can think of nothing I want to do more. My graduate students are either brilliant scholars with 17 tenure-track job offers at Ivy League institutions, or on their 12th year of writing their dissertations. Again, it sort of depends on if they’re supposed to be the “out-of-touch significant other who is only focused on their career” or the “out-of-touch significant other who can’t get a real job and won’t contribute to the rent.”

      3. goddessoftransitory*

        Hee, that first description sounds like Christopher Lee’s character in City of the Damned where he teaches, apparently, one seminar a year (with nothing but WILDLY inaccurate information) about witchcraft in New England. He also is secretly a 200 year old devil worshipper who apparently picks out at least one eager grad student per semester to send off to be sacrificed by his coven. No one in authority has put this together at all.

    8. heeler*

      The worst recent example: The Good Place and its handling of Chidi’s arc.

      He hasn’t finished his thesis (presumably his dissertation??), and he’s a professor, and he wants to switch fields and be mentored by another professor, whom he is also dating????

      1. Dovasary Balitang*

        That’s not really accurate. Chidi never switches fields from philosophy and Simone is never his mentor. It’s more of a cross-department collaboration.

        1. heeler*

          I just watched this episode! Chidi refers to the neurosci project as his “new thesis” and is clearly following Simone’s lead. I don’t know if he ever uses the words “mentor” or “advisor” to describe her but it looked to me a lot like a senior-junior partnership, not a collaborative project. And even if not for all of that: Why, oh why is someone who has not finished the thesis a professor in this universe?

          1. Dovasary Balitang*

            Hm! You raise a good point. Admittedly, the Simone episodes were less interesting to me than the latter half of season three, so I might have missed some finagling details.

          2. ShanShan*

            I mean, I was teaching classes at my university long before I finished my thesis. A lot of graduate students do. It’s literally how an enormous number of us pay for the degree.

            He also only refers to it as his “thesis.” He doesn’t tell us what degree that thesis is in service of. It’s entirely possible that he’s teaching with a master’s degree while working toward a Ph.D. That’s a very common situation at institutions that consider a master’s degree terminal, especially since he seems to be teaching 101-style survey courses. We never see him working with grad students or even with smaller seminars — it’s always a huge lecture hall, which in the humanities probably means a low-level class.

            Speaking as someone who teaches at a university, none of this sounds farfetched to me. He’s never Dr. Anagonye — just “professor,” which is a very nebulous term and might just be a colloquialism for a more specific title.

            1. heeler*

              As a humanities professor and a PhD who teaches both big 101 classes and smaller seminars at a US state flagship university: In any university context I have ever participated in or heard of, the use of the title “professor” is heavily regulated, and in the vast, vast majority of fields, philosophy included, not all PhDs are professors, and every professor must have a PhD. Undergraduates may mix things up sometimes and call someone a professor who is a graduate instructor, postdoc, adjunct, etc. and whose actual title is Ms./Mx./Mr. or Dr., but that person wouldn’t have “professor” on their door or on their CV or website, and would get in massive trouble for misrepresenting their credentials if they tried. And the title “professor” is actually a lot less heavily restricted in the USA than in other places. Early tenure-track folks whose title is “assistant professor” at my university have equivalents in the UK, Europe, and much of the Commonwealth who are at the same level and have permanent contracts, but are called “lecturer” or something else like that. tl;dr Chidi can’t be Prof. Anagonye in any philosophy department that I know of on Earth and not have a PhD.

              1. Just a guy in an office*

                When I was a journalism student at a state university, the student paper wasn’t allowed to use the title “Dr.” in articles for anyone except medical doctors (and we didn’t have a med school at the time). It made perfect sense, since every other person on campus was a PhD.

        2. heeler*

          I just watched this episode! Chidi refers to the neurosci project as his “new thesis,” and clearly seems to be following Simone’s lead on the project, although I don’t think he uses the *words* “mentor” or “advisor.” And even if that weren’t the case, why, oh, why is someone who hasn’t finished his thesis yet a professor in this universe??

      2. Hanani*

        Absolutely! And frankly, it could have all been “fixed” if they just had him working on his book manuscript rather than his thesis/diss. Switching fields and being mentored by/collaborating with someone he’s dating is a thing that happens (was true for one of my grad professors), though the conflict of interest should have probably set off more alarm bells for a strict Kantian.

        1. heeler*

          Totally agree with your idea for a fix! Plenty of people write a dissertation that is totally unreadable by anyone outside their small small subfield and then have a devil of a time revising as a monograph, although in that case one wonders how he got such a good job. Re dating a cross-field mentor, I have also heard of this happening in previous generations but I think/hope it would be more frowned on these days. I don’t think it’s quite as bad as a thesis advisor dating their student but the power dynamics of it still give me hives.

    9. heeler*

      Why do so many of these shows portray us all as obsessed with becoming the chair, even up to the point of the chair being a motivation for murder?? I have never even heard of a department where someone actually wanted to be the chair. Every department I’ve worked has had the chairship on a 3-year rota and no one was eager for their name to come up.

      1. AcademiaCat*

        Ugh. We’re undergoing the process of selecting a new chair right now, and I swear once a week one of the full professors stops by my office to remind me NOT to put them forward for the role.

        I’m the department manager, so I have to work closely with the chair. The most vocal people about not wanting it? They’re the ones who would be really good at the job. Eventually someone is going to lose this game of “not it.”

        1. Also Cute and Fluffy!*

          “It is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

          –Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

    10. Prof. Pain*

      YES! I’m a professor and basically the entirety of any Hollywood depiction of what we do is pure fantasy—there have been times when I watched movies or television that I wondered if the writers had actually been in a college class. This is especially true for my field, Philosophy, where professors are portrayed as giving the most bizarre, inane assignments (“write ‘God is dead’ on your papers!” “Debate me, personally, in front of the class for a grade!” “Earn extra credit by interviewing people about why college is important!”).

      Also, there was an article in Slate about this years ago but the portrayal of the tenure process in tv and film bears literally zero resemblance to reality. You don’t compete for tenure, tenure is not something you are surprised to learn you’re being considered for, etc. Instead, it is an extremely long and boring process: IF you are even hired in a tenure-eligible position (most faculty aren’t, statistically) you submit your materials for consideration on a set schedule, and you find out on a set schedule. The time from submission to a decision being communicated is usually 6 months or more. There are committee meetings. Decisions happen via formal letter, not casual conversation. No one would want to watch this, ever.

    11. cabbagepants*

      I think that Bunson and Beaker from The Muppets have pretty relatable interactions if you imagine that Bunson is the august old tenured professor and Beaker is Bunson’s graduate student.

      1. My Dear Wormwood*

        Oh lordy there a lab head near us who isn’t supervising his new students closely and it’s us going YOU HAVE TO BALANCE THE CENTRIFUGE OR IT WILL DESTROY ITSELF AND THE NEAREST WALL

    13. Event coordinator?*

      I think of the movie 21- not that it’s unrealistic for a professor to be “involved in student success”, but that the janitors never became upset for meeting at night in a classroom to discuss their blackjack scheme.

    14. JB*

      I’m perpetually confused by how often professors on TV have affairs with their hot grad students. Like, is that a real thing that totally happens all the time? I doubt it.

      2. Majnoona*

        I wonder if the writers are people who went to college and knew professors so they think they know what they do (teach). I saw one show where a professor was involved with a student (No!) and then she transferred to another college and then he transferred there too. No. Being a professor is a job. It’s posted. You apply for it. You probably won’t get it. You don’t just decide to work at college x. Professors don’t “transfer”

      3. Birdie*

        Not ALL the time, but often enough. When I was an undergrad, at an undergrad only institution, two professors married former students. One the weekend after she graduated! And that was just during my 4 years, ending in 2003. And at least 4 of my professors had married an ex-student before I went to school there.

        In grad school, I knew at least 3 people in relationships with professors, one who went on to marry one of her dissertation committee members. He was young, good looking, and an absolutely a rising star in that particular field. But it was still weird AF.

      4. DataSci*

        Not so much “affair” as “blatantly sexually harass” in my (thankfully not personal) experience. Nearly every department in my former field had someone who the older female grad students would warn the younger ones about.

    15. applesauce*

      Some professor friends and I often discuss just how bad at being professors the professors in tv shows we watch are (including Sandra Oh in The Chair).

    16. AnotherSarah*

      YES! I found a lot of truth in The Chair but also soooooo much wrong. And it was wrong in ways that really irked me, not just in little details.

    17. Blackcat*

      To be fair, an accurate portrayal would be so boring.
      Answer email
      Try to write grant, be interrupted by someone asking if the lama grooming program is in this building.
      Teach
      Try to write paper, be interrupted by IT suddenly needing your computer for god knows what.
      Answer email
      Go home
      have dinner
      Answer email
      Lay in bed and regret life choices.

    18. JelloStapler*

      Or Deans of Colleges/Students, etc, especially when they are portrayed as scary intimidating jerks- at least the ones at my institution are better than some of the faculty.

  8. Lavender*

    I haven’t been in academia long enough to say whether The Chair is accurate on a broad scale, but I feel like no English department chair on the planet has that nice of an office. (Although I do think the subplot about that one professor’s office getting moved into some random basement seems correct.)

    1. Lavender*

      My other job is in a library (I‘m working part-time while I finish my PhD) and I work in a role that isn’t really portrayed at all on TV. (I work in external storage in a non-patron-facing role.) According to TV, only librarians work in libraries—but there are so many other behind-the-scenes jobs that allow things to run smoothly!

    2. The Books*

      It is absolutely true that every conversation ends up being about the budget or enrollment, they got that right.

    3. Hanani*

      The idea that several women, and especially women of color, could have their personal and professional lives completely hijacked by a mediocre white man behaving badly is also very accurate. That’s probably true in most jobs, though.

      Office moved to the basement is real, as I sit in the basement my own unit was moved to!

      1. Lavender*

        Oh yeah, that part of the show felt extremely real. My area of academia is fairly female-dominated, and yet somehow the department I’m in is still mostly run by white men.

      2. Spearmint*

        Huh, it’s funny because my interpretation of the show was different. I thought Jay was very sympathetic. Yes his life was a mess and he didn’t know how to pick his battles, but he seemed like a good teacher and scholar and someone who avoided a lot of the other petty department drama. His pride made Ji-Yoon’s life harder, but I wouldn’t call him a mediocre white man. He just seems like someone brilliant with lots of mental health issues, which I’ve seen many examples of in male and female academics IRL (I know a lot of academics).

        And Ji-Yoon had just as much of not more headaches from overzealous, naive undergrads, conservative elderly professors, and meddling administration, ultimately.

      3. Age Discrimination Sucks*

        I’m a black woman currently going through a mediocre white main attempting to hijack my career…so true.

    4. Newly minted higher ed*

      Can confirm. My old school had nice looking ones because the building was bought from a corporation during expansion but they were either small, hot, cold, or some combination with the old Corp decorations still abounding.

      Currently in my English department only half of us have any furniture at all (damaged out because of pipes bursting) with no timeline to replace.

      Two schools ago my ESL department got moved to the building that the school wanted to tear down and they stuck us in a corner a couple years before taking those offices away altogether. We got to teach and office in the building while they removed all the asbestos. Then they brought in someone else to replace us.

      Nobody likes English lol. We’re simultaneously completely unimportant and the reason the world is ending since nobody can write like they have graduate degrees when they’re 18. I kid, I think. I can’t watch academia shows after 15 years in higher ed.

      The basement thing….reminds me of the Mina Shaughnessy stories.

      1. Lavender*

        I’m not in the English department, but my field is fairly adjacent. The offices in my department are perfectly fine, but not like the fancy wood-paneled mahogany-desk tasteful-warm-toned-lighting ones you see on TV. They’re also smaller. Like, way smaller.

    6. nom de plume*

      There are lots of Very Nice Offices to be had at Very Nice Universities.

      And The Chair very clearly benefited from the input of academics, because usually shows about professors cannot be arsed to get the titles or working conditions right (i.e., no understanding of tenure or the requirements of the job, or a character who’s just started graduated and is an Endowed Chair. Conversely, someone who’s been there for two decades and is an Assistant Prof.). Oh, and graduate TAs at colleges are not a thing.

      1. Butterfly Counter*

        ?? to your last sentence.

        I was a graduate student TA for several semesters while I got my Ph.D. Or do you mean TAs for graduate classes? Because those don’t exist.

        1. heeler*

          I think they meant the reverse — that graduate TAs seem not to appear in these types of shows, even though at large research universities they are everywhere.

          1. Lavender*

            Ah, that makes sense. I think there was at least one TA on The Chair, but maybe I’m thinking of a different show.

        2. I remain. . . Anatole*

          I read it as “not at colleges,” distinct from “at Universities,” with colleges granting only Bachelors degrees.

        3. nom de plume*

          I mean graduate TAs exist at universities, not colleges. So “X College” in the show would not have TAs, because it’s only an undergraduate institution, but TV shows don’t know the difference between a four-year institution and a research university.

      2. Lavender*

        Graduate TAs as in grad student TAs? That’s interesting, my university has lots of those.

        I’m at what many would consider to be a Very Nice University (it’s very old and very well-known) but my department doesn’t get a ton of funding so that might be why I haven’t seen the nicer offices!

        1. Hanani*

          I think nom de plume is talking about the technical definition of a “college” as an institution that does not grant master’s/doctoral degrees. You’re not going to have a grad student TA at a liberal arts college, because there are no graduate students there.

    7. Owl*

      I worked at Harvard as an admin and some of offices were very, very nice. My first job there I was 22 and making just over minimum wage and I had my own fireplace and a velvet couch. It definitely wasn’t intentional to give it the admins that, just a byproduct of renovating a beautiful historic building.

    9. Blackcat*

      The chair is supposed to take place at someplace swanky and with money. I’ve seen humanities offices that nice at the ultra rich liberal arts schools (Williams/Amherst/Swarthmore) and at some of the ivies. So it doesn’t seem that far fetched to me.

  9. rayray*

    Curious to see how many female journalists have tales of how their life is a chaotic mess but then sometime during December, they found the charming and handsome man who ends up being the love of their life. Did it happen when you traveled back to your small town for the holidays? Or was he also in the metropolitan city you live in and you crossed paths while his big-bad corporate job tried to destroy yours? Or did you meet a foreign prince who was trying to escape becoming the king of his small European country?

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        Chocolatiers. If my mother’s viewing habits are to be believed, chocolatiers are a dime a dozen but yet a person who professionally futzes around with chocolate can’t find a partner…unless that partner is a prince or another chocolatier?

        1. RedinSC*

          Ok, but those same chocolatiers walk in off the street, put on an apron and immediately start working with chocolate. Oh please! Where’s your hairnet and wash your hands, dammit!

          1. Daisy-dog*

            Set It Up came out 5 years ago and I have probably watched it 500 times since then. I was an Office Manager 5 years ago and ironically, my boss was a co-director with his wife.

      3. Nea*

        Bakers who never get up early, never have flour anywhere on their persons, and have never burned or cut their hands in their entire life and somehow have a thriving business despite never having a full shop.

        1. joriley*

          They do have flour! It’s just a single smudge of flour where it can be easily brushed away by a love interest’s thumb.

      3. goddessoftransitory*

        Who run their own insanely successful one man operations in tiny towns that haven’t been rezoned for any new buildings since 1953.

    4. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      I worked in journalism for 20 years and I never even dated anyone at work. OK, I did have an ex-boyfriend come into the newsroom and try to make a scene when I dumped him, but it was a busy day and he got swept up in the crowd going back and forth in the newsroom and I guess someone finally ejected him.

        1. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

          Right? Plus I was an editor and most of the available single people were reporters. I couldn’t see snuggling down after a long day at work and saying “hi honey, your story sucked but I fixed it.”

          2. It Me...*

            Er, um, well, in my experience, the scene you present is . . . not wrong.

            (I married that reporter.)

        1. Hannah Lee*

          Maybe 60 actors who actually can act at least a little bit, but another 40 people who appear on screen in roles, who simply wrote and financed their own screenplay and cast themselves, or had a friend or family member do so. They are not actors by any stretch of the imagination.

        2. Just a guy in an office*

          There was one Hallmark movie this past Christmas that was the same story, with the same characters/actors, told from their different points of view.

    6. Some Dude*

      I’m a small town carpenter, and the amount of big city bakers and journalists who want to date me is truly overwhelming. I now use calendly so they can find time to go on romantic walks with me.

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        Sorry, I’m only interested if you own a Golden Retriever that wears a sporty bandanna.

    9. CommaPolice*

      YES — I’ve never flirted with, dated or slept with a source, nor worked with someone who has. Some of us are chaotic messes, but maybe no more than any other job field?
      There are some good journalism portrayals out there, though, like Spotlight. I’ve always though an accurate depiction of a small-ish town modern newsroom would be a great sitcom, if given the Parks and Rec/Abbott Elementary treatment.

    10. Snarkus Aurelius*

      If you’re a female journalist, you will always sleep with your interview subjects.

      I’m not a journalist, but I have no idea why this offense crap still exists.

    11. Another Kiki*

      People are always disappointed to hear my life is not just like James Herriot’s. I did have a Labrador though.

    12. Inot*

      Lol I’m a former journalist and I did not find love at my small town newspaper. All I got was headaches from incompetent publishers and editors or micro aggressions from people in the community (I’m a black woman).

    13. Princess of Whales*

      I was really tempted to run off with Gustav last Christmas, who I met when I finally got my big shot at writing a story after years of solitude as a socially inept copy editor, but it would have meant giving up my condo-sized office in the newsroom.

    14. goddessoftransitory*

      Once, but it was when I went to help run my widowed mother’s florist shop on Valentine’s weekend. I pitched it to my boss as a “feel good piece” so I could write it off my taxes.

  10. ladyhouseoflove*

    My job (librarian) is always portrayed as if it’s still the 1940s and we’re hiding in corners of a dusty library waiting to shush someone.

    I work in a community college library and spend majority of my time in my office. Desk Set (1957) and Party Girl (1995) are accurate to SOME extent in how we try to help people. Honestly, I am waiting for a show about libarians (similar to Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Abbott Elementary) to happen someday.

    2. Robert in SF*

      I enjoyed both of those movies and still think occasionally about “Party Girl” organizing her friend/DJ’s albums by category and indexed! :)

    3. Baron*

      Fellow librarian here. I’m just slightly too young to have been in the target audience for “Party Girl” when it came out, but I had a professor in library school who was absolutely obsessed with that movie, thought it was the foundational text for librarianship, assumed anyone interested in studying library science must be equally obsessed with it, etc. Early in the course, I decided to watch the movie to better understand where this guy was coming from. But I never got around to it, and by the end of the course, he had talked about “Party Girl” so much that I decided never to watch it, just to spite him.

      1. Some Dude*

        Party Girl is amazing. It possibly is a more accurate text of early 90s club culture than librarians, though.

    5. potato jacket*

      I would watch the hell out of that! (Not a librarian but I used to work adjacent to librarians in academia.)

    7. Lcsa99*

      My librarian husband is always amused/annoyed by librarians that shush people on tv. Libraries are just not that quiet.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        That was my job in high school! We had specific places where you could speak at a normal tone.

        My public library now is pretty loud.

      2. Please Exit Through The Rear Door*

        No, they’re not! I get amused by patrons who whisper to their children, “You can’t talk here.” Of course you can. The high frequency of the whispering is actually more obtrusive than regular talking.

        Then on the flip side, we occasionally get old curmudgeons who complain to me that people are making noise, who then won’t accept my answer that libraries are not quiet spaces anymore, that they can go to (designated quiet area of the library) if they want to get away from cell phone conversations, etc. In that regard, the decades-outdated media portrayal of libraries as cathedrals of silence where people do nothing but read do make my job harder sometimes.

      3. Butterfly Counter*

        I wish someone would have told that to my high school librarian. She seemed genuinely upset when any student came into the library. My senior year, a friend and I had an open first period class and once tried to meet up and (quietly) go over our calculus homework together at a desk in the completely deserted library. We literally got kicked out by the librarian. I don’t remember the reason she gave, but it was my impression that we were just too distracting to her. We ended up doing calculus homework on the hallway floor just outside of the library for the rest of the year.

        1. Scooby Gang Wannabe*

          Was she perhaps secretly a Watcher who needed the library to serve as a training and research space for her assigned Slayer?

      4. hmmmmm*

        As a librarian I semi-regularly inform people “We don’t do that shushing thing anymore, just keep it below a scream.”

        1. PlainJane*

          When I was in YA, I would sometimes tell the really loud ones, “Don’t make me shush you, I’m a professional.” Which made them laugh and calmed them down for two minutes or so.

      5. Critical Rolls*

        Yeah, not the full shush, but there’s a fair amount of “inside voice please” and “no phone calls (especially not on speaker).”

    8. another Hero*

      a monster-of-the-week-type sitcom but the monsters were members of the public coming to the public library could be really funny, but I don’t think it could be super accurate about library workers’ actual work

    9. Snarky Librarian*

      Yes! Some of the reference questions I’ve been asked are worthy of at least a subplot. For example, “Does this look infected?”

      1. Jojo*

        I did work study in my college library. Best question I ever got was ” how do you make nacho’s?” It was before Google and I explained how I make them, because I did not want that guy trying to drive to the library. He was wasted….

        My current job really isn’t portrayed on TV. But The coffee sipping manager from Office Space rings really true for many of our mangers.

      2. Ev*

        My favorite I’ve ever gotten was a worried teen boy asking me if the leaf he had just eaten was poisonous.

        (It was (rhododendron), he had not swallowed it but simply held it in his mouth for a moment or two, he was fine – don’t worry.)

      3. Tuna Casserole*

        Most memorable reference question: “Is it still hit and run if the guy isn’t hurt that bad? I mean, he got up!”

      4. Cheshire Cat*

        Also a librarian, and some of my favorite reference questions were from adults asking for photos of historical figures who lived before photography was invented. (But my kid needs a photo of George Washington! I can get you a picture but not a photo…) Kids would ask this, too, but they usually didn’t know that Julius Caesar was born before cameras.

        And then there were a few people who wanted information about the Blair Witch and the history of “Blair County, Maryland” when the movie was in theaters. I showed one man information about the counties in Maryland and he still didn’t believe “Blair County” didn’t exist.

    10. Samwise*

      I always enjoy the moment in It’s a Wonderful Life where Clarence reveals that Mary is an old-maid librarian in the life-without-George-Bailey universe. The horror!

      1. edotalf*

        “SHE’S JUST ABOUT TO CLOSE UP THE LIBRARY!” Oh the horror! I laugh every time. I close up the library every Wednesday night and I’m not married, so I guess it’s pretty accurate.

        1. This Old House*

          “You’re not going to like it, George.” Of all the things that have gone wrong in a world without George Bailey – his brother is DEAD, for goodness sake. Every man on that transport died! – the one that gets a content warning is Mary being a librarian.

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        Because being married to a bitter war vet who takes his lack of worldly progress and fame out on everybody until he’s literally about to jump off a bridge is the dream of every girl, whereas having an independent career and vital function in the civic life of the town is a nightmare beyond imagination.

    11. PlainJane*

      Another librarian.

      “The Public” did all right at first (I loved the patron asking for a life-sized globe of the world and the naked guy singing in the window, and Jena Malone’s eye-rolling malaise about these things instead of the “Oh, my heavens, I’m so shocked!” thing–I mean, seriously, do people know how hard it is to shock people who work with the public?), though it missed the fact that people need an MLS to do the job. Then it went off the rails with the protest–not because librarians don’t protest or support our patrons who don’t have homes but because somehow, they never even tried things like finding out about transport to other shelters, getting information on city emergency services… you know, doing the whole reference thing. They still could have gotten to the protest by having those options exhausted after exploration, but my dudes, librarians will treat it as a reference question first.

      The series “The Librarians” hacked me off from episode one because the Noah Wyle character just figured, “Hey, it’s a librarian job, I’ll just apply for it!” without any reference to, you know, qualifications and stuff.

      And no one ever seems to do programming, which is (at least) half my job! Where’s the circus of summer reading? The oddball performers? The box of old tambourines? Having to entertain 70 children because the performer is having a technical crisis?

      1. Kaisa (The Librarian)*

        Yes, we have entire positions and departments dedicated to different types of programming now – some who do little to no work with our collections. Very few media depictions show how much of a people focused role working in the public library is (with some technical/book processing exceptions). The amount of trying to build relationships, share activities and resources we have, answering questions, presenting programs, reaching out to schools and working with community partners, far out weights any reading or bookish things that I work on (and even the reading recommendations require conversations with patrons about what they are interested in and why – we don’t just hand over random books we think are good).

        1. PlainJane*

          The funny part is, all of that makes for excellent comedy. Visiting performers who are worried about cleaning the aura of the building, the music group that forgets that its keyboard isn’t working, the self-published author who can’t figure out why there isn’t a line out the door for her book signing or why the library won’t let her have champagne, the diva who explodes if things aren’t JUST SO… It’s all great silly subplot material. You could have recurring characters–the guy who comes in every summer to teach harmonica, or the teacher who drops in to pick up all the misreturned school library books. You could have a cast show-off who turns out to sing amazing new children’s songs, or the one who thinks she can sing, but can’t. (Probably me. ;p)

          Or you could go serious, with crime and violence and drugs and so on. A reference question that leads to major revelations for a guest patron.

          There are so many possibilities, all usually ignored.

          1. Sunny*

            Also a librarian here, public. I have always thought a college library would make a great place for sitcom ala Community. You could definitely show a lot of the weird college students that drift through.

      2. Librarianne with an e*

        This is EXACTLY how I felt about The Public! No librarian would handle that situation the way they did in the movie. I heard Emilio Estevez speak after the showing of the movie at an ALA conference; he really seemed to have learned so much about how libraries and librarians operate, which was nice.

        1. PlainJane*

          Yes, I was impressed with him. He seems to get it for the most part, and just missed a fairly major detail that I think happened because he was in a hurry to get to the protest for drama.

      3. Tierney*

        Yes, I never see the programming or weeding. People are always shocked that libraries get rid of books.

        1. PlainJane*

          That’s a fun plot, too. Maybe a librarian who’s super-attached to a book that’s falling apart… or one who is going, “Yay! It’s been five years since this circ’d! So long, farewell, get outta here!”

        2. goddessoftransitory*

          Ours has a major book sale every year–like, they hold it in the armory for space, it’s a huge fundraiser and very well publicized. But there’s always somebody who is shocked, SHOCKED that they aren’t holding onto every paperback romance or copy of Harry Potter like it’s an Etruscan scroll.

      4. goddessoftransitory*

        Somebody wrote into our newspaper complaining about library evening hours and how the individual branches aren’t open every time she wants to go to one or the other. I read that and thought “this person has never, ever heard the words budget or Covid.”

    13. AusLibrarian*

      Australian academic librarian here – there was an Australian TV show, The Librarians, set in an ‘interactive learning centre’ (aka public library). I honestly can’t say how accurate it is, because I couldn’t even get through the first episode due to the cringe factor (in hindsight, it was a little too accurate in terms of some of the… personalities you find working in libraries). ALIA (the Australian library association) was somehow involved in the production, and my husband (also a librarian) watched all of it without ranting it was nothing like working in a library.

  11. Office Cheetos*

    My partner is a nurse and cannot stand medical shows were the nurses are subservient to doctors. Nurses are the eyes, hands, and heart of the patient. They’re not there just to fill orders.

    1. Hills to Die on*

      Watching Hill Street Blues with my mom (also a nurse) was equal parts hilarious and annoying. And yes, not enough nurses owning the patient care and occasionally taking the doctors to task in TV and movies.

        1. Hills to Die on*

          I thought that was it – maybe it was another one. I was little but I remember she would get so. mad. ‘You can’t do that!! You’ll him!” yelling and pointing at the tv.

      1. Shirley Keeldar*

        And to them! The nurses are never even part of the plots. Why don’t the nurses have lives? (They are probably too busy rolling their eyes at how unprofessional the doctors all are…)

        1. Grammar Penguin*

          I watched enough to see like, almost every possible violation of every possible professional standard. It’s like the writers were combing the archives here for plot ideas. “What’s the worst possible way a professional, especially in a senior position, could handle this situation? Let’s do that!”

    3. PsychNurse*

      I’m a nurse. What I usually get stuck on is the way different medical interventions/treatments are portrayed totally inaccurately. Which of course is because it’s a back-burner concern for the writers, and not typically part of the plot. But watching anyone on TV perform CPR is so painful.

      1. StarHunter*

        I watched ER once with 2 doctors and a nurse. Much screaming at the tv going Nooooooooooooooooooo! :-)

      3. Mel*

        Anytime I see somebody take a giant glass/metal syringe and inject something directly into a vein…like what? I get it seems dramatic but in 22 years I’ve been in this field, I promise we inject through IVs, unless it’s IM/SQ.

        1. Some words*

          From what I’ve seen, shots were administered one of two ways. Giant glass/metal syringe with a 4″ needle directly into the vein at the elbow crease, OR in the side of the neck with a 4″ needle. Currently I think we’re at 90% side neck jabs in media.

          Either way, the syringes and needles are huge & subcutaneous & intramuscular injections don’t exist.

          Also, my spouse becomes ragey every time he sees someone use an inhaler on tv or in a movie. But I suppose it’s not entertaining to watch someone hold their breath.

          1. Lily*

            Those ramming-a-huge-needle-into-someone’s-neck shots drive me crazy.

            And no, doctors do not start IV’s in the ER. Or med-surg.

          2. goddessoftransitory*

            I have never, ever, ever seen an inhaler used properly on TV! It’s not like it’s difficult!

      4. Sally*

        Not job related, but a pet peeve about depiction of medical stuff. My partner has diabetes, and it takes a LOT longer than 5 seconds for insulin to do its work and make make you feel better after a crash. And she has never passed out – just a few really low lows. I’ll bet if someone has passed out from a sugar crash, it takes even longer. Not being able to speak coherently is accurate, though. It’s very scary.

        1. AnonRN*

          This stuff is frustrating when shows get it dead wrong, too, because inaccuracy is dangerous! LOW blood sugar is not treated with insulin, ever, and it would take only the most basic amount of research to figure that out and adjust the dramatic details accordingly.

          Not that anyone should be getting medical advice from the side-plots of TV shows, but look at all the conversations we have on here about how co-workers fundamentally don’t understand the medical needs of their colleagues and the various problems this causes (“I need to eat at a certain time” “I’m anaphylactically allergic to that” “My condition waxes and wanes” etc). Media portrayals of things *do* make a difference and I wish the producers felt some kind of accountability.

          1. Sally*

            Oops! You’re right, I got it backwards. I remember a few times having to get her a banana or cereal to bring the blood sugar back up. It took much longer than I wanted for her to feel better!

      5. Snarkus Aurelius*

        Wait. You mean you don’t resuscitate someone by pounding on them and yelling at them not to die? But I thought that was science!

      6. CowWhisperer*

        I was hospitalized for a week after my son was born. As my husband pushed wheelchair to the NICU one day we were trying to think of nurses portrayed in films and TV. We came up with Jackie – an opioid addicted nurse and, of course, Nurse Ratched.

        This made for a fun talking point with nurses where we compared our careers. I teach – and teachers shouldn’t have affairs with students – but that’s a common plot point.

        My husband farmed and he’d deadpan that Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams” clearly didn’t understand basic math when he plowed under his corn crop….

      7. Merrie*

        I saw an episode of Scrubs with only 2 characters working on a patient and half-heartedly pushing on his chest a few times and then pronouncing him dead. Not a remotely accurate code in my experience. At my hospital we’ll have a half-dozen residents, twice as many nurses, and multiple respiratory therapists show up within minutes of the code being paged overhead. The doctor running the code typically has to shoo extra people out of the room because there are too many and it’s too crowded.

      1. FreakInTheExcelSheets*

        My grandfather was a doctor and he can’t stand most hospital/medical shows but loved House, mostly because he would try and figure out what the diagnosis was before them.

        1. Boof*

          I liked the first season or so of House and the dx were kind of relevant but after a few seasons it devolved into soap opera nonsense and the dx were worse and worse. Like I was yelling at the TV “you just treat for both possible dx! Not treat two babies for one dx each and see which one dies!!!”

        2. goddessoftransitory*

          OMG, just posted about my dad and House! His rants about how no hospital that wanted to keep its funding would let him in the door were epic!

      2. Avid Reader*

        My mother was a nurse too. Her comment on Edie Falco in Nurse Jackie was, “Scrubs never fit that well.”

        1. GingerNP*

          To be fair, now we have Figs and Mandala scrubs and cherokee infinity and they all* fit really nicely and are stretchy and very cute.

      2. Flowers*

        Well there was/is Dalisay Villanueva but it is irksome there’s no regular nursing staff. At least The Resident had Nevins.
        In fact reading the boards, there’s a whole lot *not good* about TGD…

      3. Nightengale*

        there are also essentially no non-surgical staff. Claire is a non-surgeon but there would be pediatricians, cardiologists, internists, neurologists etc in charge in most of the inpatient cases even if surgery was also involved. And especially in the ER. ER calls surgical consults.

    7. Frickityfrack*

      My mom is a nurse and spends literally the entirety of any medical show bitching about inaccuracies, but when I suggest that maybe she watches something else, that’s a no go. I’d say I don’t understand it, but I read the comments on youtube, so apparently I’m also prone to doing things that I *know* will just give me a headache.

    8. Ally*

      Nurse here! I agree- also, every medical show has staff getting far far too emotionally invested in the patients too. Of course we care about them, but when I worked in ER you could easily see 50 or 60 patients a week – you can’t get that emotional, there’s no time. And the ER doctors see an even higher number.

      Also to repeat the classic Grey’s complaint – half the things they are doing (at least in the first few seasons which I saw) are things usually done by nurses.

      I actually found MASH fairly realistic considering the time and circumstances. Obviously some seriously outdated sexist jokes but apart from that, the mood is right. Stupid jokes, occasionally an upset moment, fixed by a stupid joke, back to work.

      I haven’t seen any show lately which really captures what working in a hospital is like. Any recommendations appreciated :)

      1. Grey Coder*

        Have you seen “This Is Going To Hurt”? I’ve only seen one episode but I’ve read the book. It’s based on the diary of a junior doctor working up the ranks, so I suspect it’s closer to reality than generic hospital dramas.

        1. Ally*

          I wanted to mention TIGTH but I’ve only read the book so decided it was off topic!! But I am often recommending it as the most realistic medical book – will check out the show, thanks!

        2. Gyne*

          Have not seen the TV show but I have read the book and Can Confirm he lived my experience as an ob/gyn resident. Interestingly, i had always heard the resident hours were better in the NHS but his were worse than mine in the states. But I went to residency when we were limited to 80 hour work weeks (on paper, of course.)

      2. BookLovinRN*

        Longtime OR Nurse here. MASH has been the most accurate for operating rooms in the field. Newer shows I try to overlook the breaks in sterility and the lack of basic understanding of infection control-as it would drive me crazy. In nursing school we would play drinking games based on the mistakes made on St Elsewhere and China Beach.

      3. Chinookwind*

        I don’t know about the hospital side, but I know a lot of military people who used Radar and Fr. Mulcahey to describe what it meant to be a clerk or a chaplain. And, knowing what I know about office work and priests, their characterizations hold up.

      4. Sopranohannah*

        And where are the NPs and PAs in these shows? Phlebotomists? X-ray techs? Social workers? CNAs? I’d love a hospital show that didn’t have any doctors and focused on all the other employees in the hospital.

        1. SocialworkerL*

          Every social worker on a TV show is a harried woman, inevitably in child services, who rushes through paperwork and puts kids in abusive foster homes just to get home on time. And don’t get me started on how television shows depict counseling sessions!
          Any time you see a psychiatrist on TV, know that the work you see them doing would really be done by a social worker.

      5. Daisy*

        Have you seen Getting On (BBC about a decade ago)? That’s meant to be quite realistic about nursing even though it is a comedy. It’s set on a geriatric ward so there’s not the same excitement about medical cases but more about interpersonal issues.

    9. Environmental Compliance*

      Watching nearly any medical show with a nurse mom and an EMT dad was both annoying and hilarious in equal parts.

    11. SaffyTaffy*

      My mom, an RN, used to complain about the many times nurses are portrayed as sadistic or negligent. But now that she’s retired and we’ve all weathered some health problems, she’s gotten to see what bad nursing looks like (pre-COVID and across states). I think nursing is, like teaching, one of those professions where the people doing it know they’re doing their best but their audience sees weaknesses and mistakes really keenly.

    12. LD RN*

      I can watch Call The Midwife and MASH.
      Call The Midwife — at least the early seasons — was historically accurate. I can’t watch anyone do CPR, doctors are apparently rad techs, phlebotomists, nurses, you name it.

      Oh, and I tell my patients that labor isn’t like TV. Your water doesn’t break, you scream three times, and a three month old comes out.

      1. WS*

        My mother was a surgical nurse, pediatric nurse and midwife over a long career. The only medical show she would watch was Call the Midwife.

      2. Blackcat*

        My second labor was sort of TV like. It was an induction, which is different. But once my water broke, baby was out 15 minutes later and within another 15 minutes I was fine, feeling better than I had felt in months. I am MISERABLE while pregnant, though, so as soon as I am not pregnant, I’m thrilled. And it’s instantaneous. Magic. And baby #2 was 9lbs with great head control so he kinda looked like a TV baby.

        Everyone looked at me like I had two heads, particularly my nurse. She looked at me even more strangely when, as soon as the placenta was out, I was like “Can I shower now?”

        (Answer was no! I had to wait till I was in my postpartum room and I was annoyed)

    13. FACS*

      I am a surgeon and we physicians could not do what we do without nurses. They are the backbone of the health care system. Any of us (If honest) can remember having our bacon saved by a nurse.
      And I hate Grey’s Anatomy. There is no random assignment of interns. Sex becomes just 20 minutes you could be sleeping. And For The Love of All That is Good, tie up your mask before you scrub. You just contaminate yourself and other people cannot comfortably adjust your mask.

    14. Raida*

      but the Matrons, now those I believe on film and tv.

      oh you got an argument? Let’s get the final word in here and she did not want to waste time today on your sorry arse, whether you be patient or doctor.

    15. zaracat*

      Not all surgery is brain surgery or bullet wounds. I work as a surgical assistant doing mainly elective procedures – but I guess there’s not a lot of drama in watching hemorrhoid surgery or hernia repairs while listening to the OR staff chat about their home renovations or their adventures in beekeeping. OK so I lied, that last one was a dramatic story that involved the surgeon breaking out in hives (haha good love a good pun) after unintentionally provoking his bees by mowing the lawn at the wrong time of day and getting stung, and then frantically using his son’s expired epipen hoping it would still work.

    16. goddessoftransitory*

      Oh, God, my dad was a doctor and listening to him rant about the show House was a podcast in itself. It drove him beyond insane that any hospital would put up with his treatment of nurses, interns, patients, budgets and hospital labs and gear (I can just imagine real life MRI techs if somebody tried to get near their machine, not to mention the lab staff!)

    17. Merrie*

      I’m a pharmacist. We’re rarely portrayed anywhere (which is too bad, I really think there should be a TV show about some of the shenanigans that go on in pharmacy) and when we are it’s usually peripheral to the story. I’ve read loads of books and can only think of three with pharmacist protagonists, one of which makes a bunch of stupid mistakes about the character’s work and education that could have been remedied by having a five-minute conversation with any randomly selected pharmacist–but then again, that character was mostly made a pharmacist to set up a plot where he figures out how to cook meth in prison. Eyeroll.

  12. David*

    I get frustrated when I see UK BBC 1’s “The Apprentice” – teams appoint a “Project Manager” for each task, who invariably doesn’t support their team and certainly doesn’t employ any tools of the PM trade (schedule, budget, risk register, plan). I have to keep reminding myself that it’s just TV!

  13. Fnordpress*

    People think editors / publishing professionals make WAY more money than we do. I also spend more time chasing people for deadlines than I do wining and dining authors.

    1. I edit everything*

      True.

      At least you get on screen, though. We freelancers are ignored entirely. I guess there’s not much of interest about basement offices and stressing about when the next project will come in.

      1. Isben Takes Tea*

        Right?! You see editors, editorial assistants, and an odd publisher or publicist. You never see the production editors, marketers, office managers, business managers, or IT professionals wandering around the office, let alone all the freelance cover designers, book designers, typesetters, proofreaders, and copyeditors it takes to keep things on track.

        Everyone is overworked and underpaid, and there wasn’t a square inch of mahogany or oak anywhere.

        1. Anne Kaffeekanne*

          Editors are the only sexy and movie worthy part of publishing, it is known. And they all make enough money to afford charming 2 bedroom flats in London living on their own.

          (Former Rights person here – I am now a contract manager in licensing which is definitely not appealing enough for Hollywood)

        2. Moose*

          Yes! I am always like, how do they think the book actually gets made? Who is coordinating and designing and setting and printing and taking care of finances?

          Far more fluorescent lighting and open floor plans than wood.

        3. Lore*

          I will say that Younger, while wildly inaccurate in just about every respect (except the author gossip/caricatures; they clearly had an inside source feeding them dirt about bad author behavior), did at least occasionally acknowledge that a book needed to go into copyediting.

    2. I like hound dogs*

      Came here to find the comments about editors! I don’t work in book publishing (anymore … used to work for a small publisher) but I feel like there are a disproportionate number of books and movies where it’s a highly glamorous dream job that pays great.

      Now I’m a proofreader in marketing and I make a lot more money but my job is not glamorous enough to be portrayed in media. Lol.

      1. GrammerIzFun*

        I’m an editor and came here to say the same thing! In addition to the lack of glamour, TV shows never seem realistic about publishing schedules. Oh, you just signed a book deal and it’s coming out next month? Lists are planned YEARS in advance, and books go to the printer months and months before their pub date.

        1. 1,000 Snails in a Lady Skin*

          This is what annoyed me the most about the show Younger! I get that it made sense for a single-episode plotline but it drove me insaneeeee.

    3. Cambridge Comma*

      There’s a Mexican film about an editor called Todo el mundo tiene a alguien menos yo that’s quite realistic. Although I have worked for publishers that were heavy on the wining and dining and also paid decently tbf.

    4. Taking the long way round*

      In 50 Shades Of Grey (so awful on so many levels), one of the most grievous offences was Ana just… taking home 5 scripts to read. Like, what? She got the editor job over more qualified people.
      It was obviously written by someone with no knowledge of editing/ publishing, who thought that the only thing editors do is read a few books a week at a leisurely pace (rolls eyes).
      And someone with no experience or knowledge of BDSM either!

    5. Weaponized Pumpkin*

      I thought about this while watching the show Younger. At least they had the 2nd lead 20-something being unable to afford an apartment and there was some deadline-chasing, but everyone was far too glamorous and they spent far too much time wining and dining and competing for star deals. (Oh, and deals they just landed could be on the shelves in months, too.)

    6. Moose*

      People have no idea what editors do. Not to mention the number of roles that NEVER get covered–where are all the production people, finance people, etc.? How do they think the books get made??

      1. penny dreadful analyzer*

        People think simultaneously that “editor” is one role filled by one person who is the single human besides the author who makes the book happen, and that all that person does is read novels all day and catch the occasional typo.

    7. WerdNerd*

      Came here to say the same thing! A lot of people think “oh, so cool you get paid to read,” and sure, some days. But it’s mostly herding cats, massaging egos, and explaining for the eleventy billionth time that no, converting your complex patient-facing medical content into plain language isn’t “dumbing it down,” but making it more broadly accessible and actionable.

      1. MissGirl*

        One of our editors spent an inordinate amount of time explaining to an author that needful does not need a hyphen (need-ful). Apparently, this way of using needful (full of need) was different than how the rest of the world used the word and therefore needed to be hyphenated. So many arguments and emails over so much dumb stuff.

        1. WerdNerd*

          That reminds me of a time that an author was so mad that I changed several instances of “which” to “that” in his book that he called in a personal favor from the CEO to make me change them back and I was barred from any further text changes because the author had “put a lot of careful thought into word choice,” never mind that his choices sometimes made a paragraph completely nonsensical. Or at a different company I worked for, somehow an author was also the freelance designer assigned to lay out his own books, so he would quietly undo any editorial changes he didn’t agree with right before print. These were nonfiction books for the school library market, mind you, and this author tended to be a lot looser with facts than most of his peers. Even after several of his books went to print with factual inaccuracies he had rolled back corrections on, the publisher would not even entertain the notion of having someone else design that author’s books.

          I don’t miss publishing.

      2. kim*

        Ah, I see we’ve worked with the same authors. “This book is for a general reading audience.” The book is 200,000 (jargon-laden) words. “But it’s necessary! All the popular science books are so shallow. People need to know this!” My friend, you cannot assign the general population homework. If you want people to read your oh-so-important work, you need to meet them where they are. That’s not “dumbing it down,” that’s effective communication.

        1. WerdNerd*

          You get it.
          Neuroscientist: “But my 10-year-old son understands what I wrote!” Cool story, bro, but we can’t use your son as a proxy for the general population.

      3. sacados*

        If anything, it’s the interns who get paid (or not) to read! Lol.
        I did a summer internship during college at S&S, and my ongoing task whenever I was in between other things was to go through the “slush pile” (aka unsolicited manuscripts) and do a half-page summary and recommendation of each manuscript.
        In reality that means skimming through the first 50 pages or so and then throwing it across the room in disgust. This was circa 2006 so the manuscripts were roughly 50% Da Vinci Code ripoffs and ranged from “dear GOD MY EYES” to the occasional “maybe, possibly, with a lot of work, this could eventually be publishable.” (NGL tho it was kind of fun as an intern job tho)

        As a student worker in the acquisitions department of my university’s academic press, my main job was typing rejection letters to fancy Ivy league college professors and then forging my boss’s signature cause he couldn’t be bothered to sign them himself. (Got a kick out of that too, haha.)

        1. Anne Kaffeekanne*

          I was also the slush pile intern at a literary agency for 3 months and I LOVED it. Saw some wild things too – all submissions had to be sent in by email and often just reading the email would be enough to know whether this submission was worth looking at or not.
          (I got blanket permission to ignore every single ‘I am sending this on behalf of Mr X, I am his wife/assistant’, which happened wayyy more often than I thought it would. Dude. You want your book published? Have the decency to submit it yourself. Or did you even write it?)

          1. sacados*

            Oh wow, mine were literally a pile of printed (probably received by mail) manuscripts in the corner of one of the back offices lol.

            My favorite part of that internship though was that they also had this big bookshelf in one of the stairwells that was just full of old ARCs and it was just up for grabs, just take whatever you wanted.

        2. goddessoftransitory*

          Have you read Babbeltower, where the main character does freelance slush pile reading? Her writeups are brilliant and clearly the author A.S. Byatt was voicing an opinion or three.

    8. Siege*

      BUT, the last time I wined-and-dined a pair of authors (okay, it was breakfast at a convention we were all at, and they were both already under contract, and I would go on to fire one of them 4 weeks later because he didn’t, you know, bother to write the book, whatever, potato poTAto) I was still drunk from the night before, so hey. The drinking part is probably correct.

      I feel like I spent more time chasing down minutia than media really shows. But now I can bore people for twenty minutes on what kind of cow a First Crusade knight would have passed in France and whether you can have an open forge on a wooden boat, and that time the British Museum got mad at me because a copyeditor didn’t understand the flow of time and wanted me to call a war by the name it got in relation to the second war, which happened after the events of the book so the characters didn’t know about it happening (not World War I/World War II).

      1. kim*

        There’s the old joke that editors know very little about very many things. I do trivia fairly regularly and I loooooooooove knowing the answer to some random thing specifically because I learned it from a manuscript I was working on.

        The least fun trivia I know, though, is all the ways an author can break Microsoft Word. I don’t know *how* they figure out how to insert 3 section breaks per page when they can’t even figure out how to intentionally change the line spacing, but they do. I’ve been doing this a long time and yet every year I get some new mess I’ve never seen before and it’s always a marvel.

        1. Siege*

          Oh god, the Word thing. A lot of my authors were older and had been writing a long time and had zero concept of attachment size. At the time I was in editing, ten mb was standard. They could not grasp that their book was 1 mb, max, so I would get 5 or more emails with a random number of chapters (never sequential) attached. Or it would all be in Courier, the third-worst font on earth.

          But I did find it fairly meditative and satisfying to put their books back together, inserting page breaks and removing all the hard returns, making sure that soft returns became hard returns, removing the second space after the period, etc. I also learned a lot about what you can find/replace in Word, which has served me well.

          1. kim*

            Learning you can find/replace formatting was a game changer. And yeah, there’s something very zen about spending an afternoon reformatting a manuscript. I sometimes daydream about teaching formatting classes for authors. Lesson 1: Please don’t use (a random and varying number of) spaces to indent your paragraphs. Lesson 2: The hanging indent and why you should use it instead of tabs or hard returns when formatting your bibliography.

            I wouldn’t reject a book over it, but I certainly weep a little inside every time I open a manuscript file to discover 14-pt Courier. Because Courier wasn’t big enough on its own, it needed to be made EVEN BIGGER. Love a 40,000-word manuscript that’s 600 pages because of the formatting. (On the other hand…authors who submit 150,000 words in single-spaced Calibri and think “it’s not really that long,” I see you.)

        2. I edit everything*

          Not only the trivia, but the truly bizarre google searches and browser histories. I’m convinced every editor has an FBI dossier.

      2. StephChi*

        As someone who teaches history to teenagers for a living, I would love to know what kind of cow a First Crusade knight would have passed in France!

        Regarding the second part – they got angry with you because you called WWI “The War to End All Wars”? You’d think the British Museum, of all places, would know that.

    9. Double A*

      Obviously the movie “Elf” is not realistic on any front, but it still cracks me up that his money-grubbing, rich dad works in Children’s publishing.

      1. Skippy*

        What is the best way to make a small fortune?

        Start with a big fortune, and buy a publishing company.

  14. Lacey*

    Graphic Design doesn’t often get portrayed on tv, but when it does, very complicated tasks happen with a click of a button and instead of fiddling around with the exact placement of the elements the designer pops them into the perfect spot right away.

    1. Hamster Manager*

      Yes! And of course the first (and only concept) is always perfect.

      Or they’re constantly drawing on paper or a Cintique. I guess sitting motionless at a computer is not very cinematic. :P

    2. LG*

      I’m also a graphic designer and I’m wondering this explains how some people thing graphic design is just clicking a button!!!

    3. Warrior Princess Xena*

      There’s an older Catwoman movie that while generally pretty bad does what I feel is a pretty good job of portraying graphic design at the very beginning.

    4. sookie st james*

      same with copywriting (my job) – it’s portrayed on shows like mad men that we lounge around smoking, are suddenly struck with a brilliant idea, then present it to the client fully-formed and they run with it. Actually it’s so much more tedious than that with endless rounds of tweaking and sending it up the approval chain to people you didn’t even know existed

    5. VC*

      On TV no designer ever has to ask the account manager to have the client send a vector file of their logo, then explain to the account manager for the seventieth time what a vector file is, then explain again to the account manager for the one-hundred-and-twenty-first time why they can’t use an EPS file which is clearly a JPG someone (naming no names) saved off the client’s website header and “converted.”

      2. Lacey*

        Hahaha, yes! Also never depicted are the tears on both sides as we desperately try to explain that while a png CAN have a transparent background, that doesn’t mean a png DOES have a transparent background – and putting “transparent background” in the file name doesn’t change that.

      5. LunaLena*

        This was my life when I was a production artist for a promotional products company. My go-to explanation was that they were putting an apple in a potato sack – just because the sack says “potatoes” doesn’t mean the apple has turned into a potato.

        I’m starting to have the same problem at my current job, now that Canva is becoming more common. “Can you download this from Canva as a PDF instead of a JPG and send it to me?” *receives JPG saved as a PDF*

    6. JTP*

      Graphic designer here, too. I can’t even think of any TV series or movies that have a character who is a graphic designer.

      2. LunaLena*

        Halle Berry’s Catwoman was a graphic designer. I didn’t love that representation because she also hated her job and only did to pay the bills, while her true passion was to be an artist and she spent her nights painting abstract masterpieces.

    7. Lucy P*

      Yeah, based on TV and movies people seem to think everything’s possible with one computer click. I had someone ask me the other day (when we couldn’t render something to a high enough quality), “Can’t you just give the people a small photo and let them increase the size and resolution on their end?”

    8. Janey-jane*

      Anyone remember when Pam on the Office briefly studied graphic design? And then tried to explain to Jim that she was struggling, and the garbbled mash of design words that flowed out…made zero actual sense if you were a designer?

  15. glitter writer*

    I’m a journalist. Media portrayals are… very hit and miss, haha. Some are accurate and many are very much not. Could be worse, I suppose.

    1. ProducerNYC*

      I started my career in TV news. At the time, “Broadcast News” was pretty damn close (though I hated that the woman journalist got the short end of the stick, had to admit it was pretty on par with the times), and the Robert Redford/Michelle Pfeiffer movie (where she goes live from inside a prison or something!?) was so gawdawful I couldn’t even hate watch it.

    2. Midwest Writer*

      I was coming here for this. I’ve never worked anywhere with half of the actual physical danger to journalists that you see in most movies or on TV. While I’d say that my job (I’ve been at papers from 1500 circulation weeklies up to 100,000 dailies over the course of 25 years) is actually often really mundane (I go to SO MANY MEETINGS), the real drama is often so hilarious that if you saw it on TV, it would only work as comedy. Like … a recent story about a dude who was probably smoking weed (illegal in this state) and watching PBS (this is speculation, but wait for it) and decided what he needed to do was build a log cabin on his property (like on some PBS show about people living off grid in Alaska). So he cut down more than 100 trees off of public land and transported them to his property (probably powered by the meth also found at his home). But with all the drugs, he never got around to building the cabin. My coworkers and I were laughing so hard we were crying because it was so absurd. But it’s not really TV or movie drama.
      I once did get a death threat though. For a positive review of a community theater presentation of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I told the police and they kind of laughed at me. I was a little freaked though. The guy never followed through, thank goodness.

    6. T'Cael Zaanidor Kilyle*

      Former journalist here. Aside from the romanticization that I assume every profession gets (we’re always depicted sleuthing and having confidential meetings with our top-secret anonymous sources, and definitely not sitting in city council meetings about water and sewer rates or interviewing Miss Springfield County about where she plans to go to college), the conflicts of interest that are casually accepted are ridiculous. Think the reporter from “Scandal” being allowed to cover the White House in which his husband serves as chief of staff, or Danny Concannon on “The West Wing” seeing no problem with trying to date CJ Cregg while she’s serving as press secretary.

      1. Moose*

        Yeah, TV workplace romances are NEVER realistic. The kinds you’re describing are the most egregious but even in most standard workplace shows I’m like does no one know anybody outside of work?

        1. Snarkus Aurelius*

          I thought that about The Office. Remember Pam’s art show and how no one from work showed up except Oscar and Michael and…that was it? She was so hurt, but… Pam, do you really not have anyone else you could have invited? That’s so sad and not funny at all.

        2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          Eh, for a long time I didn’t know anyone local outside of work (except my spouse). I had moved a couple of hundred miles and was working full time, so it took a while to even meet anyone else. I took some evening classes but didn’t particularly click with anyone until a year or two in.

          I would think it’s weird for *nobody* to have friends outside work, but I don’t think it’s weird that a particular individual wouldn’t.

          1. Moose*

            Yes, very true! Just meant that in a lot of work-based shows, it seems like the office is *everyone’s* only social circle and dating pool, which is bizarre!

      2. Librarian of Many Hats*

        The West Wing was a hot mess as far as workplace relationships. Josh and Donna were all kinds of wrong.

        1. StephChi*

          Over the pandemic I rewatched the entire series, and while I still loved it, I didn’t love Josh and Donna as a couple the second time around.

  16. BigArty*

    I’m a designer—tangentially connected to work with photos and videos. In every crime drama, there’s a terrible, grainy video or photo of the bad guy and the people in the crime lab are able to zoom in and “enhance” the photo to get a clear image of the guy through some form of magic that doesn’t exist. Drives me nuts every time! It’s not a thing!

    1. Pugetkayak*

      They also have these flashing computer systems where they type in things really fast and just all this DATA…come flying across the screen and makes all these beeps and boop noises.

      1. Miseleigh*

        I’m a software engineer. Apparently, that means hacker. And apparently ‘hacking’ looks like a Matrix screensaver while banging away at a keyboard. Also there’s someone else on the network actively trying to prevent whatever this magical hacking is, but it’s ok because there’s a backdoor and… We’re in! We magically gained access to the Pentagon’s internal network within 45 seconds, and of course that means that we can actually find the information we’re looking for immediately, because reasons. Looks like the data’s encrypted, but that’s not a problem, just hit the keyboard a few more times…

      2. I AM a Lawyer*

        Penelope on Criminal Minds was such a good example of this. Like just smashing her keyboard and able to access literally anything in like 10 seconds.

    2. The Designer*

      Omg I know! My life as a designer would be SO much easier if we could magically make any grainy fuzzy photo incredibly high res and clear with a single click of the button.

      1. LG*

        Yes! And it is SO common in shows and movies that people in real life sometimes think you can “enhance” a photo to a magically dramatic extent!

    3. Blinx*

      I’m pretty sure I saw a a show where they identified the killer in the reflection of someone’s eyeball. Really??

    4. Amber T*

      I remember a scene in NCIS (an early-ish season) where they’re looking at a still frame from some security camera that’s super grainy and awful, but of course when asked to zoom in and enhance on the license plate, it comes up perfect quality.

      (Kinda separate, but there was also an *amazing* (amazingly bad) scene where they’re getting hacked, so the two computer experts start furiously typing together *on the same keyboard.* It was only fixed when someone else unplugged the computer completely, which fixed the entire problem and stopped the hack entirely.)

    5. a*

      Crime lab person here – I can barely make my photos taken under controlled conditions, with a high resolution camera and a variety of light sources, good enough for use sometimes! No matter how many Photoshop actions I use.

    6. Siege*

      I read a book by a mystery author years ago and loved it. Compelling, gripping, a great story. I didn’t really read anything else by that author but a few years ago saw a book of his and picked it up, and the part that means I will never read anything else by him was something like this, heavily paraphrasing:

      The bad guy has kidnapped someone. He sends a video to the police indicating that he’s got her captive. The detective notes a TV program on in, like, an unintentional wide-angle shot or something, and thus can identify the day the program aired. There is a reflection (either in the TV screen or in the glasses someone is wearing) of a box truck with a logo that has orange in it. The logo and truck can be resolved as a courier logo on a delivery truck outside the house and down the hill, in the road. The combination of the TV program’s airdate and time means that once they zoom-and-enhance to figure out which delivery firm it is, they can contact the firm and find out the route that would be running at that day/time, then talk to the driver and ask if he noticed a specific car (matching tire treads from another scene) parked in the driveway of a house he passed in a half-hour block of time. He accurately and adequately remembers seeing a car (I don’t know, a Chrysler LeBaron, something that you wouldn’t actually NOTICE) in the driveway of a specific house and gives them the address. They go arrest the suspect and free the victim, hooray the end.

      Nothing works like that. Nothing at all, on any planet, ever, in the entire multiverse, works like that. You would get Neanderthals as the dominant species of human before you got a world where half that sequence of events could happen.

  17. Athena*

    Someone who works in Publishing here! It’s hilariously inaccurate. Younger and A Business Proposal were still fun to watch though.

      1. NotSoEvilHRLady*

        I absolutely loved Younger! I watched the whole series 3 times! I had no idea if the publishing industry is portrayed accurately, I was just there for the drama. LOL

        Completely different topic: are there any shows with HR employees as the lead characters? Curious to know how they would be portrayed!

    2. a*

      I’ve been a latent print examiner for 28 years. When I was fairly new, the very first CSI started. I was testifying at a trial and the defense attorney asked “So what do you think of that CSI show?” The prosecutor object, but the attorney caught me in the hall later, and said he really wanted to know what I thought of it. I said that I thought it was fiction and not great fiction at that. Things that are wildly out of sync are: Timelines – we used to have 18+ month backlogs. Results available in months, not hours. Interaction with suspects: We don’t do that. One memorable time, I was stuck in a room with a defendant who was handcuffed to his wheelchair while court was in recess. But that’s the only time I was anywhere near a suspect. Computer stuff – we CAN search databases to try to identify fingerprints, but there are very few functions that are lights-out. For crime scene prints, the computer doesn’t tell us anything – it gives a list of potential fingerprints that might be a match for the one we entered. It doesn’t flash MATCH at us. We still have to compare the prints, regardless of what the computer thinks about it. The prints – most of the prints I look at are absolute crap – a small portion of a finger, rather than a whole, nicely placed complete print of an entire finger. Now, I only watched CSI once or twice back in the 1900s, so I have no idea how they’re mangling the science today. But that was enough – they were stitching parts of fingerprints together, and that was too far off for me. I haven’t watched that type of program since. Once in a while, I will watch Forensic Files or that kind of show. But I watched one of those programs about a case I worked on and it was still vastly mischaracterized.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I’ve been on jury duty three times, and each time the attorneys make a point of the CSI Effect, where juries apparently expect the timelines and kinds of evidence that simply do not exist in reality.

  18. Blujay*

    I’m an archaeologist. My professional realities are almost never on screen- even the documentary style ones are outliers for most of us. I could, however, probably make a quiz of “is this a work experience story or the opening scene to a horror movie.” Not because anything specific in movies was depicted accurately, but my job has definitely put me in some odd environments/scenarios that are ripe for script writing tropes.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      I was just getting on here to make sure an archaeologist weighed in. One of my siblings is an archaeologist and, hoo, boy . . .

      1. Blujay*

        I’m sure you hear the rants then! I had a grad group that tried to find the worst archaeology movie and there were a LOT of contenders.

    2. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

      Is it that archaeology documentaries just only ever show the dramatic stuff, and not the work of finding more “”mundane”” things? Or are there other major inaccuracies?

      1. Blujay*

        Most archaeologists I know (in the US) don’t work on the type of projects you see in documentaries. A lot of archaeological work is regulatory to figure out if a project is going to affect a known/unknown archaeological site. So we do sample testing ahead of time. We might do additional work if we find something that might have notable information about the past, but full digs are usually only if something is being/will be destroyed. This is outside academia that might excavate for research. So I’ve walked a lot of miles through back woods areas to see if a road or a building will impact archaeological sites in the ground. And used everything from a trowel to heavy machinery to excavate, depending on conditions. But I rarely have occasion to use a brush. I’ve also gone extended periods of time not finding anything.

        1. Blujay*

          My most common set up was a backpack kit that included good and water for the day, a shovel, a tarp and a screen. Head out and dig a hole every X feet. Make notes, collect artifacts (if any) and continue to the next one. Head back to the vehicle at the end of the day. Repeat.

            1. Mrs Vexil*

              That’s how we did it in the early 80s too. Don’t forget the Munsell Soil book (if they even still exist)

              1. Blujay*

                They do! Though now sometimes each digger/pair get a GPS with preprogrammed locations to dig.

                I still opted for a more desk based version of archaeology in recent years as an attempt to not develop any more bad joints. And as someone noted below- have access to indoor plumbing regularly.

              2. Ciara*

                We were taught this in college in Ireland in the late 90s. It was definitely still used when I was working in the field too.

          2. Miss Pantalones En Fuego*

            Ah yes, the endless shovel testing. I don’t do much of that now that I’m in the UK but I used to just tell people that I hiked for a living because their eyes would glaze over when I was trying to explain survey to them.

        2. Richard Hershberger*

          Yup. My best friend’s husband does this for CalTrans. But my understanding is that most modern archaeology, even of the “go spend a season digging a site” sort, tends to run more toward pollen analysis and quantifying tiny potsherds. And nowadays we have DNA analysis from old bones and teeth, but my impression this is more about going through the drawers of museum storage facilities than it is going out and finding bones to analyze.

          1. Blujay*

            We do have a lot of existing collections of all types of cultural material that we are storing for their research value and historic importance. A shift to actually using those materials regularly for research and public information would be really beneficial all around!

            I’m not sure about your mentions of focus change. I haven’t worked in academia and I can definitely see focusing on new technologies and analysis that has become more cost effective and therefore accessible- I work more in cultural resource management so we excavate what is where we need to look. We analyze what we find, whatever it is, and don’t really opt in/out of anything specific.

            1. Blujay*

              Also mileage varies depending on region. I can’t speak for regions I haven’t worked in and methods/focii can be quite different.

              The collections crisis is an issue everywhere though. We need to be looking at what we already take care of for answers to some of the questions we’re asking.

              1. Salty Secretary*

                But Bob forbid you write a thesis on an existing artifact collection instead of digging your own – nevermind that its not a PhD and you don’t have funding and the spot you’re interested in already has been dug and covered in a parking lot.

                And then they wonder why so many people leave the field after a couple years too.

                1. Blujay*

                  The only grad student I know that graduated on time used existing collections- the rest had to scramble when excavation didn’t give them the right material to answer the questions they had originally laid out.

                  So I think you were very smart in that decision, and it’s disappointing that programs aren’t more supportive of similar ones.

                2. Miss Pantalones En Fuego*

                  Interesting, I know several people who analysed existing collections for their degrees. I think you must have been in the wrong place with the wrong supervisor. Every commercial unit I’ve worked for had a big backlog of stuff that never got properly analysed for whatever reason and they always had students doing bits of work on them, which helps them clear space and finish site reports as well as giving the student something to work with.

      2. Another archaeologist*

        I don’t watch documentaries, but one of the omissions of popular media about archaeologists in general is the balance of field vs lab time. It’s always more lab time. And then you have to write up your results. Only at the lowest levels are you spending all your time in the field, and then it isn’t quite as envious because a) you’re probably making $15/hr and b) you’re probably traveling almost every week or have little to no job security based on busy vs slow seasons.

        I remember being in my 20s and hearing someone say “it seems like all the women go into lab work once they have kids,” and I was like “I’ll never do that! Lab work is so boring!” Well, fast forward and now I do “boring” desk-based regulatory work, because it turns out I actually do value seeing my small children most weeks.

        1. Another archaeologist*

          + I also would like to submit that I value family health insurance and year-round job stability, which field archaeology doesn’t always get you. There’s academic archaeology but that has its own tradeoffs, like not being able to choose where you live, and the likelihood you’ll get stuck in precarious positions for a few years post-PhD anyway.

          1. Blujay*

            Another bonus for year round/not alway travel is hobbies. I lost a lot of hobbies because I was never home to attend things.

          2. Texan in exile on her phone*

            My boss hired this amazing early 30something woman, who had been a field archaeologist, to be our team’s admin.

            My husband couldn’t figure out why someone with a master’s degree and such a cool job would come into the corporate world.

            I told him because I bet she and her husband wanted to have a baby and darn if eight months later I wasn’t gleefully calling my husband from work to tell him I had been right.

        2. Blujay*

          Oh wow yes!

          If I had a dollar for every time someone said “so we can move forward now right?” when I mentioned field work was complete…I wouldn’t be retired but I’d certainly be closer.

        3. Salty Secretary*

          I came to the realization that I could either be the kind of parent I wanted to be, or I could be a working archaeologist… and I decided archaeology could live without me, but I didn’t want to not be a mom.

      1. Blujay*

        I have not run from a boulder, though I have run from a falling power line. I have run into people that didn’t particularly want me to be there. Some of them were dramatic in conveying that message. So some shadows I guess?

        And every good archaeologist has a hat. But usually with a better (read wider) brim.

      1. Blujay*

        That’s great!

        One of my class final test was to document everything Indiana Jones did wrong in one of the movies. I think it was the first one.

    5. jamlady*

      Also an archaeologist, but a different background. I was in Federal land management for years before switching to Tribal Government. I run a large CRM department of archaeologists, anthropologists, archivists, curators, historians, public educators, and bios – I haven’t been to the field in many, many years! I don’t think any of the professions on my team are accurately portrayed.

    6. goddessoftransitory*

      I remember watching Last Crusade and being furious at how terrible Indiana Jones was at his job as he smashed apart priceless and intact medieval knights’ tombs.

    7. Miss Pantalones En Fuego*

      Yeah me too. Time Team isn’t too bad but the artificial 3 day thing always annoyed me a little bit. But at least it shows people using mattocks and machines for a lot of the work instead of tiny little brushes as we are often portrayed. I think the only time I’ve used tiny little brushes was when I worked on a huge cemetery site and everything had to be super clean for photogrammetry.

  19. ceiswyn*

    I’m a technical writer. And apparently I don’t exist.
    I am well impressed by the expertise of all the people on TV who can just spin up some unfamiliar software and use it without ever looking at the help.

    2. Charlotte Lucas*

      I used to train people on the kinds of internal systems that TV people can use & navigate the first time they see it! (Luckily for sleuths, screens are never locked or password protected.)

      1. Code Monkey, the SQL*

        I want some of those TV users for my software! I’ve got a user stuck in ticket hell going on week 3 because she skipped an access step and created some sort of six-way Gordian Approval Knot.

      2. Elenna*

        Or if it isn’t, the password is always, *always* either written down somewhere or it’s their wife’s name or their kid’s birthday or “password” or something super guessable. I’m sure there are people who do that in real life, but also there do exist people who have good passwords!

      1. Age Discrimination Sucks*

        There’s a movie with Eric Roberts and his character is a comic book writer, I believe.

    4. Mockingjay*

      Me too.

      My favorite are the scenes in Gravity during which Sandra Bullock pulls out the Russian, then the Chinese user guides to instantly fly unfamiliar spacecraft. Those guides must be the pinnacle of technical writing efforts.

      1. ceiswyn*

        I was astonished to discover that flying a spacecraft is so much easier than, say, provisioning compute in the cloud. That normally requires days of training…

    5. MmeJennyfair*

      While we aren’t usually portrayed in film, I reminisce fondly about (and sometimes identify with) Tina the Brittle Tech Writer from the Dilbert comic strip. Remember “Must. Stop. Fist. Of. Death.”?!?
      Love me some Tina!! VERY accurately depicted in cartoon life!!

      1. ceiswyn*

        One of my most guilty proud moments was when I discovered that the entire overseas development team was apparently terrified of me.
        I’m actually quite nice when I’m actually talking to people. I just rant a lot when I’m not :)

    6. Nea*

      Solidarity! Either we don’t exist OR the big butch hero proclaims “We don’t need a manual!” and operates highly technical machinery/machinery without shutting it down or injuring himself.

      How I wish GUIs were actually designed like that…

      2. Sally*

        How I wish GUIs were actually designed like that…

        Yes… but since they’re not, we remain employed!

    7. penny dreadful analyzer*

      I am a tech editor, and before that I worked in publishing, and given how publishing is portrayed in movies and TV I am actually quite glad that tech writers and editors are not considered filmable!

    8. Miette*

      Not to mention people able to navigate multiple screens and graphical objects THROUGH KEYSTROKES ALONE. I stg no one on TV uses their mouse ever.

      1. On Fire*

        Yes! I use keyboard shortcuts constantly, but there are some things you simply cannot do without a mouse.

    9. scurvycapn*

      While I am not a technical writer, I have put extensive hours into writing system design documents, quick reference guides, etc. for our technical writers to review/put the finishing touches on (and remove the million extra commas I tend to add).

      I think the real answer is that the profession may as well not exist as no one reads it. Or they do once, then forget about it, asking people for the information they already have. My favorite story was a customer asking for details about a process months after a project closed. A co-worker responded that it was in the design document, and even attaches a copy even though it’s in the customer’s SharePoint. “But where?” the customer responds, too lazy to even open it and look for the information.

    10. Buffy will save us*

      As an Occupational Therapist, I feel your pain. Whenever someone is in physical rehab it’s always just PT. Guess no one cares how they’re going to get dressed, eat, bathe, etc…..

    11. ProcessMeister*

      Star Trek (among others) is bad for that.
      “We found a spaceship abandoned by a species of alien we’ve never met and whose language/mode of thought/number of limbs we do not know. To make the ship go, we just need to plug this cable we don’t know anything about into this unrecognisable socket and all without knowing if it will cause any repercussions elsewhere. As for flying the ship, I just press various nearly-identical buttons with symbols I’d never seen up to an hour ago. It’s so convenient to live in a universe where most aliens look and think like me.”
      I enjoy Star Trek but, seriously??!

  20. Smaller Potatoes*

    I’m an engineer working in manufacturing. Except for the tv show “How it’s Made” and people running through industrial facilities while being chased I’m having difficulty thinking of where else it is represented at all.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Another engineer in manufacturing here, and when I watch superhero TV shows and movies, I’m usually thinking “holy industrial accidents, Batman!” as people are running through industrial sites and throwing forklifts at each other.

      1. Sally*

        And how about the scenes where a random person can jump into a forklift and drive it perfectly? I’ve never even been near one, but unless you’ve driven construction machines before, I imagine it’s not obvious how to do it. Or maybe that’s part of spy training…?

    2. 1-800-BrownCow*

      Haha, same with me. My engineering job in manufacturing is certainly not interesting enough for any tv show. What did I do today? Review product drawing changes and update some procedures…fun times.

  21. EggyParm*

    I work in advertising and I would say some parts of Mad Men are still highly accurate today. There’s still a strong drinking culture, a lot of long nights, and plenty of egos to deal with. Even the way some of the pitches are done feel very relevant to how we pitch and speak about products/ideas/campaigns today, which might be why that show has strong re-watch value for me.

    Probably the most unrealistic representation of advertising is Emily in Paris. That gal posts the most basic photos and captions and goes “viral”. Sure, Jan. She’s also, what, 25 years old and frequently refers to herself as a “Marketing Executive”? At best home girl is an “Account Manager”. I still hate watch it though. Haha.

    1. Hamster Manager*

      Also, Emily’s first and only idea is always brilliant and everyone is onboard with no changes every single time.

      1. Hamster Manager*

        Oh yeah and she’s only heard the barest amount of info about what the problem and business goals of the project are! Lol.

    2. Roy G. Biv*

      Agreed on Mad Men. It has been decades since I worked in advertising, but the pitching the idea to the client meetings always had some flashbacks for me. And the random goofing around at the office, usually while drinking.

    3. Lemondrop*

      I think that depends what kind of advertising you’re doing. My dad works in advertising, but he isn’t writing ads for consumers. He writes “hey, [major hardware store chain], here is why your stores should start carrying the new line of [major brand of appliance]!” type ads. He doesn’t drink at all, he works 9-5 (from home), and takes a ton of vacation time.

      On the flip side, I once had a coworker tell me she was leaving our crappy retail job to be a Marketing Manager at Old Navy. I was like, woah, that’s a big step up for someone with zero experience in marketing, and I asked her what sort of stuff she’d be doing. “Oh, you know, organizing displays, putting up signage in the store, opening and closing, that sort of thing.” So…like a store shift manager. Not a marketing position at all, just a misleading job title.

      1. Pudding*

        I had that job at another retail company for a summer! The title was Visual Merchandising Associate though, which seems more accurate. I LOVED it btw…the only reason why my tenure was short was because it was a between school years thing, and I had worked there before and they loved me, so when I called and asked if they had any summer work for me, they put me on that team.

    4. Riot Grrrl*

      When I as a freelance graphic designer, I met with a new client and proposed several possible solutions for her advertising needs. The way she responded was… odd. There was something overly officious about it, and she kept using phrases like “that’s our graphic.”

      Then it hit me: the way she’s talking isn’t the way people talk about advertising, it’s the way people on TV talk about advertising! She was doing her impression of an ad executive.

      1. Marcella*

        I run into this all the time! So many clients have picked up lingo around branding and marketing and then use it incorrectly. One client got frustrated because I thought “our ranking system is really cool” referred to some kind of Google rank strategy. He was talking about lead scoring but didn’t know the right term for it.

    5. Miette*

      The thing about being in Advertising is that everyone thinks they know all about Advertising, and all they know about Advertising is what they learned watching Melrose Place lmao

    6. Ray of Sunshine*

      Several of the ad agencies I’ve been in bad actively tried to distance themselves now from the Mad Men style drinking culture – to no avail often. One place I was at mad a big point of getting rid of all the bar carts in the office (there were 12 public ones in total, god knows how many were hidden in the managers offices!). Even with that, 90% of us had some sort of liquor in our desk drawer for impromptu happy hours. It was very much still a “work hard play hard” culture like in Mad Men, just with less sexism

    7. Purely Allegorical*

      I work in marketing and comms, and Mad Men is depressingly accurate. Only a little bit less sexism these days.

  22. Dread Pirate Roberts*

    I always find it funny when there’s a new show with (a) journalist character(s) – the number of journalists who feel the need to write “that’s now how it works” articles but don’t seem to make the connection that TV is not how pretty much any job works.

  23. Ari*

    Archaeologist here. I just have two words for you: Indiana Jones. :)

    Even some of the documentaries, etc., that interview archaeologists and histori

    1. Ari*

      …historians can really over-dramatize what is actually quite boring work sometimes.

      Sorry for two posts. My browser went crazy on me.

      1. It's Marie - Not Maria*

        Married to an Archaeologist. Can confirm, not glamourous, but a lot of back breaking labor. I joke my life is what happens after Indiana Jones rides off into the sunset with the pretty lady (I have a full time office job and I stay home with the pets, taking care of the house, while my Spouse goes and digs holes in exotic [haha] locales)

        1. Warrior Princess Xena*

          I’d guess that the ‘exotic’ locales include a lot of places with no clean drinking water, no toilets, whatever food is cheap and available, and more experience than most with endemic local diseases. And a lot of wrangling over paperwork with a counterpart when neither of you speak the other’s language overly well.

        2. Blujay*

          Yeah it’s funny when people ask where you’ve been as an archaeologist. I get asked if I’ve dug in Egypt a lot. No but I’ve seen a lot of the parts of states most people don’t go to!

          1. Salty Secretary*

            “ohhh that’s so exciting! where have you worked?”
            “umm central and Eastern Kentucky, little bit in West Virginia and Virginia.”
            “oh… um… cool?”

            I did used to know a fantastic Country bar/burger joint/indian restaruant/liquor store” down in Trigg co – but it didn’t survive the pandemmy.

          2. Ari*

            Yes!! For me it’s Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and one memorable project in Louisiana. Nothing exciting. Lots of hot, humid corn and soybean fields with the occasional swampy area thrown in for good measure.

            1. Blujay*

              I feel like some of those hot humid projects are, if nothing else, a touchstone bond between different phases of archaeologists. I once got a call from someone in my current job because they just read my name in a report which for me was two jobs ago. They were going to the same swamp and commiserated. I told them where to find some good Cuban food.

              800 holes I dug in that swamp. Found nothing.

    3. I edit everything*

      The biggest drama I faced when working on an archaeological site was the lack of a bathroom. We were there *all day*.

    4. I'm NOT Lara Croft*

      And don’t forget the built in water wings of his female equivalent Lara Croft.

      Those two stereotypes made studying Archaeology at uni a nightmare. Everyone was always SO disappointed when they met you in real life and you didn’t have a whip and fedora or wear really skimpy clothes.

      And YES, we have heard that joke before.

    5. no thank you*

      In high school my Latin teacher would play Indiana Jones for us on days she was feeling under the weather…. her justification was it was educational, as he is the best archaeologist ever lol.

  24. Magda*

    I’m an author which I frequently see depicted in media, probably because screenwriters figure they can guess what that would be like (the way a lot of authors choose to write characters that are artists – it’s “close enough” without being on the nose). I always chuckle when the “finale” of the movie or series is that the character writes the best-selling book about their experiences and is now a millionaire (no writer I have ever encountered gets that kind of money anymore, certainly not a debut writer with one book in them; if they had an unexpected success they would get paid in royalties but that takes literally a year to see the money – and very few authors now are given tours, never mind gifts like cruises as in Murder She Wrote). The timelines are often nonsensical (character writes a book and six months later is touring the world as a best seller – best case scenarios would be at least a year and a half before it comes out). The roles of editor, publicist and agent are all mixed together. The idea that writers are treated with prestige within the industry is kinda laughable (writers are somehow at the bottom of the power structure).

    2. Lisa*

      This! I’m a ghostwriter. I personally make more money than the average writer because I’m paid on a project basis and write 4-5 books/year for other people. But I’m privy to the world of publishing and this is dead on.

      It takes 18-24 months for a book to get to market unless it’s Prince Harry’s memoir, and even that took well over a year. The publishing industry is very old-fashioned because print schedules are so constrained; there are only TWO major printing companies in North America and ONE distribution network, and every big-five book has to fit into their timeline.

      The “book tours” depicted in so many films/shows are ludicrous. An episode of Agatha Raisin had a history writer going on a 6-12 month book tour in “America” after a successful 3-month tour in Europe. Seriously!!

      Debut non-fiction writers are extremely lucky if they make 50k off a book, and that number is much smaller for fiction writers. A bestselling book on the NYT list sells approximately 10,000 copies (depending on the week and how many books are released), not millions.

      The most accurate depiction of the publishing industry I’ve seen was in the show Younger. Not perfect, but close.

      1. Flowers*

        Maybe this is better for the open thread but what’s it like being a ghostwriter and how did you get into doing this?

    3. Shirley Keeldar*

      Never yet seen a freelance writer on the screen worrying about how to afford health insurance. I’ve been freelancing for 20 years and I worry about that A LOT.

      (Did get a book tour once. It was fun. Pretty sure
      it was useless in terms of selling books, though.)

      1. Tinkerbell*

        Yeah, I love when the editor flies the author to New York (or somewhere else glamorous and ritzy) and chides them about being behind deadline on their book, so the author retreats to somewhere remote but still glamorous and pulls a Walden Pond for a while before rushing back and handing their editor a (paper!) copy of their manuscript. Then the next scene, they’re on a grand book tour (paid for by the publisher, of course!) and doing red carpet events.

        Actual experience:

        1) Write book (takes anywhere from months to years)
        2) Submit to agents (also takes months to do)
        3) If you’re lucky, you get to sign with someone. If not, you put that manuscript under your bed and start on a new one, go back to step 1.
        4) Your agent asks for some revisions (add a few months), then starts on submissions. Take another 2-12 months for this.
        5) An editor wants to acquire your book or series! Yay! In a month or so you get a contract. Lucky authors will get an advance (money paid right away), authors in other genres (cough cough *romance and ebooks*) are lucky to get royalties eventually. Even if you do get an advance, that money is split up over YEARS – often 1/3 at signing, 1/3 at turning in the book, and 1/3 at publication.
        6) Spend anywhere between six months and two years doing edits, okaying the cover, writing back cover copy, and working on your social media presence before the book comes out. The publisher might cover the cost of a blog “tour” if they really like you, otherwise all the marketing is out of your own pocket.
        7) Release day! Post a lot on Twitter and Facebook and obsessively watch your book rank on Amazon. Try to read the reviews (because you’re excited) without reading the reviews (because seeing one mean thing will totally haunt you forever).
        8) 3-6 months later, get paid for day 1 sales. Continue to get royalty checks for increasingly smaller amounts, always with a 3-6 month delay. Eventually the royalties end up being under $5 so they don’t actually send checks every time anymore.
        9) After 10 years and 9 books out, finally earn enough income to have to pre-pay taxes on it. Still don’t get health care.

        1. Shirley Keeldar*

          And where did the author get that remote-yet-glamorous retreat anyway? I mean, obviously it’s not THEIRS, they’re a writer, they’re broke. How do all on-screen writers have family or friend with lovely wilderness cabins?

        2. New Jack Karyn*

          You mentioning the writer being behind deadline reminded me of the movie Stranger Than Fiction. Emma Thompson is a well-regarded author who is DEEPLY behind on her latest novel, and Queen Latifah plays a ‘fixer’ sent by the publisher to prod her along.

          I’m sure it’s incredibly fallacious, but their interplay was amusing as hell.

          1. Vio*

            I love that movie, so many great scenes and characters! I especially loved when the guy brings the girl ‘flowers’, one of the funniest yet still romantic moments in any movie.

            1. New Jack Karyn*

              I suspect they made Maggie Gyllenhall’s character a baker specifically so they could make that joke!

    4. Flowers*

      This is so funny – I’m watching Home Economics atm and Topher grace’s character is a writer. and it’s exactly like it says above. With a few hilarious setbacks.
      (fwiw I’d totally read the book he wrote).

  25. L-squared*

    Im in sales.

    I feel like most portrayals are far more slimy than any sales job I’ve ever had. Not saying those people don’t exist, but I feel they are more the exception than the rule. And I mean truly sales of things companies want, not like calling people to sell crap they don’t need. Movies like Boiler Room are entertaining, but not like my life.

  26. David*

    Also, don’t get me started on bad CPR in films…James Bond at the end of Casino Royale is basically just groping his casualty’s chest. Given the quality of his chest compressions and rescue breaths it’s no wonder she died!

    2. ENFP in Texas*

      To be fair, you can’t do full-strength compressions on a healthy patient.

      You’d need to substitute a dummy or mannequin, which has its own issues.

    3. Isben Takes Tea*

      When I first did lifeguard training, they had a special section on “How to Identify a Drowning Victim” that emphasized we all “think” we know what drowning looks like based on TV and film depictions, but it is almost never like that, and unless you are really looking for it, you’ll miss it most of the time.

    4. Amber T*

      The amount of shock and, frankly, bad press over the “aggressive” CPR done on Damar Hamlin (NFL player who recently collapsed on the field) made me realize that not enough people are trained in CPR. Heck, I’m a boring office-goer who has thankfully never had to perform CPR for real, and I can only imagine it’s so much harder and scarier when doing it on someone who actually needs it. But I’ve gone through CPR training, and we did the “aggressive” chest compressions on the dummy for two straight minutes before switching out with a partner… that’s a lot of physical effort.

    5. Sister Spider*

      I was an EMT for a few years and they’re still dragging those carts with the paddles out on every medical show and shocking patients who show a flatline on the monitor, too.

    6. Vesper Should Have Lived*

      YES, that CPR scene in Casino Royale has always driven me nuts! He’s even got her slanted the wrong way on the roof so whatever water is in her can’t even use gravity to flow towards her mouth instead of staying in her lungs. This is my “Jack could have fit on the door with Rose,” unnecessary-cinematic-death hill that I will die on, ha ha.

      1. CowWhisperer*

        I was 16 when Titanic came out – and I remember being amused that Jack was gonna die because two adults couldn’t manage to stay on a huge door when my friends and I could get three people on a single pool mattress…..

  27. KTinDC*

    The number of police procedurals that think that a librarian will just give them patron or circulation information is alarming.

    3. Critical Rolls*

      Librarian: Oh, yes, I have that information right here.
      Librarian: [smiling politely]
      Cop: …
      Cop: Are you gonna give it to me?
      Librarian: Do you have a warrant?

      Or just “we don’t retain that information” for privacy reasons exactly like this.

      1. Tinkerbell*

        Exactly!

        No, we can’t tell you every book you (or your children) have ever checked out. The only people who ever ask us for that information (besides you) probably shouldn’t have it, so we prefer not to even make fulfilling their requests a possibility.

        1. AABBCC123*

          Legitimately curious, is there a line when that privacy protection would not apply? For example if it becomes clear that someone is actively planning violence?

          In my state at least, attorney-client privilege doesn’t apply to crimes that haven’t been committed. Also EVERY ADULT is a mandated reporter and can go to jail if they learn of abuse and don’t report to the authorities.

          1. Tinkerbell*

            I never ran into that situation, thank goodness, so I didn’t have to find out. (I was the “branch manager” and also sole employee at a one-room library out in the boonies.) I did stretch the rules once – a teenager stole my purse, I knew who did it (he was the only one there), and I used the computer to look up his home address when the police officer asked if I knew where he lived. I think technically I could have gotten fired for that but I really needed my keys to get home!

          2. Critical Rolls*

            My experience is that we just don’t do a level of monitoring that would give us that information. We don’t have a “how to do crime” shelf. The internet is lightly filtered, enough to block sites whose only purpose is “how to do crime.” Unless someone is dumb enough to come to the desk and say “I want a book about how to poison someone” or “Why can’t I access bombsrus.com?” it’s not likely we’d even know.

          3. Jean Pargetter Hardcastle*

            I think every state has slightly different laws regarding where the lines are. People (including cops, yikes) always seem quite stunned to learn that this is actually a law, not just me being difficult.

            1. AABBCC123*

              This could be a thread in and of itself, laws that affect your work that no one knows about; for example in NY the minimum age to be in a first aid squad is set in the “Arts and Cultural Affairs law”, not the health code or the labor law.

    5. Odditor*

      Honestly, the way police get evidence in most procedurals is kinda terrifying. From basic stuff like picking things up with a pencil to the really awful things like breaking into someone’s home or roughing up a witness… real-life police already behave in enough ethically questionable ways as it is.

    6. Here for the Insurance*

      My library wouldn’t even give me my *own* information, even with an ID.

      I was so happy they were that protective of people’s info, I almost danced out of the building.

    7. k*

      Same with any business I’ve worked with customer data. If some cop walks in I (the person at the front desk) is not going to just hand over customer details. So not worth losing my job.

  28. Kvothe*

    I was a laboratory scientist in a former life, and unsurprisingly science is pretty much never portrayed accurately. For academic labs, it’s always shown as WAY more organized/clean than it is in real life. And there are really rarely brightly and variously colored chemicals/solutions hanging around in beakers/graduated cylinders – for the most part, everything is white or clear! (I was a biochemist, so for other fields YMMV I suppose.)

    Oh and it’s hardly ever the professor/big boss in the lab making the “big discovery” – in real life it’s an exhausted and jaded grad student/postdoc/staff scientist :)

    2. AngryOctopus*

      Oh yes. CSI timings are terribly inaccurate (I WISH PCR would come off the machine in minutes), and the granularity achieved is stunning and I wish I could have that in my job (pharm biotech research).
      I have zero brightly colored liquids hanging around my bench, but media is red, if that counts.

      1. PostalMixup*

        Unless you’re using the version of DMEM without the phenol red! I do have a conical of fluorescein at my bench, and it’s very pretty. As are my quencher-labeled oligos. And in grad school I engineered a GFP-expressing cell line that was so bright I could screen +/- by just looking at the pellet.

        But yeah, it drives me crazy when they put the swab in the centrifuge and up pops a DNA double helix on the computer screen and the tech goes “the DNA matches our suspect!” No sequencer, no bioinformatic analysis pipeline, no RFLP analysis.

      2. American in Ireland*

        Molecular biologist here. I was forever confused as to why they would talk about DNA sequencing and then go use the big whatever mass spec / scintillation counter / thingy. Why are they not actually sequencing the DNA. Oh. The big moving machine is actually supposed to be the machine that makes DNA sequences.

        Lots of yelling at various forensic shows around here. Bones, CSI, NCIS… I can’t even watch them any more.

      3. Lora*

        That’s why Fisher Sci makes those rainbow colored tube racks. Cause everything else is boring looking.

        I work for Big Pharma (well, Startup Biotech at the moment) and the most exciting part of the job is when one of the drugs you worked on two years ago is finally advanced to the next stage, long after it’s passed through your hands. I didn’t find out that one of the drugs I worked on had actually gone commercial until about ten years after I no longer worked for that company, and I only found out because the CDMO I was working for happened to get a manufacturing contract for it.

        It’s never just one person who discovers a drug at all, even in the early stages there’s still at least two dozen people doing the work. To progress a drug through all the clinical stages takes the work of hundreds of people, it’s definitely not Sean Connery in the rainforest falling in love with his colleague while they fight logging companies type of thing. The vast majority of the time we discover a new molecule, we don’t have a clue what it might do, it probably affects a lot of different systems and will need a lot of refinement to be a good candidate molecule, nevermind passing clinical trials for a specific illness in a reasonably credible fashion.

      4. TheAG*

        I curse CSI in general. I was a quality lab manager at a large CPG manufacturer and someone walked into my office with a jar of something that was brown-ish. “Can you tell me what’s in this?”. Yeah, no it doesn’t work that way, and if you don’t know what’s in it please remove it from my office.
        When I was young and working at the bench I was in a commercial for the company, so they were following me around trying to get shots but apparently what I was doing wasn’t science-y looking enough so they told me to do something that looks like science lol. I just ended up titrating something with a burette. That seemed to satisfy them.

    3. Ama*

      I was coming here to say this — I work specifically in medical research and they don’t do that properly either — Gray’s Anatomy in particular I had to stop watching once they started doing research storylines because they are just so unethical and half their research related plots wouldn’t happen because of the regulatory safeguards that are in place to make sure those exact situations are prevented.

      1. IRB analyst*

        Oh I was wondering about that below! Guess I should find those episodes when I’m in the mood to point and boo at unethical research!

    4. My Cabbages!*

      And please let me state for the record:

      *Stating that you’re a PhD is not a flex in science, it’s the bare minimum for a non-technician.

      *Stating someone has multiple PhDs won’t impress a scientist. It doesn’t mean you’re super smart, it means you can’t commit to a field of study.

      *Just because someone has a PhD in one scientific subject doesn’t make them an expert at all science. Your physicist isn’t going to be able to whip up an explosive, and your chemist can’t treat an unknown disease. Hell, I am a microbiologist and I couldn’t tell an alder tree from an elder tree.

      *Research takes a long freaking time. Oh no, the bad guy has released his deadly virus on the hero and only the lovely heroine can save him! Welp, say goodbye because just culturing enough virus to study is going to take all night, if she’s lucky.

      *Microscopes can’t do that.

      *DNA definitely, definitely can’t do that.

      1. Sam*

        A character saying that they have 6 PhDs in closely related fields is like saying they lost their virginity 6 times. It’s a one and done thing and then you move on.

        1. Sister Spider*

          Also, 6 science PhDs is a level of unmatched masochism. 6 dissertations? That many PIs? TA jobs??

            1. New Jack Karyn*

              I suppose the ‘logic’ there is that he’s so gosh-darn brilliant that he can whomp up a diss in 3-6 months. And/or that he realizes that his breakthroughs have applications in more than one field, and writes them up with a slightly different focus.

          2. tamarack etc.*

            Indeed. You only need to go through the experience once, and then you have a PhD and have learned what you needed from it. If you *really* want to formally immerse yourself in a different but adjacent discipline, with a piece of paper in the end, you get an MS. That teaches you where the state of the art is in this subfield and how to competently work in it. Done.

            1. DyneinWalking*

              Yeah. A PhD is less about getting expertise in the field and more about getting expertise with the research process itself. It’s somewhat similar to learning a trade; you learn the craft of research. It’s expected that you already have the relevant background knowledge for your field.
              Unless the fields are really different – like switching from molecular biology to literary studies – it’s pretty pointless to start again from scratch. Honestly getting a second PhD in a related field mostly sounds like you couldn’t find any place that was prepared to pay you as a postdoc. Which may not necessarily be your fault but either way isn’t something to brag about.

      2. Librarian of Many Hats*

        I know many PhDs who are perfectly nice people and respect the expertise of others. I also know some who aren’t and don’t. Many of the latter happen to be men in the sciences.

      3. Laura*

        *Stating that you’re a PhD is not a flex in science, it’s the bare minimum for a non-technician.

        Ouch! Plenty of us are working at scientist level roles without PhDs. I’ve worked with plenty of great scientists with “just” a masters or even BS; I’ve also worked with some pretty worthless PhDs.

        1. TH*

          Yeah, my husband is a scientist with a Masters degree who is currently job searching and nobody has even brought up the fact that he doesn’t have a PhD. They are much more interested in his industry experience.

    5. irene adler*

      Biochemist in Quality for a manufacturing company.
      Hoo Boy!

      All the tests work- never/rarely a failure! And so speedy too! With just the right results for what is needed.

      Labs sooo neat and tidy. Where’s all the dirty glassware at?

      Disparate kinds of work done in the same lab: like reconstruction of the murder implement, an analysis of the paint found on vehicle, a DNA analysis and finally, a seroconversion status.
      The research animals are in cages right there in the lab-like pets.

      Lack of log-books for equipment, animals, etc.

      Either folks don full-on PPE or nothing.

      Lab explosions. Especially the big ones that catch the lab techs by surprise. What the heck are they using in that lab??

      1. Nesprin*

        Not to mention lab tape.

        Like a third of my lab is held together by lab tape, and yet, no colorful stripes labeling “this beaker is Jeremy’s, all others go find your own beaker” or “in use don’t touch till 1/22/19” or “beware of Oliver, he bites”

          1. Nesprin*

            Sharpies pshaw. Spring for the good ethanol-proof VWR pens- they’re amazing if you have to do ethanol wiping all the time.

            1. genomics tech*

              Research associate here – my favorite is fine-tip Sarstedt pens! I hoard them and hide them all over when we get new boxes in.

      2. my cat is the employee of the month*

        Balances placed directly on benches! Biological labs without any hoods! Well tailored lab coats!

    6. Nesprin*

      Oh yes. No one on TV pipettes correctly, no one wears the correct PPE, and I’ve never worked in a lab that had bubbling green liquids. I’ve never seen a TV show actually portray the excitement of getting a band on a blot where you wanted to see a band on a blot.

      The big bang theory is a particular anti-favorite. There are, in fact, women who work in labs who aren’t nerdy jerks.

      1. Med Lab Scientist*

        I currently work in a clinical microbiology lab, we occasionally do have bubbling green liquid when preparing a particular culture media. But 100% agree between the tape and things working they way they are supposed to.

      2. my cat is the employee of the month*

        My lab did bubbling beakers (water, food dye, dry ice) for Halloween one year, and our safety guy dropped in to make sure we were okay. He didn’t appreciate it.

    7. spiriferida*

      The equipment is always new, no one ever spends an hour cleaning the dirty glassware, they’re never swapping out their pipette tips or discarding their slides or having their equipment beeping obnoxiously at them because it just decided not to work this time. I’m not in research (so I don’t really exist in media), but in both the commercial and academic labs I’ve worked in, the equipment is always ‘what we can get’, and there’s always months if not years of old records and broken equipment just… there, because no one’s gotten around to dealing with it. My current job we have to go all the way to the board to get rid of anything. We have whole rooms of just stuff. We’re getting new fume hoods and it’s just about the most exciting thing in years.

      Oh, and the safety procedures are always terrible, but that’s a given. Nary a chemical shower or a broken glass bin in sight.

    8. Sister Spider*

      The labs are always so dark. Like on CSI – how could those people even see to load a PCR plate.

    9. Manders*

      I love this thread. All of the above is 100% accurate. Especially the comment about the animals *being in the lab like pets* – thank you for the laugh! And while I’m not a lab tech in a crime lab, the Law & Order thing where the same guy who analyzed fingerprints also did the blood spatter analysis and also the bullet analysis and also the DNA analysis, etc, always made me chuckle.

      1. TomatoSoup*

        I have been to the NYPD lab where most of those tests are actually run and I laugh that TV shows make it look sleek like the inside of an Apple store or centrally located. It is neither.

    11. Tongue Cluckin' Grammarian*

      I worked in an anatomic pathology lab for a number of years (accession, some gross, transcription, and protocols)

      Movies and shows always have the biopsy results in minutes. That’s pretty rare, and never as detail as the reports they end up reading for those quick turnarounds. You have to process the specimens and get them in paraffin blocks before you can slide and stain them!

      1. The Katie*

        I also work in anatomical pathology, and I’ve found that most people have no idea how the whole process or the equipment used really works. Some highlights include my father assuming that slides get coversliped immediately after cutting, doctors asking for unrealistically fast turn around times for renal wedges, and my personal favourite, this mislabeled microtome: https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/2017/04/diseases-are-cool.html?m=1 (bottom picture).

        1. Tongue Cluckin' Grammarian*

          Our doctors wanted unrealistically fast turnarounds for a lot of things, lol. We created a lot of documentation to try and set expectations properly, but sometimes they demanded we subvert time somehow.

          And that picture set is amazing. I love the implication that the waterbath is for intentionally growing organisms.

    12. My Cabbages!*

      When I was in grad school I had to do a Biuret test to see if I’d adequately unprotected my reactant-linked amino acids. I was so excited because I finally got to do an experiment that depended on whether my liquid changed color or not.

    1. another social worker*

      Also regardless of what type of social work it is, whether it’s therapy, case management, child protection, etc. All the ethical and boundary violations make me wince.

    2. Lcsa99*

      Have you watched Travelers? I don’t know how social work actually works, but I always pictured it the way David is portrayed, at least in the beginning. Too many people assigned to him, no budget to work with, to time to do everything and anything he does do for people he basically has to do on his own time.

    3. EvilQueenRegina*

      Not sure what country you’re in, but I’ve definitely seen some bad examples of that in the UK. At a time when I used to have to set up regularly scheduled family time between children in care and their birth families, struggling to find supervisor cover and venues for this to take place three days a week while a soap opera here gave someone one contact in her own home after three weeks of baby being placed with family member (there were a lot of comments art the time about how was that family member even approved anyway – UK people, it was Phil Mitchell) steam was coming out of my ears. If that was the norm, I could have more easily handled that on top of my official job. But hey, that’s another story.

    4. Spero*

      Was scrolling to find social work! 90% of us do not work in CPS. And why do school and hospital based shows never have a social worker? I usually just assume whatever helpful and competent character who doesn’t have a named profession is actually the social worker haha

      I spend half my day on grant reporting/monitoring, 25% on staff supervision and the rest of it paying to keep people from being evicted.

      1. Cavia Porcellus*

        As someone who DOES work in CPS, that’s also not how CPS works!

        The most recent example I can think of is Netflix’s Sandman. Which depicts a CPS agency that:
        1) Does NOT do any family finding, when there is literally a mother who desperately wants her child back and just happens to live in another state
        2) Does NOT facilitate a visit between the child in placement and his sibling who shows up searching for him
        3) Does NOT conduct regular (minimum monthly) in-placement face-to-face visits with the child
        4) Does NOT have any services referrals in place for mental health or anything else for the child despite him being placed because of a parent’s death

        I spent an episode just raging at the TV. My husband was more entertained by my yelling than he was by the show!

    5. TheMonkeyShuffle*

      Thank you!! If I see a social worker in a show or movie I immediately guess they’re the killer or thief. Or at very least they are TERRIBLE at being therapists. After being a hospital social worker for most of my career I actually get more irritated watching the doctors in medical dramas do job of like 8 different disciplines

      1. AMT*

        Yes! TV always has a very optimistic view of doctors’ willingness to do any form of discharge planning.

    6. Introvert Teacher*

      The social workers always get sh*t on in every storyline! I am not one but as a former teacher our school social workers were the champs! You guys put in more emotional labor than anyone in any other field could possibly imagine, and you do it with incredible heart, with no respect from society and the media. If anyone can think of a positive representation then please correct me. The last time I remember seeing a social worker on TV was in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and she was portrayed as a clueless cog in the system for not detecting the abuse happening within a foster home; then she gets killed unceremoniously by the villain.

    7. Raida*

      have you seen… British series… “Damned” ? Obviously the characters are on the larger than life side, but I’m interested in the actual tasks and responsibilities and processes they were going through. Had a real ‘this is not fun or exciting and we aren’t out to get you’ feel to it

      1. Cavia Porcellus*

        Lilo & Stitch was my favorite depiction. Cobra Bubbles having The Talk with Nani about how he knows how much she loves Lilo, but is *this* really what Lilo needs, and could we talk a bit more about how to give Lilo some stability? – It was heartbreaking when I first saw it in high school and it’s so relatable now as someone in the field.

      2. SocialworkerL*

        Oh, I couldn’t stand the social workers in Instant Family. They brushed off his valid concerns about being a “white savior” they are so demeaning toward the birth mother, the adoption class they teach is a nightmare when it could have been an opportunity to really confront stereotypes about adoption … I generally liked the movie but I can’t think of any movie or show that really gets social work right.

    9. Pajama Mommas*

      I was looking for the social worker thread! Our code of ethics is very clear that that is never okay to sleep with clients (and your state board can impose all sorts of punishment for doing it), but so many therapists in the media sleep with their clients with no consequences.

  30. H3llifIknow*

    Oh Dear Sweet Baby Deity NO. I am a Cyber Security SME and I don’t really do ANY of the “cool” hacker/forensic type stuff that TV portrays, ala Garcia on Criminal Minds, etc…I do enjoy watching those types of portrayals though because they make me laugh and WISH my job were as easy as clicking a few keys and “Voila!” … My son is a Firefighter/Paramedic and he HATES the portrayals of FFs and ‘medics on TV. No, they don’t all look like GQ models; no, everyone in the station is NOT sleeping with everyone else. No, people don’t go rogue on a call and rush in after being told to stand down, etc… The only one he likes at all is Tacoma FD which is more of a comedy/parody of shows like ‘Station 19’ etc..

    1. Sloanicota*

      Cyber stuff: I love how there’s always a database of every type of cement or whatever that the computer geek can filter through with some very unlikely attributes.

      1. H3llifIknow*

        …and don’t forget how they can always quickly access private/protected medical records, etc… “Oh he was hospitalized as a dangerous paranoid schizo 3 years ago.” Sigh.

          1. H3llifIknow*

            Yikes. Let me go back to my dark isolated room, lit only by my many many monitors busily hacking into …everything…. but where I don’t know that such things exist….

        2. Eat My Squirrel*

          Taking it one step further, it drives me insane how many movies and shows have this dialog:
          “I can’t tell you that, it’s classified.”
          -sad eyes-
          “Ok I’ll tell you, Person who doesn’t have a security clearance, out here in the open where anyone could overhear, but DON’T SAY I TOLD YOU.”

          Sigh. Just once I’d love to see that person who just gave the hero classified information have their security clearance revoked, be fired, and face jail time.

          1. H3llifIknow*

            OMG yes. And the way they use the different classifications is hysterical. “I have Top Secret.” How high? “Tippy Top.” Sigh or “Let me just carry around this folder with a big read stamp ‘EYES ONLY'”….

        3. Tau*

          The amount of times they just casually break encryption, too.

          Like… if they don’t have the key then either someone messed up when setting up the encryption, the characters are in possession of what’s basically an absurd superweapon, or they are not getting at that data before the heat death of the universe.

    2. Infosec*

      Thank you! My favorite/least-favorite scene is the notorious two-people-typing-on-a-keyboard-at-once-to-more-faster-quickly-stop-the-evil-scary-bad-hacker. Just…. no, that doesn’t work that way.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I assumed that was satire. The one that gets me yelling-at-the-TV mad is the Bones episode where a hacker/serial killer who hasn’t been allowed near a computer in 10 years manages to hack a computer by carving marks on a bone. Meaning that he managed to hack into an unknown photo program based on a photo taken at an unknown angle with unknown lighting, *and* he got it right on the first try.

        In my computer security class, I spent a week just trying to tweak a buffer-overflow attack to work for a known OS and never succeeded.

        1. H3llifIknow*

          That must have occurred after I stopped watching Bones when it just got increasingly ridiculous and veered so far away from the (very good) books that I couldn’t stop being angry at every episode. That would have launched me from my chair at the TV I think!

    3. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      Also in cyber here. The number of bit/byte streams that flow across my screens in a visually exciting way is zero.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        Okay, but you do fly through 3-D pixelated cities to access files, or send virtual warriors to fight the virtual monsters in order to defeat computer security, right?

        (Visual depictions of computer “worms” and “trojan horses” crack me up every time.)

    4. Russ*

      Yes! I also work in computer security, and while the job of responding to an intrusion in real time does exist, it (a) doesn’t look like that, (b) is much rarer than any TV show thinks, and (c) even if you are pulled in to an incident, very few people do that work all the time.

      Nearly all of my job is thinking about how people log in to things and how systems talk to each other, looking for mistakes, and trying to keep everyone else writing software or assembling things from creating future problems. It’s all very boring hypotheticals and analysis tools and from the outside is indistinguishable from software development, which in turn is indistinguishable from staring at a computer screen full of not-moving code and muttering and occasionally typing something.

      1. Weyrwoman*

        Hello fellow IR person. TV always shows us as responding to what I call ‘live’ events where a threat actor is actively in our system and we’re trying to shut access out while containing while working out motive.

        lol.

        My day to day is more like “hey is this email phishing I think it’s phishing” “no, person, that’s not phishing that’s just someone who bought a list” or “have you talked to IT yet because that sounds like not-a-security problem”. On exciting days I get to investigate something that happened three days ago, affected one user or system, and did absolutely nothing of note.

    5. Darury*

      On a related note, I work in IT storage. It kills me when they break into the data center to steal data, grab ONE drive out of a computer and that contains everything they need. Data is typically striped across multiple drives including a parity bit, so if you lose one of them, you can pop in a replacement and rebuild the lost bits. For our storage, they have external encryption, so even if forklifted out the several thousand pound cabinet, you STILL wouldn’t have easy access to the data.

    6. frankie*

      married to a paramedic at a fire station and so far he’s seen 3 fistfights over people sleeping with someone else’s partner, so.

    7. Starscourge Savvy*

      But do you and a coworker type on the same keyboard at the same time to more quickly counter-hack security risks?? XD

  31. CTT*

    Corporate and real estate lawyer here! It’s not that I’m horrified at how my job is represented on television, it’s that we don’t show up at all. I mean, I get why criminal law or high-stakes litigation makes up the vast majority of entertainment depictions of lawyers. It’s built-in drama! And who wants to watch a show about people arguing over indemnification provisions? But! there is a real opportunity for a good sitcom here. I spend so much of my time dealing with the whims of rich people, and those whims can be hilarious. I once had to move up a closing because the client got invited to go climb one of the Alps!

    As it is, I think the closest representation I have seen of my job on TV was the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart on “Angel,” because I believe several of them were transactional attorneys. Obviously there are no human sacrifices in BigLaw but…not so far off?

    1. Ginger Baker*

      I definitely felt Wolfram & Hart depicted some more-realistic situations. Esp. once Angel took over because then it was “okay so we don’t want to Do Evil but also we have a client who Is Evil, where’s the win-win solution here?” Also the office politics, and the way major moves were frequently all paperwork versus like, Slaying (pre- and post-Angel-run firm).

    2. Jenny*

      Even in criminal law you rarely see things like Calendar or slow meetings that make up most of the work. I used to clerk and Friday Calendar was a mix of tedious and exhausting. We’d be lucky if “morning Calendar” was done by 4. The clerks would sneak granola bars and protein shakes because we couldn’t leave.

    4. Corporate Lawyer*

      Ditto, corporate/securities lawyer here. I have yet to see a dramatization of what I do. Though, in fairness, even I wouldn’t watch a show about drafting, reviewing, and filing reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

      Totally agree that Wolfram & Hart was a not-too-far-off depiction of transactional lawyers. I have yet to invoke demons at a closing, but I’ve worked on transactions where it might have helped.

    6. Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet!)*

      I’m a trusts and estates attorney, so I also spend a lot of time dealing with the whims of rich people, and the stuff they get up to can be hilarious or ridiculous (“How much money do you want to leave for the care of your cat? Half a million? Okay, so more than you’re leaving your kids…”)
      A part of me thinks a show based around the conflict between a scrappy sales department and in-house counsel could be funny.

    7. an attorney*

      Right, I’m not horrified by how entertainment portrays the law, although every so often I do get my hackles up about Law & Order a) not accurately portraying evidentiary rules (so much hearsay!) or b) allowing an attorney to testify, rather than questioning the witness. I’m never in court, but I recognize it would be difficult to portray most daily law work in a manner that attracts viewers.

      1. Jenny*

        Or lawyers who keep talking after an objection rather than allowing the judge to rule. You’d be in so much trouble for that.

        1. NotAnotherManager!*

          Or arguing back and forth with the judge after they rule! Nobody does that unless they are badly in need of a contempt citation. Shut up, sit down, and hold onto some credibility and capital for the next objection.

          (One of my favorite John Mulaeny bits is the L&O Original Recipe tropes one: “Judge Who Allows Everything. ‘Mmm, I’ll allow it watch yourself, McCoy!'”)

          1. LawGal*

            I’d love to see a show that is just the appellate bureau dealing with all appeals from McCoy’s shenanigans.

    8. Bored Lawyer*

      Even high-stakes litigators spend like 80% of their days answering emails. Not exactly scintilating television.

    9. higheredrefugee*

      As a federal attorney doing nothing but administrative law, I’m definitely not seen on television or in movies. But if people knew how much time many lawyers spend just writing and reading by ourselves, they’d stop encouraging people with great oral advocacy skills (without knowing anything about writing capabilities) to go to law school.

      1. eye roll*

        Same here, and I’m with you. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve trained for this job who are great at arguing, but have writing skills that make me wonder how they actually completed the bar.

    10. ticktick*

      Yes, and every shot of any lawyer’s computer screen shows nice clean text on a white background – no redlines anywhere in sight! I weep for the lack of “Track Changes”, the commercial lawyer’s best friend.

    11. CarlDean*

      I’m a divorce lawyer for high net worth clients. TV doesn’t capture the absurdity and drama of what I see in real life. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

      1. MeepMeep123*

        Oh yes. My wife is a divorce lawyer and I often think that her practice would make a heck of a TV show. Or a series of novels.

        I’m a patent lawyer, myself, and that never shows up on TV, even though that’s frequently very entertaining. I work for individual inventors, mostly, so I get a lot of really crazy inventions and ideas.

        1. The Prettiest Curse*

          There is a British show called The Split about a family of divorce laywers that ran for several seasons. I have no idea whether it’s supposed to be accurate or not, though.
          .

      2. Anon attorney*

        This is very true. However, it’s also true that I spend a fair amount of time reading through financial documentation and working on spreadsheets. Which is not scintillating viewing. Far better to show us roaring “OBJECTION!! in a designer suit.

        Speaking of which, most attorneys I deal with are significantly less attractive and well dressed than our TV avatars…

    12. Not That Kind of Lawyer*

      Fellow lawyer here. “My Cousin Vinny” had one of the most accurate depictions of what can happen in court. It was the scene where Vinny objected to an expert witness. He gave an accurate summary of the law and was absolutely right, but he was still overruled. This happens and all you can do is got back to your seat and plan to either file a writ o an appeal.

      1. Was I ready for a career leap?*

        I’ve been in practice for a decade — the first big chunk of it doing municipal/insurance defense (with side work for municipalities to enforce local ordinances and/or minor traffic violations), and the latter portion on plaintiff’s side largely for car accident or slip and fall cases. With rare exception there has been more conflict in both of those jobs with my own clients’ unrealistic expectations than with the opposition or with judges.

        Instead of dramatic courtroom scenes, it’s begging a governing board for settlement authority or trying to get someone to take (reasonable) offered money and run when they could walk with $0 due to a liability question — and then feeling stuck going through the motions of additional discovery without any real ability to control the trajectory of the case when your client won’t play ball.

        Even on the rare occasions where some Court has gone rogue (e.g. once had a state court judge tell me NYT v. Sullivan didn’t apply to a libel claim), the real challenge is usually getting the client on board with the most logical next steps. i.e. sure we could litigate this case to trial and then have a good chance of winning an appeal of the denial of our motion to dismiss — but if the other side will take $5-10K in nuisance money to go away, why do you want to spend $40K and 2 years to do that?

    13. Anonn*

      Not that it’s a huge part of the show, but the main character of Crazy Ex Girlfriend is a real estate lawyer…and does very, many not real estate lawyer-y things. You might get a kick out of the song “Don’t Be a Lawyer” though.

    15. JelloStapler*

      My Dad (rest in peace) was a real estate lawyer. You’re right not very glitzy but also had some good perks if you were the legal support for the company.

  32. Buffalo gal*

    I’m an Episcopal priest. I can’t think of any depiction of either priests or Protestant pastors that are anything like my life. In fact most of the depictions of pastors I can think of would get the priest/pastor brought up on disciplinary charges or seriously counselled for violating boundaries.

      1. QuinFirefrorefiddle*

        Hilariously I couldn’t get through the first ten minutes of an episode because it was so true to life that it gave me anxiety. I’m in a better place now, I should try it again. :)

        1. PastorLobbyist*

          I also came here to say Rev.! It’s the only show I can think of that really nailed the experience of ministry.

    2. many bells down*

      I work for a church and I don’t think any show has ever depicted how WEIRD church life can get.

        1. QuinFirefrorefiddle*

          That show *is* beloved by a lot of clergy I know. And it gets the feel right, I’m not an expert in Anglican details. The one thing I couldn’t believe was that I’ve never met a congregation so loyal to their pastor that they’d protect her through 2 weeks of no-showing for worship, like after that one breakup she has. Not all of us have bunny suits, either.

        2. Jean Pargetter Hardcastle*

          Not clergy, but as an active church council member, I find Vicar of Dibley quite resonant in a lot of ways!

    3. Warrior Princess Xena*

      Haha this reminds me of watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding (I’m Orthodox). The liturgical bits were the least accurate. Everything else felt very, very accurate. There’s a running joke that it’s not a movie, it’s a documentary.

      1. fish*

        I’m Jewish, and it also feels very accurate. My family makes new partners watch it so they know what they’re getting into.

    4. LongTimeReader*

      Same!!! And I have also never ever solved a murder mystery in my free time. But maybe that’s just because I don’t live in England!

    6. QuinFirefrorefiddle*

      Lutheran (woman) pastor here. I hear a lot of shows/movies do ok with Catholic priests. Nondenominational/Evangelical are usually mostly okay. Mainline liturgical protestant? Absolutely not. And usually the fixes are so easy! The church calendar, aside from when Easter is, is pretty simple! That tells you what color the decor should be! Even if you went with the Catholic thing of advent being purple, that would be fine! But no. Seventh Heaven was so bad at so many things. A pastor dad can’t just give his pastor daughter a job. The denominational leadership wouldn’t stand for that, she needs to be away from him to develop!

    7. melbelle*

      This was my fundamental problem with Fleabag–yes the Priest is hot, and yes, they have amazing chemistry, but like. He really cannot actually behave this way, and this relationship would be SO much more toxic for both of them than it is on the show. (Not a pastor, but a pastor’s kid who’s been active in church life and leadership forever)

  33. Anomonys*

    There’s an entire TV series that takes place in and around my specific workplace. It’s rather silly and gets most of the details wrong, though the overall themes are correct. It was fun to watch with coworkers and see how different roles were represented. My role wasn’t in the show, sadly.

  34. The Prettiest Curse*

    I’m an event planner and the recent Netflix documentaries on the Fyre Festival and Woodstock ’99 accurately accurately portray the worst case scenario when you don’t plan an event properly. (I plan my events properly, and fortunately they are not music festivals.)

    And if you’re not authorised to have the microphone at one of my events, you’re not going to keep hold of it regardless of what personal drama or romantic tribulations you are experiencing. Sort it out in your own time – my event schedule does not have time for your heartfelt speech to your ex!

    1. Ama*

      Those I actually enjoyed (I have done some event planning during my career), because they do bring home that when you plan an event that (for example) requires ordering chairs and setting them up somewhere, you have to assign someone to receive the delivery and set the chairs up — it was like the organizers thought all the little details would just magically happen and no one would have to do the grunt work.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Agreed, you can’t just wing it with an event of that size! So many horrible things happened (at Woodstock ’99 especially) that could have been avoided with adequate planning. Frankly, I was amazed that nobody died at either event, because the organisers clearly just didn’t care about attendee safety.

    2. joriley*

      I’m an event planner and I’ll add that 95% of my job is at a computer. Half the time I don’t even go to the event, or I leave after setup to do something else. It’s not glamorous.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yup, the amount of time spent at glamourous event venues is a tiny percentage of the job. Making glamorous stuff happen involves very little actual glamour.

    3. CivilServant*

      I have so much respect for event planners. It’s been part of my job in the past, and I suck at it and hate it.

  35. LexArch*

    I used to be an archaeologist…so…ABSOLUTELY NOT!! The best thing I’ve ever seen with archaeologists in it is the BBC’s Detectorists, which is hilarious and perfect, but not really about archaeologists so much as detector hobbyists.

    I’m now an impact manager which to my knowledge has never been on TV and frankly I can see why.

  36. RIP Pillow Fort*

    I’m a geologist and there’s such a mixed bag. From The Core to Prometheus there is just nonsense and bad field procedures. But at least most of the time it’s a fun movie.

    Though Jurassic Park did get me into geology even if I’m not in a paleontologist. I still feel like the beginning has one of the better scenes of somewhat accurate field work.

    1. Alistair*

      At least us geologists are always portrayed as the rugged and dashing individuals we truly are! Pierce Brosnan in Dante’s Peak, anyone? (Also one of the very few movies I can think of with fairly good geo-science in it)

        1. Pepperoni Pup*

          I’m a geologist who works with engineers and one used to jokingly call me “Kim” occasionally because on the show Sheldon tells Penny that geologists are like the Kardashians of science :(

    2. Not Australian*

      There’s a brilliant episode about geology in ‘From The Earth To The Moon’, where the astronauts are taught the value of observing their surroundings accurately.

      1. RIP Pillow Fort*

        That episode is something I really love. And while it’s a dramatized series, the true story behind the push to have practical geology sampling on the Moon is one of my favorites. I’ve always had a soft spot for off-earth geologic processes/interpretation.

        I live in hope that SOMEDAY we get more geologists on the Moon if not Mars.

    3. Chidi has a stomach ache*

      OMG, I got so angry watching Prometheus for this reason. I’m usually pretty open to suspending my disbelief but every decision made by “SMEs” in that film was terrible and frustrating.

      1. RIP Pillow Fort*

        Agreed. The Core (while terrible) has a good memory attached to it and is more silly than infuriating, so I can’t hate it too much. Plus it has an unobtanium plot which I don’t know why I find those fun, but I do.

        I ended up watching it on a TV in an empty Mexican restaurant with all of my classmates while we were having dinner after field work. It’s much better with margaritas and people going full MST3K on it.

      2. Chutney Jitney*

        You mean taking off their helmets or do you mean touching a totally new alien species because they’re “cute”? Morons. It was so bad it was like 1950s sci-fi.

    4. geological engy*

      I found a lot of the movie representations adjacent to geology to be mostly hilarious– we used to have movie nights at uni that pretty much turned into drinking games laughing at the inaccuracy of movies like San Andreas. Gold was pretty good though!

    5. Tinkerbell*

      At DragonCon (science fiction and fan convention) every year, the science track has a panel called “Science Versus Movies.” They get half a dozen real scientists – renowned experts in their fields – up on stage, then show clips of THE WORST MOVIE SCIENCE TO EVER EXIST and panelists have to explain how actually, that was 100% accurate (using lots of horribly tortured explanations). They usually get very drunk and sometimes they cry. It’s hilarious :-D

  37. GRA*

    Non-profit fundrasier here – any time we are portrayed it is the opposite of the ethics we abide by (I have never murdered anyone for family money or had a romantic relationship with a donor!)

    1. BeesKnees*

      No actual murder but … I do confess to joking about giving our Planned Giving Donors extra bacon at the Thank You breakfast every year :-) And, at the same time, telling them that by making a planned gift, they are all ensuring they will celebrate their 100th birthday.

      1. KT*

        At one org I was at we were debriefing our annual meeting and someone mentioned having helped out an elderly gentleman who fainted and our planned giving manager yelled out “why didn’t you call me?!?”

    2. KT*

      “Never murdered anyone for family money” made me lol! So few fundraisers on the screen (and never the roles I’ve held – gift processing and prospect research) though I have often fantasized with colleagues about who would play us when they finally do make a movie of our job. I’m hoping for Aubrey Plaza.

      1. WantonSeedStitch*

        Yeah, no prospect research on the big screen! I think a movie about a prospect researcher solving a mystery would be pretty awesome, to be honest.

      1. GRA*

        LOL! The only times I can remember seeing fundraisers portrayed are an old episodes of Law & Order where the fundraiser was killing some of her donors and the movie Backdraft where the fundraiser was having an affair with a doctor … I promise I haven’t done either!!!!

      2. Aarti*

        Hey my people! Well I am not a fundraiser anymore but I do work for not for profit. Man, we sure are sleazy on tv! Doing anything to get money or attention.

    4. WoodswomanWrites*

      Another nonprofit fundraiser here. I guess an actor trying to trim narrative to meet character limits in a grant application doesn’t make for good entertainment.

  38. Valkyrie*

    Nope! I work in estate planning (wills and trusts). “Reading of the Will” is not a thing (at least not in my state), we don’t gather around a fireplace wearing our ascots and listen to the attorney list off who is getting what. Lots of people seem disappointed when I tell them that’s not how things work.

    I also used to be a therapist, and I cannot watch shows about therapists. I can’t get past all the blatant violations.

    1. Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet!)*

      I’m also in trusts and estates, and every time I see a reddit AITA post about a reading of the will, I just want to ask where they hell they’re located because I’ve never heard of that happening IRL.

      1. Valkyrie*

        YES!!! I see those all the time. My thoughts are either “this person mis-named the experience” or “this post is total BS” (usually the latter)

        1. Rosamond*

          Trusts and estates here too (corporate fiduciary). I’ve had several beneficiaries ask me when the Will is going to be read and I let them down gently. (They’re all pourover wills and it wouldn’t be very interesting).

          Only show I’ve seen depict being a trustee accurately is Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

    3. Prospect Gone Bad*

      My mom settled two estates for older relatives and kept having to go on long day trips to go sign things at the lawyers. So maybe people are confusing these sort of office visits with “reading the will?”

    4. Dovasary Balitang*

      So what does happen when it’s time for assets etc. to be distributed as per a will? I’m super curious.

      1. Valkyrie*

        It depends on the specific circumstances. We do a lot of Trust Administration and in this case, we meet with the Successor Trustee, review the trust and then send out paper notices to the beneficiaries and heirs-at-law. The notices often contain a copy of the trust. Then there’s a 120-day waiting period (I call this the “Speak now or forever hold your peace” time).

        Everyone is still informed, it’s just not a big weird meeting with everyone.

        If it’s probate, that goes through the courts and is a bit different. In this case a relative applies to be appointed by the court, then there are public notices in the news papers and stuff.

        Sometimes you have to do heir searches, which I think is the most interesting part.

      2. Jonquil*

        The appointed executor is responsible for ensuring the estate is distributed according to the deceased’s stated wishes. So be careful who you choose for that task.

      1. Valkyrie*

        I think you could include that as a “precatory statement”, which is like saying “I’d really like it if everyone wore ascots during the administration” but it isn’t a mandatory obligation.

        I suppose you could set aside a portion of your estate to provide ascots and smoking jackets for your heirs…

  39. Helvetica*

    My field – foreign service – is usually portrayed through diplomats committing crimes and getting away with them due to “diplomatic immunity”, and this being a big nuisance. In real life, it is not nearly as straightforward as it is portrayed.
    Or that all we do is have cocktail parties. Sure, receptions exist but most of our work is…talking. So much talking and report writing.
    Or that we are all spies and incredible action heroes at that.

    1. Liquidus*

      Homeland, 24, the Brave. None of these show anyone spending two workdays on mandatory computer based training and a third workday submitting receipts from recent travel.

    2. Snow Globe*

      I always wondered about all those cocktail parties. How are spies supposed to exchange information if they can’t get dressed up and go to a party at the embassy?

    3. Down with TNR*

      Just waving at a fellow diplomat. Also, I object to your username. Obviously, it should be Calibri now.

      1. Shiny*

        At the Embassy I work at, claiming “diplomatic immunity” will get you fired and sent home in disgrace so fast you might prefer a stint in a foreign cell.

      2. CivilServant*

        I’m not alone!! (I know it says CivilServant, but yes, FS.)

        Also, don’t get me started on media where we are:

        1) the traitor (Captain America—love that movie, but that stings)

        2) hopelessly naive kumbaya singing dunderheads (book 2 of Honor Harrington comes to mind)

        3) uncaring bureaucrats (most shows about Americans in trouble)

        1. annoyed diplomat*

          What do we want? Incremental progress towards goals that promote our shared values!
          When do we want it? Before the next summit, when we have to have a deliverable, but certainly not within the framework of a 30-minute network drama!

      3. Helvetica*

        Ah, I don’t work for the US foreign service ;) many people do use Calibri but I actually prefer Arial (controversial!)

  40. Roscoe da Cat*

    I have worked in the US government in cybersecurity for years. Totally not realistic portrayal.

    I do understand – having scenes of people from different agencies discussing the pros and cons of strategies is hard to make interesting.

    1. Onward*

      You mean you don’t frantically type on a computer until you hear a little beep, then dramatically say “We’re in”?

      1. TechWorker*

        Loooool yes, plus having a dark screen with green text because what else would a TRUE hacker do, and a monitor spewing out hundreds of lines a second…

        1. Roscoe da Cat*

          Although we did once have a CIO talking to us and when he left, one of the staff looked up and said “Hey, they blocked our address space in their firewall.”

  41. Catwhisperer*

    I’m in tech and though I haven’t personally watched it, I’ve heard that Silicon Valley was very accurate. Not sure if that’s still true in today’s climate, though, in which tech ceos have ripped off their masks to reveal the true villains inside, Scooby Doo-style.

    1. Roland*

      Software engineer and yes, most shows are hilariously wrong but friends have said that one was more realistic, for a certain kind of environment anyway. I never watched more than a few minutes because I found the characters insufferable.

      1. Catwhisperer*

        This is also why I’ve never watched it. I don’t want to watch the same personalities I get annoyed with on a daily basis on my TV.

      2. Prospect Gone Bad*

        The huge caveat is that while it may be accurate for Silicon Valley, it aint accurate for the rest of the country. These portrayals and a lot of articles and comment threads I see are grossly underestimating the skill and experience levels needed to hit career milestones.

        I keep seeing “I made $200K by 30 and only do 3 hours of work a day” posts all over the internet but at every company I’ve been at – and some have been large and are indeed the standard for the market outside of Silicon Valley – it’s more like, you may hit $140k or $150K by 35 or 38.

        I’m noticing an undertone of high earners posting their salaries to humble brag, not realizing they’re misleading younger people into thinking they can realistically get those amounts without getting a boat load more experience or moving to Silicon Valley. It’s often posted under the guise of “just want to help folks who are underpaid” when it’s really “just want to brag about my salary!”

        1. Catwhisperer*

          Agreed, though in many places even $140k is double what you can expect. I started out in tech at a FAANG company in Austin and then transitioned to Dublin. While I love Dublin, I had to take a 20% pay cut with the same company at the same level when I moved. Granted, the cost of living in both Austin and Dublin is lower than the Bay, but not that much lower.

          1. Prospect Gone Bad*

            “Agreed, though in many places even $140k is double what you can expect”

            I totally agree! I just didn’t want to start with that because I’ve gotten barrages of comments from highly paid FAANG folk on other forums who were borderline insulting with some of their comments, making it sound like we all have personal failings for not making Silicon Valley salaries, or making it sound completely normal for 25 year olds to earn six figures even though all statistics and surveys show these people to be outliers. It drives me absolutely bonkers but I don’t feel like arguing with people today!

            1. Catwhisperer*

              Well if it helps I’ve worked in 2 FAANG companies now and am nowhere near $140k. I also had a career prior to tech so I feel like I have a more realistic understanding of how the world works than folks who went directly from school to FAANG jobs. It’s unfortunate how many people in the industry fail to see their own privilege.

        2. Tau*

          I’ve spent my career in tech in Europe (UK and Germany) and I assume the Silicon Valley stuff is not super likely to reflect my life, either in reality or in fiction.

          And yeah, I make probably half what someone with my background would in Silicon Valley, but I’ll take the lower salary in return for work-life balance and a better culture.

          1. Catwhisperer*

            This is exactly why I moved to Europe – I’d rather be happy than make money. The stronger employment laws are also a big plus.

        3. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

          It made sense pre-Covid. Older son got a job there out of college and his starting pay was higher than mine at the time as a senior level dev. But he had to relocate there for his work and his rent for a dilapidated 1-bedroom apartment was 2x the size of my monthly mortgage payment for a 3-bedroom ranch. And it was a great deal too – he had to move there and live in a long-term-stay hotel and do nothing but apartment hunt all day for a week to find and secure an apartment for a price that low. And he had to be really close to the office, like within 6-7 miles, because apparently in the Valley at that time (mid-2010s), a six-mile distance translated to a 30-minute work commute. Not sure what the pay and the living situation are now – he quit and moved back within a couple of years.

          My work peers are just starting to get to the 140 range now and most of us are far from 35 or 38. I made less than half of that at 35-38. Although when I recently shared that with a family member, they whipped out an inflation calculator and ran my long-ago pay through it and the results frankly shocked me. Apparently, by today’s standards, I was rolling in cash and didn’t know it.

          1. Catwhisperer*

            Last time I was there was 2019 and the commute from SF to Silicon Valley was at least two hours each way. I heard the commute got better during and after COVID. With the rise in popularity of remote work, a lot of transplants apparently left the Bay.

            I’m 34 and making around what my mother made in her 40s, though I also whipped out an inflation calculator recently to compare and similarly shocked. Makes me wonder why the US is still arguing about raising the minimum wage.

            1. Cedrus Libani*

              The geography of the Bay Area is brutal for commuting. There’s a literal bay in the middle of it, and it’s surrounded by mountains, leaving only a narrow habitable strip around the bay’s shores where everyone wants to live.

              Yes, salaries are high here, but they have to be. You’re paying a king’s ransom for not just your own rent/mortgage, but everyone else’s – any goods or services have to go up in price to cover the costs of living here.

    2. EMP*

      I’ve seen a little bit of it and the “gormless white boys failing up” did ring a bit too true to life…

    3. Maeve*

      I’m a data engineer. Silicon Valley is pretty accurate but the lack of female representation in the tech roles is annoying. There are more of us than are shown on TV and in films and it just cements the stereotype that it’s not a space where women belong.

      1. talos*

        I used to work in tech in the Midwest, and I seriously could go a couple weeks without having any work interactions with anyone who wasn’t a white man (I am also a white man).

        Not Great

      2. AnonForThis*

        That series came out while I was working for a large silicon-valley-based company. I watched a few episodes, but not seeing any women in software engineering really turned me off it. We exist!

      3. Keyboard Cowboy*

        In some areas, sure. But I’m one of 2-3 women in my entire open source project, the only on my small team and one of 2-3 in my parent team, and half of the women engineers on my main day-to-day project. :(

      4. Catwhisperer*

        This is a good callout. If we’re not represented, how are young girls supposed to see themselves in the industry in the future? Whenever this topic comes up I always think about how Mae Jemison, the first black woman to travel in space, was inspired by Nichelle Nicholes/Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek. I don’t care if TV is fictional, we need the representation to portray the reality of our presence and help build the future.

      5. Ellie*

        I think women in tech tend to stick together though – there are teams and teams of all males where I work, but then you’ll get a team with 3 or 4 women on it together. Its probably related to hiring bias, but its hard to prove.

        I find depictions of hacking in TV and movies hilarious. They use cool special effects, like electricity making its way along cables, to try to inject a bit of fun into what’s essentially sitting at a computer for 8-10 hours straight, running various command line apps.

        Although they’re scientists, I think the Big Bang Theory did pretty well. That scene where they have to tell NASA that the product Sheldon said they could deliver in 2 months is going to take 2 years is brilliant.

        1. Yecats*

          Another software engineer here! I don’t know what you’re talking about, I often sit in dark rooms with six monitors full of neon green text while wires crackle alarmingly around me! /s ;)

    4. Cedrus Libani*

      I’ve worked in and around Silicon Valley startups…and from what I’ve seen of the show, it does capture the flavor. (I’m in biotech, but I have friends in tech-tech.)

      There are some shows / media that do a good job capturing what it feels like to be doing the thing, even at the expense of literal realism. When it’s your life, you’re deeply engaged – it’s really happening, and it’s really on you to make things work. An impartial observer might find the same events to be only slightly more interesting than watching paint dry. In order to capture the intensity of the real-life feeling, they crank up the intensity of events until it’s a surrealistic version of what actually goes on. I can vouch for PhD Comics; my MD friends vouch for Scrubs; my friends on the hot dog detector circuit vouch for Silicon Valley. Yes, in real life, that snappy one-liner would have in fact been hours of boring meetings. But the one-liner is how it felt; you just had to be there.

    5. K W*

      I think the problem with Silicon Valley is that its only focused on startup culture. In reality, lots of very different companies need programmers and devs. I’m a web developer for a University, and my partner works for an insurance company. Both of which have good work-life balance and pay. Neither of which are ever trying to convince anyone that their products will change the world, or cause “disruption”, or any of the other hacky buzzword. We work in departments that are part of wider organisations. I work with many different faculties with many different needs. I have to communicate in a non-jargony, normal way.
      My guess is they focus on startups because of their tendencies towards weird, often toxic work cultures. My partner has worked for exactly one, and, like many in tech, left it for saner hours and a better culture.
      No one would ever want to watch an actual programmer work. We type a bit, click something go “hmmm… that didn’t work” then type some more, occasionally messaging a coworker for help.

  42. RandomLawyer*

    Lawyer here. Most legal dramas don’t get it right at all, particularly in timing. Most lawsuits last years and almost none go to trial. They are not resolved as quickly as TV portrays. But shout out to Law & Order, which used the correct law and precedents in all their cases, both statutes and cases.

    1. Ainsley Hayes*

      And the ability of TV lawyers to get an IMMEDIATE hearing with a judge and an IMMEDIATE decision…yeah, not so much!

      1. RandomLawyer*

        Fun fact: Still waiting on a decision on a motion that I filed 14 months ago and argued 8 months ago.

        1. QED*

          I am still waiting on a decision in a case where all the papers were filed almost 2 years ago. State court–what can you do?

      2. Mike*

        I dunno, I have a certain judge in a certain rural county in my state who was all too happy to deny my motion from the bench, immediately and without explanation. He asked Opposing Counsel to send a proposed order, which he did, also with no explanation in it (obviously)!

      1. Clisby*

        He just won’t admit he doesn’t know how to extract a spectacular courtroom confession a la Perry Mason!

        1. My Cabbages!*

          I love reading Perry Mason books but… I know nothing about law and even I know how quickly he’d be disbarred.

    3. EPLawyer*

      OMG, and you do not do depositions in the middle of a trial just because you learned something new.

      And so many other things that would get real life lawyers disbarred in a heart beat.

      1. Clisby*

        Also, I doubt too many defense lawyers adopt the Matlock principle of refusing to defend guilty people. Like, dude, I think maybe you’re confused about the actual job of a defense attorney.

        1. Personal Best in Consecutive Days Lived*

          Right!? I am not a lawyer, but if anyone needs a lawyer it’s people who have committed crimes…

    4. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      They are so far off that even in areas that I don’t practice I can spot the absurdities.

    6. NotAnotherManager!*

      Not a lawyer but used to manage paralegals. Literally told them ALL during the interview, “This is not Law & Order. Law is procedural and can be quite boring at least 75% of the time. You’re more likely to be calling the clerk of the court about local filing rules than in an actual court room. You will not touch a Supreme Court brief until you have worked with a lot of much more mundane proceedings.”

    7. Odditor*

      I studied to be a paralegal for a while and I still watch a lot of Legal Eagle to this day. I love his reactions when he does movie/show reviews and one of the attorneys walks toward the jury. If he’s not already selling merch that says “YOU WILL BE TACKLED BY THE BAILIFF,” he should. The things that a lot of stories get wrong– putting the oral arguments out of order, skipping all the behind-the-scenes motions, bringing in surprise last-minute witnesses– don’t bother me so much these days, but I really do love the ones that get it right.

    8. Manders*

      I was on a jury last year for a murder trial. Crime happened in 1993. Defendant was charged in 2009, I believe. And it finally saw the inside of the courtroom in 2022. SMH.

    9. I AM a Lawyer*

      I’m an education lawyer and my job is extremely boring. I get to work on cool issues, such as the first amendment’s application to schools, but I mostly just sit in front of a computer and write and answer emails.

      Any show where there is litigation, I’m always yelling, “that evidence would never get in!” or “you could absolutely not say that in a trial without an immediate mistrial!” But, real trials are not exciting enough to portray.

    10. Kate*

      I’m a paralegal, and I’ve never seen my area of law (immigration) represented on TV. (I haven’t watched 90-Day Fiancée, though, which some of my coworkers enjoy.) I spend my day drafting government forms, reviewing and assembling client documents, doing legal research, and communicating with clients. My clients are all over the world, and I keep a running tally of countries where my clients have come from. (I’ve got about 50% covered, I believe.) Since I specialize in family and green card matters, I get to help bring families together which is amazing.

      I really enjoyed how the paralegal was portrayed on She-Hulk. When She-Hulk is being recruited to a new firm, she is insistent that her paralegal comes with her. The managing partner of the new firm says he doesn’t care one way or the other. (My firm allows established attorneys to bring their paralegals with them when they join, and the attorney who I came in with calls me her second brain. But it’s also common for support staff to be undervalued. I’m not sure some attorneys realize how much they rely on their assistants, and unfortunately our pay can reflect that.) I also enjoyed how, when one case was at a standstill with about a dozen unhappy ex-spouses shouting in a conference room, the paralegal was like, “I got this!” And sure enough, she sits down and actually listens to what everyone wants and comes up with a solution that everyone agrees with. I sometimes have to prepare affidavits for a client, and that can involve meeting with them for hours, listening to their story, and figuring out what is relevant to the point we are trying to make. It can be intense, but is so rewarding.

  43. The Dude Abides*

    I’m an accountant who currently works in state gov’t in a managerial role.

    The accountant side, not even close.

    The governmental side…the tropes about red tape are fairly true in a general sense.

    1. spockface*

      I’m in the same field (though not really a managerial role in that I don’t have any direct reports or final sign-off authority on our big projects) and my spouse has told me that from my work stories, she gets the impression “Control” (government job gothic, the video game) is pretty accurate. I can’t say she’s wrong.

    2. Here for the Insurance*

      I’m a lawyer in state govt. in a managerial role, and I agree on the red tape tropes.

      I do take exception to the humorless, incompetent, don’t give a rat’s ass about you bureaucrat trope, though. Most everyone I work with are well-educated, professional, dedicated public servants. There’s definitely shades of The Office dysfunction, but no worse than any private business.

  44. ImprobableSpork*

    Silicon Valley is often described as a work of fiction. It isn’t – only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

    1. Lavender*

      I know next to nothing about working for tech startups, but I grew up not far from the real Silicon Valley and I know a lot of actual people who remind me of characters on that show.

      2. Wendy Darling*

        My partner and I were both working in big tech when Silicon Valley was on the air (now I work in much smaller tech and it’s less wild) and between the two of us could tell you the specific incidents that were being parodied most of the time. The more outrageous it seemed the more likely it was to be true (Sean Parker’s wedding alone…).

      3. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

        Not in the Valley, but I work in the field and had online friends and family members who worked in the Valley, and I found the show quite accurate.

    2. AnonForThis*

      I disagree. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how a general-purpose data compression algorithm like Pied Piper would work, and I don’t think it’s possible.

      The people, on the other hand…

  45. Johnny Karate*

    I think shows set in schools, especially high schools, are usually just bonkers, but Abbott Elementary is actually pretty good. There’s some things that are off for plot purposes (they have a LOT of planning time, they all have lunch at the same time even though they teach different grades, the kids aren’t popping off nearly often enough, etc.), but the characters and the kinds of challenges that teachers face feels very true. Honestly only the principal feels particularly exaggerated to me, and not by as much as you’d think/hope. The one where all the bathrooms kept breaking and nobody from the central office cared enough to get them fixed…oof. Dead on.

    1. Roland*

      Not a teacher but a former child – seems wild how often they just pop into each others’ rooms to chat when both are supposed to be teaching haha.

      1. Chemistry Cat*

        High school teacher here – for the past 18 years, at 2 different schools, 2 different districts – my room and my co-teacher’s room have connecting doors and we are in and out of each other’s rooms on the regular. Could be for administrative reasons (we both teach the same subject at times so there might be questions) or for personal (can you drop me off this afternoon). It also helps reinforce to our students that we are both their teachers. On any given day we could cover the other’s class and not miss a beat. Students learn they can come to either of us as needed. We get to build relationships with students that we will teach again in the next science class. And sometimes we need to just step away for a few seconds and vent before continuing on.

        Not saying that every portrayal of high school and teachers in the media is accurate. It’s typically fat from it.

    2. Turanga Leela*

      I agree on all counts (as a former teacher, currently married to a teacher). The challenges feel really familiar–it’s clear that people in the writers’ room were teachers or are close to teachers.

    3. Y'all Come Back Now, Ya Hear?*

      As an educator, agreed on all points – especially the bathroom issue and the kids popping off.

      I rarely see teachers that don’t have my same planning periods or lunch – we are supervising our students and teaching in our rooms! The episode where they went to get their nails done during lunch made me laugh – we have 20 minutes for lunch, and by the time we get back from walking the kids to and from the lunch room, that’s more like 15 or 16 minutes to scarf something down.

    4. HSTeacher*

      I agree that it captures some of the problems and mood of teaching very well. However whenever I watch that show and the teachers are all in the hallway while their students are in their classroom we’re always like “who’s with the kids?! How are they just leaving their classes completely unattended!”

      1. Dark Macadamia*

        I’ve been thinking this while watching Bones – they had to question a teacher so they show up at the school, during class, and just start interrogating her in the hall while the kids are unattended?? Of course they’re always seeing suspects in their workplace for story reasons but what might work in an office setting is WILD when they’re interrupting a class or performance or something.

    5. Isben Takes Tea*

      Also all the teachers who are mid-monologue to a silent or at least apathetic class when the bell suddenly rings and they shout out the homework assignment as the kids rush to leave, as if neither the teacher nor the kids know exactly when that period is going to be over.

      1. Anne Shirley*

        I was surprised to find that teachers in US schools do not in fact refer to their students by their last names (like Miss X or Mr Y). Legit thought that’s how it must be.

      2. Katy*

        Yeah, this always bugs me. I’m not great with timing and I do often have the end of the period rush up on me, but it’s not because I’m lecturing. It’s because I didn’t budget quite enough time for the final activity and I’m trying to get students to share out their answers before the bell rings. If you’re doing direct instruction at the end of class AND you don’t know when the bell rings, you are a really bad teacher.

      3. Double A*

        As a teacher, this is the most annoying wrong Hollywood trope to me, even though it’s really small beans. Teachers are hype aware of the clock!

    6. BlueSwimmer*

      HS teacher here. The bathroom thing is SO TRUE.

      When my school was under construction and we were in 55 trailers out on the soccer field, the water main was accidentally drilled into and the trailer bathrooms had to be flushed using a bucket of water. The poor custodians had to sit in the bathrooms waiting to flush for the students. Students were complaining that they didn’t want to have the custodians see what they had done in the toilet so they were ditching school to walk to McDonald’s to use their bathrooms (right next door to our school) to have more privacy. McDonalds actually called the school to complain about all the students.

      But the amount of time they spend in the lounge and chatting in the halls is crazy! Their class sizes are all quite small too, except for the episode where Melissa gets an aide because she has two classes in one room. I’ve been in that position- with an entire extra high school class siting on the floor of my classroom- when there are no subs and they need to be with an adult somewhere.

    7. Irish Teacher*

      Do elementary school grades have lunch at different times? In Ireland, in most primary schools, all the kids have lunch at the same time (the infants might be earlier in some schools, ’cause they have a shorter day, but the 7-12 year olds will all have it at the same time).

      Actually, in secondary schools, everybody has lunch at the same time too. In our school, it’s from 1:05 to 1:45.

      1. Ms Frizzle*

        In the schools I’ve attended and worked at in the US, elementary lunches are staggered (to help with cafeteria and recess capacity). We might combine a couple of grades but not all of them.

      2. Ellis Bell*

        My secondary school has three lunch times for different year groups. You have to work out when your lunch time is based on who you’re teaching the periods before and after.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          In the UK – and I know this is common in the north west at least. Schools rebuilt in the naughts were deliberately designed with smaller canteens to “reclaim space”. Also brought in was a lot of open space non roomed teaching areas which are of course the devil’s work.

        2. Irish Teacher*

          We did that for break times during covid – only two times though, not three – but we’re back to having them all at the same time again now. And lunch was always the same time for everybody. But then, I guess schools in the UK and the US are often a lot bigger than Irish schools, so I guess it makes sense. Plus, ye are more likely to serve food in the school, I think.

      3. Jonquil*

        Same in Australia but we don’t have cafeterias; everyone either packs a lunch or buys one from the canteen and the kids eat outside in the playground.

    8. Ellis Bell*

      The thing that always amazes me about fictional teachers is the lack of common sense regarding whisperers and passed notes: “please read that out loud” or “please share that with with the class”. Um, no! Please don’t let the drama out of the bag to spread. Just take the note away discretely or tell them to stop talking.

    9. Red*

      Never happens in real life: Teacher is teaching, somebody shows up at the door to take the teacher out in the hall (no phones? No PA? No plan to substitute?) and the teacher looks at one of the kids in the front row and says, “Johnny, can you take over?” And the kid jumps out of his seat and goes to the front of the classroom like he is actually going to take over the lecture. And they leave high school students in a classroom behind a closed door under the direction of a high school student. And the classroom somehow does not spiral into the commission of several crimes before the teacher finishes talking to a circle of adults for 3 minutes in the hallway.
      But yeah, the bit about the bathrooms. Spot on.

  46. Yeehaw*

    I’m a big fan of that one throwaway line in Gossip Girl: “What do you think about falafel? Eww. Isn’t that the kind of food paralegals eat?” As a paralegal, can confirm, I do enjoy myself some falafel

  47. Chris*

    There aren’t a TON of depictions of historians in popular culture, but I remember being enraged/baffled by Nate Heywood on Legends of Tomorrow. The whole premise was that this was a group of time-travelling superheroes, and so Nate (a historian) is useful plot lubrication since he can immediately identify apparently ANY period or location just from being dropped in it. In one episode, after being transported into a field, he immediately identified them as being in Japan *and* the rough time period they were in; in the very next episode, he identified Eliot Ness on sight. Meanwhile, I study late Qing dynasty China (~18th century) and don’t think I could identify anything about that period just from looking around a field; I sure couldn’t identify any given American historical figure on sight who isn’t, like, Abraham Lincoln. I remember talking to a friend and going “What are Nate’s fields? What does he study? How does all of this fit together?”

    1. ecnaseener*

      Ah, like Daniel Jackson on Stargate – he could always immediately figure out which culture they’d stumbled into (despite the people having been abducted from Earth centuries ago at least!) and speak and read their language.

    2. curly sue*

      I teach a series of material culture global survey courses. My field is officially early modern Atlantic dress studies, but thanks to course prep I have approximate knowledge of many, many different time periods and regions. I still don’t think I could ID Eliot Ness, though.

  48. Dark Macadamia*

    Haha, all the teachers were complaining about Glee in the open thread!

    As I said there, my personal peeve is when the show wants us to believe someone is a wonderful teacher while demonstrating over and over that they’re the WORST. And not like in a way where the characters think they’re great but we can see they’re not – we’re honestly meant to be impressed.

    Even the teachers that ARE generally good have terrible boundaries.

    TV leaves out all of the aggravating standardized testing, weird bureaucracy, and most of the conflicts with parent interactions.

    Unfortunately, we usually can’t “save” anyone by just caring real hard at them or teaching poetry through rap.

    1. Roland*

      Tbf, is there any main character on glee who isn’t some kind of caricature? Obviously Will and Sue are off their rockers as teachers but that show seems to take place on another plane of existence.

      1. Dark Macadamia*

        I feel like the problem with Glee is it started as more of a satire but sometimes would randomly take itself seriously. So a ton of really over the top nonsense happens but then there’s some dramatic situation and you’re like “wait, is this part not a joke?”

        Sometimes they’d have the episodes where it’s like “maybe a Spanish teacher should speak Spanish” or “dancing suggestively with children is inappropriate” but then on the other hand you have all the students involved in Mr. Shue’s proposal and wedding and we’re NOT supposed to think that’s weird.

        1. AnonForThis*

          I couldn’t take that they kept doing “special episodes” about important topics where every character grew a lot… until the next episode, where all character growth reverted.

    2. JustMe*

      YES. This bothers me a lot. TV writers and students both don’t understand that interacting with students in class is only a fraction of what teachers do–good teachers also update their gradebooks in a timely manner, have respectful relationships with other teachers and the administration, prepare their students for school/district/nation-wide proficiency tests, etc. When I worked with an ESL school for adults, we had a teacher who married a student, showed up drunk and hungover for class, had students get prison pen pals as semester-long writing assignment (not realizing–or caring?–what the ramifications could be), and never turned his grades in on time or taught things that would be on the end-of-semester exam for promotion to the next ESL level. The students adored him and didn’t get why the other admins/teachers were so frustrated with him.

    3. Irish Teacher*

      I’m now thinking of the play, Our Day Out, where the awesome teacher who is supposed to be the one we all look up to, basically implies that the kids in her class (she teaches students who need extra help) aren’t going to achieve anyway, so just let them have fun. Can’t remember the exact words but that seemed to be the implication and I was thinking “um, maybe the ‘mean teacher’ has a point here when he is insisting they need to spend more time learning.”

      I think it’s meant to show that she is focussing on their emotional needs and not just their academic ones, but the way it’s phrased? It just comes across as “their academic needs don’t matter because they are all going to fail anyway, so let’s just focus on their emotional ones.”

      1. Ellis Bell*

        Scouse teacher here; it’s considered blasphemy to question Willy Russell in Liverpool schools, because not only do we often teach his plays, he was in fact a teacher himself! Between you, me and the gatepost though, I really dislike some of the simplicity of his plays, for example Blood Brothers; I find it way too predictable and teaching the symbolism is more low expectations than Mrs Kay ever was. In some ways though I actually don’t mind Mrs Kay’s low expectations too much. I teach kids from similar backgrounds and we get them through with a lot, lot more resources, interventions and pastoral help than were available in the eighties, (when I was in school) when it really was sink or swim. I think she was just observing Maslow’s and concentrating on what she could do. Russell actually makes a point of stressing that the outlook is bleak for the kids and that they fully know it: Carol is standing on a cliff contemplating suicide at one point and when Briggs tells her she could just work hard and have a nicer life she says “Don’t be so bloody stupid”.

        1. Irish Teacher*

          Yeah, it is another era. I just have a problem with the “wow, she’s so understanding and liberal and on the kids’ side” when she is still stereotyping them. There is a middle ground between “learning disabilities, low income and prejudice won’t hold you back at all. Just work hard and you have the same chance as anybody else” and “aw, it’s mean to expect too much of them. They aren’t going to succeed anyway.” Though I guess that is something we’ve learnt more about in the past 40 years.

          Apologies for the blasphemy.

          1. Dark Macadamia*

            I’ve never even heard of this play but I guess I need to check it out now (along with Abbott Elementary). This sounds like the “bigotry of low expectations” concept.

      2. Double A*

        I thought Derry Girls did a good job with this type of teacher. Like, the girls adored her because she was so cool and edgy (and boundary violating, yikes!), but it was clear to the audience that she was terrible. And in the end didn’t even really care about them!

  49. Panicked*

    Same. Toby was a decent portrayal. He tried to get them to follow the rules, but upper management didn’t care as long as the office kept producing. It’s hard to be effective when you aren’t empowered to do so.

    That being said, I do consider myself a Holly/Toby blend.

  50. Engineer and Nope*

    There are many areas of specialties. Mechanical, Civil, Industrial, Computer, Aerospace, Electrical just to name a few.

    We are not all:
    -socially awkward
    -unfashionable
    -criminal masterminds
    -incapable of having relationships
    -only have “dorky” interests

    I will add more…..

    1. Snarky Monkey*

      I’m an Engineering Manager for 35 years, managed dozens in my life – the original comment is true, but Engineers certainly *lean* toward these characteristics. Personally, as an unfashionable extrovert, I’ve got many of these tendencies myself! BUT I’m an excellent speller.

      1. Wendy Darling*

        Most engineers I think have the seed of a criminal mastermind within us. We just choose not to go for it.

    2. JelloStapler*

      I have plenty of Engineer friends, my SIL is one and two of my nephews (same SIL’s sons) are majoring in it for college. They are definitely not any of those.

  51. KHB*

    I’m a science writer. The actual, real-life publication I work for was mentioned once on The Big Bang Theory. The plot point/punchline was that the gang only found out that “we” had written something about their research upon seeing the story in print. That would never actually happen: For all the stories we write, we either interview the researchers beforehand, or – if we don’t have time to do that – at least send them a draft of the story to check for errors before we go to press.

    1. Catwhisperer*

      Oh that would be so annoying. Did they get permission from the publication first before including the actual name of it?

      1. KHB*

        Oh, I have no idea – I have no involvement in the rights-and-permissions side of things, I just write stuff.

  52. IRB analyst*

    My work is never portrayed in media, because no one makes stories about medical research except for the mad-scientist stuff. (At least, so I assume – do they ever do any research in medical dramas and soaps?) I do get a kick out of piping up with my professional opinion – “in case anyone was wondering, this study definitely doesn’t qualify for a waiver of consent, idk what this guy’s plan is because there’s no way the FDA will accept his data”

    1. Najek Yuma*

      Also in medical research, and basically the only time I see medical research portrayed is in sci-fi shows, where they go from someone getting sick, to identifying the new virus/bacteria/handwavium alien bug causing the illness, to creating and synthesizing a vaccine/treatment, to administering the vaccine/treatment to a patient and having them totally back to normal, all within maaaaaybe 4-6 hours.

      All I can think is it must be nice to live in the Star Trek universe, where there is no such thing as an IRB, FDA, ICH-GCP guidelines, Declaration of Helsinki, etc., and the computers are essentially all-powerful medical miracles.

    2. New Jack Karyn*

      ER and Grey’s Anatomy had medical research storylines, I know for sure. All of which got ethics-violated in ways that would cost practitioners their licenses, bank accounts, and possibly their freedom.

  53. Little My*

    I love Abbott Elementary but it drives me crazy that Ava has the principal job seemingly without ever being a teacher (and that Greg is indignant he can’t be a principal without working as a teacher??). That’s just not how it works.

    1. Johnny Karate*

      I’ve heard this complaint a lot, and I agree that it doesn’t make sense in a public school. BUT, charter schools definitely sometimes hire administrators who have never been teachers depending on the rules in their state. I worked for one briefly out of college and it was…interesting.

      I give that show a lot of slack because I think schools work differently all over and the vibe is generally very on point.

      1. Rebecca*

        Teacher here.

        Look, make Dead Poet’s Society and Freedom Writers into a mash up and that’s basically a documentary. I am turning around suffering 14 year old lives by whispering a few lines of classic poetry at them on the regular. Going broke and ruining my marriage is just a sacrifice I make because I love kiddos and am not a monster. My divorce meant I got teacher of the year over the lady who taught online from her hospital bed.

        I solved racism. And poverty. If you cared, you could too.

        Actually, the best depiction I’ve seen of teaching was a Danish show on Netflix – Rita. She was just a lady doing a sometimes ridiculous, sometimes nice job that she mostly cared about and was good at, and then went home to deal with her own messy life.

        2. Double A*

          My favorite depiction of a teacher is the Mad TV sketch “Nice White Lady.” Captures all of this beautifully.

    2. Retail Dalliance*

      Ava is the most egregious part of the show. I understand why the creators write her that way, I guess–the show is using caricature to get at an essential truth about teaching, which is that many times, administrators (especially principals) are under-qualified to serve in their positions, and their efforts to “improve the school” are ill-conceived at best, and selfish at worst. BUT. Ava’s character takes it too far, even for me. I just can’t stand it.

    3. Properlike*

      Sure it is. There are plenty of principals who came in through the corporate training “transition into education, ‘cause it’s exactly the same!” route.

      Maybe less likely to happen now than in the 90s/00s. I’ve met at least one superintendent who started out in school speech therapy.

    4. CRM*

      I thought that was kind of the whole point of her character – that she isn’t qualified at all to be a principal and only got the job because she blackmailed the Superintendent. The premise is a little ridiculous but it’s meant to be completely satirical; her ignorance highlights the heavy burden teachers shoulder. Plus she is fantastic comedic relief in a show that sometimes handles heavy subject matter.

  54. JustAForensicTech*

    I’m a CSI, and there’s so much that tv gets wrong. We don’t solve everything in 45 minutes, we don’t run around slinging guns while wearing heels, and just because someone touches something, that doesn’t mean there’s fingerprints on it. Also, our office is pretty low tech, in the gross basement, and has cockroaches. It is not a glitzy job.

    1. Dovasary Balitang*

      Is it true that you have to start as a police officer in order to go into crime scene investigation?

      1. AABBCC123*

        It honestly depends. If by “CSI” you mean the people in the lab, almost never. If you mean the people in the field going to crime scenes, maybe. It really depends on the individual city/county etc.

      2. JustAForensicTech*

        Our unit is completely composed of civilians, but it depends on the jurisdiction! There are definitely lots of other places where the officers are also basically scene techs, or they may have some of each (sworn and non-sworn) that get utilized depending on the type of crime (property crime vs crimes against persons).

    2. Wendy Darling*

      Not involved in crime investigation in any way professionally but did have a family member who was a victim of a major crime and people had so many fucked up thoughts about how crime scene investigation worked from TV. Like they tested DNA from the crime scene and 1. it took a year to get results because there is a heckin backlog and 2. it was completely inconclusive.

      Meanwhile I had tactless people all “DID THEY FIND DNA? DID THE RESULTS COME BACK YET?” like every 48 hours.

    3. Sister Spider*

      You mean you don’t get to go into the interrogation room armed with your PCR results and interrogate criminals? ;)

    4. TechWorker*

      I love bad crime drama but also find it funny how the CSI or pathologist is also part detective and always solves the case. That seems… unlikely?

    5. Snarkus Aurelius*

      I know a medical examiner, and the first thing he says when he meets people is, “No, I don’t go to crime scenes in my high heels, leather jacket, and hair extensions. The bodies come to me, and I do my work in a boring exam room in the basement.”

  55. Bob-White of the Glen*

    Librarian here. Totally accurate. I am so HOT when I take off the glasses and remove the bun. But until then I am just a mean old hag or troll trying to deny you access to information, when I’m not actively shushing you all the time (okay, I’m ADD so some truth to that one for me.) And of course I am always a dried up prude (Mary became a spinster librarian when George ceased to exist!!), when I am not a nymphomaniac eager to do things in the stacks. At work all I do is sit around and read books all day (I would kill for that job!) All the men I work with wear bow ties and are timid, completely brow beatable, and effeminate. And of course, I get paid nothing but do the work out of the goodness of my heart. Oh, and I know how to knock over the stacks by accident. (Granted, my favorite heart pounding scene in The Mummy.) )Oh, and anyone can just take over my job – no such thing as an MLIS in la la land.

  56. Jane Bingley*

    I’m an executive assistant and I spend most of my days dealing with emails, setting up meetings, organizing business travel, and having literally zero sex with my boss. Much more mundane than you’d think based on TV shows.

    Also, I work from home, so no one has ever dramatically burst past me into my boss’ office while I trail behind exclaiming “I tried to stop him!” He’s not a mysterious shadowy figure, people have his phone number, if they want to call him they can and he’ll decide whether or not to pick up.

    1. SingingInTheRain*

      I’m an EA too and you nailed it. Even when I’m in the office, no one has ever dramatically burst past me into his office. If anything, I’m trying get him to stop being such a social butterfly and focus on his tasks.

    2. ExecAsst*

      Yep, came here to say this too. I’ve been an EA for over 10 years and while I am a gatekeeper, I have yet to have someone lunge into the CEOs office. It’s emails, calendaring, event and travel coordination, and being a sounding board for my boss. Very little drama. I just finished reading Hench (novel), and even though it’s about an EA for a supervillian, there’s actually a lot about her job that reminded me of mine! The only tv character I can relate to at all is Radar O’Reilly on MASH because he knew everything that was going on and wrangled all the paperwork. I do also have a tub of supplies for offsite meetings that I call the Leviathan, a la VEEP, but that’s as far as the association goes.

  57. Veryanon*

    Most depictions of HR professionals in entertainment are wildly inaccurate. I’m looking at you, Toby Flendersen.

    1. Freya*

      Yes! They never show the emotional work of HR or just the craziness we have to deal with from grown adults who should always know better.

      1. Veryanon*

        Exactly! I’m not here to plan parties or push paper. I’m here to facilitate the intersection of management and employees in order to make sure we have the best-qualified and engaged workforce possible, and that we’re operating in compliance with company policies and the law. I do not have time for petty squabbles over putting someone’s stapler in jello.

  58. Baron*

    Librarian here.

    I think the main thing that media gets wrong about any job is the idea that everyone in a field is a generalist, like that period on “House” where they run out of storylines for Chase, and also need to show someone doing a surgery, so boom, Chase is a surgeon now, because why *wouldn’t* a fellow in diagnostic medicine be doing a surgery? Doctors are doctors, right?

    Similarly, I actually think the stereotypical shy, nerdy librarian helping you look something up in a dusty old book *absolutely exists*, just like surgeons exist. What media has trouble with is that that’s, maybe, 1% of library staff in 2023. Our jobs are varied. As the executive director of a small library system, I spend 5% of my time doing research, and most of my time doing management/administrative stuff – writing reports for my board, dealing with our funders and vendors, etc. Very little of what I do actually has to do with “library work” per se – it’s just nonprofit-ED stuff.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      My first job was as a library page, & that seems to be what most people think librarians do. Nope, we were the high school kids doing the grunt work so the librarians could do what they were trained for. (And even in a small public library, we had specialist librarians.)

    2. Critical Rolls*

      And that’s before you get to the apparent belief that everyone who works in a library is a librarian. Nope! Paraprofessionals make it all possible.

    1. Snarkus Aurelius*

      When I worked at a charity, it was majority white people. We didn’t look anything like that communities we served.

      Insecure really took me back to those days.

  60. Professor S*

    Mathematician/professor here. The math in movies is usually naive or nonsensical (like in Pi where a sequence of 200 digits breaks the stock market and fulfills a religious prophecy, or something…) but this is forgivable since movies want to tell a story, not teach people math.

    One thing that does bug me is that mathematicians in movies are usually the same stock character type: cold, socially awkward, abrasive, etc. Even in the biopic of Alan Turing, which is reportedly not what he was like in real life at all.

    1. KHB*

      It’s not research-level math, but I thought it was cool that in “X + Y” (released in the US as “A Brilliant Young Mind”), they used reasonably realistic math-olympiad-type questions (and showed reasonably realistic solutions for some of them).

    2. Taura*

      What about Numb3rs, if you’ve seen it? I watched it as a kid and remember being REALLY impressed with the math, but I honestly don’t know if it (the math, not the FBI or college professor stuff) was all that accurate.

      2. Tinkerbell*

        I loved Numb3rs but as the seasons went on, they REALLY had to reach for how to apply math to murders. Like, they did use real math – usually things with catchy titles like so-and-so’s theorem or the XYZ dilemma – and explained the concepts, but then they applied them in ways that were wildly unnecessary for the actual problem they needed to solve.

    3. AnonForThis*

      My dad’s a CS professor, and he was really annoyed by the John Nash biopic. Not only does true love cure schizophrenia (wouldn’t that be nice!), but their example of Nash Equilibrium (using blondes and brunettes, of course) was the opposite of a Nash Equilibrium.

    4. Tau*

      Oh hi! I am not a mathematician but I do have a PhD in the subject and was scrolling down to see if anyone was complaining about fictional mathematicians. The depictions are just so bad. And always the single lone genius when maths as I experienced it is highly collaborative.

    5. LunaLena*

      Have you watched Futurama? I’ve always heard that a lot of the writers were former mathematicians with PhDs, so the math equations were usually pretty accurate. Especially when the Harlem Globetrotters were involved.

  61. FormerGeo*

    As a former geologist: obviously there are a lot of inaccuracies in how geos are portrayed generally, but any volcano/earthquake/dinosaur movie where the geologist or paleontologist runs towards the disaster to make observations, instead of running away, is VERY true to life.

    1. RIP Pillow Fort*

      Oh absolutely. I don’t work in seismology or volcanology (I’m engineering adjacent) but whenever there’s a problem related to geology my first knee jerk response is always “Can I go out and do recon? I’ll go walk up that unstable slope for you?”

      Also the ping of my text group when there’s been a large or unusual earthquake somewhere so we can discuss it.

    3. New Jack Karyn*

      My friend’s dad was a seismologist (now retired), and apparently there is TV footage of him being denied entrance to his lab. There had been an earthquake, and he got out of bed and went to the university, only to discover that the quake had caused enough damage that they weren’t letting anyone in the building. He was a little grumpy about it at the time, but the irony still strikes me as funny.

  62. Just a Manager*

    I’ve been in technology for over twenty years and manage a team of support specialists. On TV, you’ll see a support person instantly fixing something. Most of tech support is the ability to for a good Google question so you can find the solution on the Internet. Also, understanding that at times, computers do strange and magical things :-)

    1. Becky*

      Though “Have you tried turning it off and on again” often actually works. Because computers do strange and magical things.

      1. AnonForThis*

        There’s also an art to getting callers to check the obvious things. If you ask “Did you forget to plug it in?” callers become offended and don’t actually check. If you suggest that they unplug it and plug it back in, you would be amazed how often that fixes the issue.

    2. Camellia*

      I’m in IT. Some of us are extra blessed with those strange and magical things. There’s been times where my coworkers have gathered around my monitor to look in awe at the latest strange and magical thing my laptop has coughed up just for lil ole me and no one else. My family teases me about being in IT and having an adversarial relationship with every piece of technology in my life.

      1. talos*

        I’m a software engineer, and I often tell people, “my job doesn’t mean I don’t have computer problems, it means I have them professionally!”

      2. Keyboard Cowboy*

        It’s true, though. Some people are just cursed. My mom and my partner’s best friend both get to be statistical outliers with the volume and strangeness of the technical problems they have.

    3. kiki*

      I think a lot of shows about tech inadvertently scare people away from careers in the field because they make it seem as if some people just have so much knowledge and skill that they can immediately solve any issue. Most people aren’t like that, so they think tech must not be for them. But actually, what sets apart great technologists, in my experience, is persistence and the ability to learn as you go.

      1. My Cabbages!*

        That’s really similar to science. Sure, it helps to be smart, but what is really important is the ability to grab on to a question and follow it as long as you can.

      2. Newb*

        Oh yeah. No one tells you until you’re in the job that your most useful ability will be decoding a stack trace and then being able to find the most applicable post about it on stackoverflow and then work your way through every possibility until it stops breaking.

    5. Your Computer Guy*

      Yep. So much of what I do is google. And, if I find something good, I add it to our documentation system. Also, we’re not all antisocial and mean to our clients.

  64. ANiceGuy*

    I work for a certain government agency. We are never portayed accurately in anything. But we like it that way

  65. Tilly W*

    Sadie on American Auto is highly relatable as a corporate communications professional. Having to satisfy executives’ bizarre requests and constantly dealing with dumpster fires.

    1. Tilly W*

      On the flipside, I’m watching Season one of Ted Lasso and not quite sure what Higgins does as head of communications.

        2. Sharkie*

          I currently work in sports and I am so curious about Ted Lasso! My coworkers say it is accurate tho so that is promising

  66. The Other Luna*

    Primary School Teacher.

    Abbot Elementary is scarily close to reality in some ways, except for how often the teachers step out into the hallway to talk to each other and leave their students alone in the classroom. It only takes a millisecond for a kid to stab someone with scissors, or draw on the SmartBoard with permanent marker.

    I don’t mind that it only really shows interactions between a handful of teachers, when really you’d need a lot more for the average sized primary school, because to be honest I only interact with the same 10 or so people most days myself.

  67. lazuli*

    I’m a therapist. I mostly just yell, “ETHICS VIOLATION!” and “THERAPISTS DO NOT TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO DO!” a lot. I think it does create a really skewed vision of what therapy is supposed to look like, that we’ll meet a client once or twice and then just wave our magic wand, deliver an insightful monologue, and inspire the client to make immediate lasting positive change, no more work required. So clients come in expecting us to do the work, rather than realizing they have to, and expecting us to tell them what to do, rather than understanding that we’re there to help them sort through their own decision-making process. They expect us to be the deus ex machina.

    1. ThatGirl*

      My husband is also a therapist and most depictions drive him nuts. Psychiatrists also don’t behave like they do on TV in real life. He said the counselors on Monk were pretty accurate. And we’re enjoying Shrinking very much but the whole point is that Jimmy is wildly violating ethics.

      1. AMT*

        I’m also a therapist and I agree that Monk’s therapists were probably the most normal, ethical therapists I’ve ever seen on TV. My wife and I have been watching Shrinking and has not appreciated me yelling “THAT’S ME, I’M HARRISON FORD!” at the TV. But I identify so much with his work-life boundaries and exasperation.

    2. Roz*

      I also do this. I am not a therapist but I started in Social work and have friends still practising. I get sooooo annoyed by all the boundary violations! And the casual sexual abuse of a patient. WTF?!

    3. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      Have you seen Shrinking? Even my husband and I, neither of us therapists, cringe at all the ethics and boundary violations. Another therapist calls him out on things, but I think realistically would fire him.

    4. Age Discrimination Sucks*

      In all fairness, it depends on the flavor of therapy. My therapist definitely gives me homework between sessions, and tells me what she does and doesn’t want me to do in order to make progress. But my therapy is CBT. Definitely not a quick or magical process though. I definite do the work, but help with my decision making process was needed because it was a mess. I nees and what my therapist to give me all the insight she has!

    5. Robin Ellacott*

      One of my close colleagues is a therapist and my very favourite thing to do is mention Dr Phil and watch him visibly heat up like a kettle about to boil. And that’s “reality” TV!

    6. disruptive knitter*

      Yeah, I can’t watch therapy shows. The massive ethics violations that are used as plot points bug me, but worse are the insightful monologues. My job is much more about helping people figure out why they’re judging themselves so harshly and helping them notice that their nervous systems are freaking out over things that are mostly just emotionally uncomfortable, not deadly. Not so riveting in tv-format.

      I’ve also never ever seen any media depictions of play therapy with children, which wasn’t all having kids throw things at me, but definitely involved more of that than I’d anticipated. (It was surprisingly easy to take in stride – I can only think of one occasion where the kid was really trying to hurt me, and they missed.)

    7. LMHC*

      The past two books my neighborhood book club has picked could have been called “mental health professionals” behaving badly. I can’t take it!

  68. Parker*

    As a professional criminal, I think Leverage captured it pretty well. It’s a lot of teamwork, you always gotta have a plan M, and most people aren’t paying a lot of attention as long as you look like you fit in.

    4. knitcrazybooknut*

      Is the romantic life between you and Hardison accurately portrayed? I need to know before I start my new career.

  69. 00ff00Claire*

    Abbot Elementary is the best media portrayal of teaching elementary / primary school that I have seen. It definitely captures the essence and spirit, even if there are a few aspects that are still unrealistic. And those are mostly 1) the volume of free time the teachers have in order to get up to all their shenanigans and 2) the extent to which some the characters are caricatures. Real teachers don’t have that much time away from their students during the school day, LOL. And I think I’ve met/worked with every single character type from the show, but they weren’t as extreme in real life as the character on the show.

    2. Irish Teacher*

      I’m starting to think I must see if I can find Abbot Elementary. It’s been mentioned numerous times as an accurate(ish) portrayal.

  70. I'd Rather Be Eating Dumplings*

    I’m a psychologist (clinical practice in a hospital, not research). Broadly I think therapists and psychologists are not portrayed accurately on TV — they often seem to be engaging in wild ethical violations.

    1. ShowPony*

      I’m a research psychologist (started in clinical) and neither are portrayed anything close to accurately. Lots of ethical breaches and grand pronouncements made with 100% confidence that they are true 100% of the time.

      1. Sloanicota*

        ” grand pronouncements made with 100% confidence that they are true 100% of the time.” – IMO, this is the biggest divide between science fields and pop culture. Ordinary people just can’t understand why scientific results are typically hedging so hard on any conclusion (for excellent reasons!) which is why the popular coverage in journalism helpfully strips all those out and leads with something like “Scientists Announce XX Is Bad For You.”

    2. Robin Ellacott*

      Yes! I’m not a therapist but I supervise a bunch of them within a specific government program. The lack of boundaries in every (?) TV therapist is staggering, not to mention merrily diagnosing people without having done any diagnostic work, and disclosing all kinds of confidential information.

      Even in shows I like and with characters I like (*cough* Lucifer) I’ve yelled NO! at the TV.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        What about on Monk? His therapists seem to have to keep firm boundaries that the patients fight against.

          1. Tinkerbell*

            The show kept swinging between a sympathetic, realistic take on Monk’s OCD and playing it up for laughs (which is what made me finally stop watching), but I really did like his therapist. There were a few episodes where the therapist stepped outside normal boundaries but they didn’t feel terribly egregious because a) clearly this was a very long-term patient whom he knew well and was trying to do his best for, and b) he still attempted to keep boundaries, even when Monk (ha ha, that OCD!) was overreacting and calling him at all hours for silly reasons. Also c) I’m not a therapist, just someone who’s been a client on and off, so I probably didn’t notice some things too :-P

  71. Meghan*

    I’m a microbiologist. NOPE. Countless pipetting errors, really DARK labs (I’m looking at you CSI and Bones), etc. The most egregious to me was on the short lived police procedural based on Beauty and the Beast, and I remember the lab person saying they “ran the DNA through the mass spec and got a match.”

    …Mass specs don’t tell you about DNA matches. Mass specs (in short) tell you what’s molecularly present in a given sample (hydrogen, oxygen, etc). So a mass spec would tell you that your DNA is *drum roll*… DNA.

    1. AngryOctopus*

      Ah yes. Ye Olde “say science words and they all must just go together!”.

      Honestly though I do love that scene in The Simpsons where the scientist says “your DNA results will take 6-8 weeks” and Wiggum sighs and gives him a carton of cigarettes and he says “did I say weeks? Because I meant seconds!!”. Makes me laugh every time.

    2. My Cabbages!*

      Worst violations I have seen:

      1) I think it was an episode of Star Trek Voyager where they encountered the “macrovirus” which had “incorporated the host’s growth hormone into its amino acid sequence” and thus grew to be the size of a cat. And flew.

      2) On Fringe, when a character needed to pretend to be her alternate universe self and thus needed to implant her memories. They did this by…transferring the memory B cells. *weeping uncontrollably*

      1. Keyboard Cowboy*

        Yeah, but in (1) that gave us the benefit of getting to see Janeway shoot a virus with a rifle. Especially gratifying since I watched Voyager for the first time in 2020…

  72. Sparky*

    I will say that I understood so much more about “Mad Men” the second time I watched it all the way through because I’d been working at an agency for a few years at the time. Though I work in accounts, so I’m definitely more of a Pete than a Peggy, which was depressing.

  73. Cat Tree*

    I’m a chemical engineer. As far as I know, my field is rarely portrayed on TV. Nobody really understands what I do, and my friends have sort of landed on me doing something in a chemistry lab or CSI-type stuff (which isn’t accurate).

    1. Cat Tree*

      Replying to myself to add that sometimes engineers are shown as sure characters to show someone who is a rich workaholic. That’s semi-true. I’m not a workaholic but many of my coworkers are (although isn’t that true for white collar salary jobs in general?) And I’m not rolling in cash but my salary is good for only needing an undergraduate degree. I’m solidly upper-middle-class.

  74. jack of some trades*

    HR people are often portrayed as uptight older women with no sense of humor who are only there to ruin everyone else’s fun. It seems like the only time accounting is portrayed in movies is when there’s something scandalous happening. It’s actually pretty boring most of the time so that makes sense.

    1. Safety First*

      My wife is an accountant, and we used to joke that nobody would ever make an action movie about an accountant. Then they did! It’s helpfully called The Accountant and was a solid action movie starring Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick.

  75. Chris T.*

    Nuclear plant operator here, SO much disinformation/misinformation, but my favorite is screams of “THE REACTOR IS CRITICAL!” Good. That means it’s stable, making power, doing its job. Carry on.

    1. Bean Counter Extraordinaire*

      Out of curiosity, did you watch the HBO miniseries about Chernobyl? What’s your opinion on the accuracy/inaccuracy of how operations were portrayed?

      1. Texan in exile on her phone*

        Did you listen to the podcast with the writers? It was really good! They based a lot of the show on a Chernobyl book written by a Russian journalist.

        (Voices From Chernobyl? I can’t remember.)

        I couldn’t believe how the guys in the control room had their process manual and the manual told them exactly what to do and their boss told them to ignore the manual!

  76. BeesKnees*

    Fundraising & Development Work … great at my job but nope – don’t really go to cool parties and at least my fields, no ‘cool’ people supporting us. Lots of businesses and workers, therefore I spend my time talking to company marketing people who want to know how we’ll be thanking them for their support. I don’t have an impressive ‘contact’ list of people who will just give us millions of dollars if I suddenly left my job and moved to a totally unrelated nonprofit. My contacts support THAT nonprofit or that cause.

    On a side note, if one more Board Member says … “Why can’t we get to support us … despite having no connections, POC, or reason to believe said entity even knows who we are … I will scream. I will admit to getting snarky when they say this, which isn’t good but honest.

    1. Her name was Lola*

      I’m in fundraising as well. They are never portrayed well on tv. I think a series based on a struggling nonprofit could be very entertaining. You could have all the interpersonal drama amongst the staff, (believe me, in 20 years I’ve seen a LOT of drama), in addition to a “client of the week” whose problems could be dealt with.

      1. MAW*

        definitely solidarity from this fundraiser too!

        I call it the “Oprah effect,” as in when someone says in a meeting (usually a board member), “Oh, we should get Oprah to fund XYZ”. The named celebrity differs but it’s always someone really well known, really really rich, and really really well protected from being approached out of the blue by fundraisers.

        if you haven’t seen Loot yet (Apple TV) starring Maya Rudolph as a Mackenzie Scott-like Rich Divorcee and MJ Rodriguez as the ED of her family foundation — it’s delightful!

  77. the LIEbrary*

    I’m a librarian. Mostly TV portrays libraries as if they’re stuck in 1950, complete with glasses and sweater wearing older ladies and actual card catalogs. It appears their only job is to shelve a handful of dusty books and shush the occasional person. However I LOVE the show The Librarians- especially how each character brings different skills to help the library and the strange artifact they’re researching. Accurate? No. But awesome? Yes! The other depiction of libraries I love is Parks & Rec- where you get a glimpse of a normal library from this century…but more importantly, instead of being portrayed as a feeble old lady, the librarian is a scheming, evil seductress who is out to bring the downfall of the parks department! (Still not super accurate because parks and rec and the library are totally different budgets in a city/county in real life, so they can’t really fight with each other for resources, but I digress…)

    For the person who commented they don’t really see archives in TV, try Warehouse 13! Similar to The Librarians, it revolves around an archive of old/mythical/magical artifacts and the shenanigans they cause.

    1. ArchivesPony*

      The other thing I loved about The Librarians (though John Larroquette drove me bonkers, I hated when they added him) is it was filmed in Portland.

    2. Snow Globe*

      I always thought that the rivalry between parks and library is really about different beliefs about how people should spend their free time—indoors reading and enriching their minds or outdoors in fresh air exercising their bodies. Natural enemies.

    4. Rarchivist*

      I did like Warehouse 13, but it’s artefacts – not really an archive… (One day I will write a novel with an accurate portrayal of working in an archive, and no-one will believe any of it)

  78. Jenny*

    I’m a lawyer and I think it’s pretty well documented how inaccurate the media can be about my job.

    I would actually say The Paper Chase is decently accurate as to how some professors are in law school (it does depend on the professor, but my very first ever law school class I was the very first person called on and was grilled about a holding in a case, just like in that movie (though I was ready)) and it’s pretty commonly discussed My Cousin Vinny is pretty accurate as to how trials are conducted.

    1. Abogado Avocado*

      OMG, yes, as to both!

      I have been a criminal defense lawyer for more than 3 decades, had my fair share of trials, exonerations, and, also, extremely sad outcomes where clients have been sentenced much more harshly than they deserve. Thus, when my husband (not a lawyer) tunes in any of the CSI dramas, he always asks — after the leads have done something fantastic with forensic analysis that enables the stumped cops to find the perp — “Can they do that?” The answer is, routinely, “No.”

      1. Jenny*

        I’ve also personally run into really really bad CSI. When I was clerking my judge was overseeing a wrongful conviction case where a guy was convicted on a hair comparison that turned out to be a dog hair.

        Another thing that Hollywood consistently gets wrong is Miranda rights. You don’t throw out an arrest based on a Miranda violation, you just can’t use the statement.

    2. Robert E.O. Speedwagon*

      My Cousin Vinny was required watching in the MPRE course I took. Such a great and quotable movie.

      “Were these magic grits?”

    3. Pippa K*

      If you follow The Secret Barrister on Twitter, every few months they do live tweets of some Hollywood movie analysed through the lens of the laws of England and Wales. It is always a hoot (and educational!) The ones for My Cousin Vinny and Paddington 2 were especially good.

    4. Kris*

      The scene in the Paper Chase where they checked into a hotel to study for exams and avoid the distraction of fellow students was one of the most true to life things I’ve ever seen in a movie. In my case, my now-husband and holed up in my apartment bedroom for an entire week before exams. We pushed the furniture aside, set up folding tables along all the walls, and only emerged to grab a bite of food. We refused to go to the library because the stress level was so high among the students there.

      1. Jenny*

        I had this very careful 3 day outlining plan for every exam. Although one time I got roped into basically teaching property to a group of friends. I did mostly avoid the library during exams too. I actually studied with a lot of noise.

  79. Tiny clay insects*

    My husband and I are professors. Obviously there are a zillion things that TV and movies get wrong about academia, but the one we were talking about most recently is the hyper-specific majors / fields of study. For example, on an episode of Brooklyn 99, a character asks some professors what they teach. One responds “comparative historiography of the French and American revolutions.” First off, it’s hard to believe that would be a single class! (Historiography is a class, but not that level of specifics). But even if it were a hyper-specific grad seminar or something, are we to think that is ALL that person teaches? Like there are multiple sections or courses on it, every semester?

    2. nom de plume*

      This makes it sound like one of the writers remembers just that one class they had to take to satisfy their general requirements or minor . Yeah, that is definitely not an actual research field, much less teaching field!

    3. JelloStapler*

      Good point! Definitely not the case here- may be a major and 5 minors? but who has time to get all of that done?

  80. The designer*

    As a designer I did love Mad Men and a fair amount is quite accurate. However one thing that drives me nuts is that the “genius” idea of the designer is always accepted by the client who leaves happily with no comments. In reality the client nearly always comes back with “We love them all…can we combine option a and b with just sprinkling of option c?”. You also never see the designers pulling their hair out in frustration trying to work out what the client means when they say “can we make it 30% more dynamic” or something else equally vague.

    2. ThatGirl*

      I’m a copywriter who works closely with designers and yeah, nobody is EVER happy with the first draft.

      1. MassMatt*

        Curious whether you deliberately give them a very rough draft that you know they’ll throw out and make them receptive to the second one you thought was better all along?

        I don’t do this in my field, but give at least two or three alternatives (and very rarely more) even if I think one of them is the best option. I found most people prefer to choose among alternatives vs: being given one option.

        1. ThatGirl*

          Depending on the project/ask, I will often give 2 or 3 options, and I often have a favorite. And if I know it’s just a draft, I won’t spend as much time on it as I will on the rewrite. But I’ve never purposely sent a bad one.

    3. ferrina*

      “It doesn’t have oomph.”
      “It doesn’t feel harmonious enough.”
      “I don’t know, the vibe feels wrong. Can you fix that?”

      You also never see the market research team in the background blinking and saying “Yeah, you are literally the only person who thinks that….we’ve got the numbers to prove it.”

      1. Riot Grrrl*

        I once asked what a client was looking for and literally got back: “I don’t know. I just want it to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Not exaggerating that she wouldn’t offer any more than that.

      2. sookie st james*

        aahhhh my pet peeve is people who can’t tell personal taste from objectivity. at my old job they’d say ‘make it jazzier’ then upon receiving that draft: ‘nope, that’s too cute’ – these words are so subjective, tell me what you meeeeaaan

  81. Lisekit*

    I work in dance, and I cannot think of a single accurate representation of the rehearsal/making process or what life on the road with a touring production is like. Really, if anyone were going to represent the sector at all meaningfully it would be a montage of somebody like me wrestling with a series of badly-designed funding platforms to get not-quite-enough money to make the tour happen, then frowning extensively at a budget.

    1. David's Skirt-Pants*

      Agree. I worked in the ballroom dance industry two decades ago and there’s no portrayal that ever even got close to reality.

  82. yllis*

    My sister is a forensic chemist and there is nothing funnier than watching her watch CSI. Some major triggers for her

    1. the woman actor’s hair just flowing all around the equipment, just shedding DNA everywhere
    2. The lab folks talking to the suspects, EVER
    3. Eating in the lab
    4. results that come back so certain and so quickly.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        This also drives me crazy when women are supposed to be professional chefs but wear their hair loose!

    2. MassMatt*

      OMG, eating in the lab, my partner is in biotech and this always provokes outrage.

      Three rules for just about any lab: Measure twice. Label clearly. Eat elsewhere.

      1. New Jack Karyn*

        Is that an actual saying in labs? I read it in a fantasy novel, and thought the author had made it up.

    3. Atlantis*

      There’s actually a studied affect from those shows referred to as the “CSI effect” which is basically where juries expect forensic experts to testify on evidence even if the evidence is not useful for the case.

  83. Smiley*

    There’s not too many portrayals of actuaries. Probably the main one is Along Came Polly. IMHO actuaries tend to be somewhat risk averse but no where near the level shown in the movie. But while I’m not constantly assessing the risk of things around me, I do think I’m more cautious because I’m aware of what can go wrong. But that’s probably because I’m around liability claims all the time.

    1. Another actuary*

      There was an Amazon holiday movie in the last couple years “starring” Larisa Oleynik as an actuary. The setup of the movie is that she gets sent to Small Town, USA to shut down her ex-boyfriend’s unprofitable ornament factory and falls back in love with him. Actual quote from her in this movie: “I’m an actuary. I fire people for a living.” She proceeds to demonstrate the ins and outs of actuarial work, such as observing and taking notes on the process of ornament making and generating lists of potential ornament buyers. It was amazing.

  84. Retail Dalliance*

    Okay, I have been waiting to write this for a while. I didn’t even realize I’d been waiting to write this, but here it is, bursting out of me: Abbot Elementary does not depict healthy boundaries between coworkers (as teachers). The show uses hyperbole to get at the heart of what teachers really are up against–low pay, inadequate funding, low/stressful parental involvement, ineffectual administration, and other common woes. I do fully understand that and appreciate the warmth and humor the show brings to shed light on those realities! But damn–the number of times per episode that teachers either a) leave their classes unattended [even for 5 minutes!!] or b) wantonly interrupt each other’s classes for small bullshit that can ALWAYS wait…it absolutely blows. my. mind. If anyone interrupted my high school classes as often as these elementary school teachers do, I would stage varying levels of interventions until eventually looping in HR. It is extremely hard to get a “flow” going, and when it’s going, it’s precious! I imagine this to be doubly true for children under age 10! Barring an emergency (parent is here to pick up child for personal family emergency, etc.), truly it should wait for lunch, recess, or a free period.

    Don’t even get me started on Glee and how the teachers are the students’ friends! I can’t.

    My final post-script: many shows depict teachers as “not in it for the money” and they are in the profession because their hearts are innately good and oriented toward community and justice. While I appreciate that, it culturally excuses the choice (and it IS a choice) to chronically under-pay teachers. The quality of teaching and teachers will not fall if we raise their pay. Teachers deserve living wages. I can be “not in it for the money” but also be “paid a living and respectable wage for my expertise” at the same time.

    1. Appletini*

      Teachers deserve living wages. I can be “not in it for the money” but also be “paid a living and respectable wage for my expertise” at the same time.

      Truth. *applauds*

    2. JelloStapler*

      “The quality of teaching and teachers will not fall if we raise their pay. Teachers deserve living wages. I can be “not in it for the money” but also be “paid a living and respectable wage for my expertise” at the same time.”

      Same for Higher Education, the mission only does so much- and it doesn’t pay the bills.

  85. Ren McFee*

    I’m a pastor of a Presbyterian (PCUSA) church, and have been so for 30 years. Ugh. Many religious leaders, of all kinds, are portrayed as buffoons, idiots, cheaters, law breakers, sexual miscreants, haters of LGBTQ2S+ folx, and all-round awful humans. Hurts my heart.

    1. Becky*

      The only Presbyterian minister I remember being portrayed in a movie is in North Avenue Irregulars which, while I can’t speak to the accuracy of the pastor portrayal, is quite funny.

    2. just some guy*

      You might enjoy Guareschi’s “Don Camillo” series if you haven’t already encountered it. I’m an atheist from an ex-Catholic family and I have plenty of criticisms of the Church, but Don C has been common ground for me and my more religious friends. I suspect a pastor might find some of Don C’s conversations with Jesus particularly enjoyable.

        1. gsa*

          Look up Don Ween.

          He was a good man. I was confirmed at his church in St. Louis. That would have beeen back in 1985.

          I will post a link shortly. It will probably take some time for Alison to review it.

  86. Artsygurl*

    I am an art historian and curator. No nearly as adventurous or glamorous as it is portrayed in movies and shows. Mostly we suffer through massive student debt (no couture outfits for us) and spend 90% of our time sitting at a desk reading and writing. If you want a funny response to bad portrayals, I highly recommend McSweeney’s parody letter on why the committee is denying tenure to Professor Indiana Jones.

      2. Artsygurl*

        Having problems linking for some reason – it is titled: BACK FROM YET ANOTHER GLOBETROTTING ADVENTURE, INDIANA JONES CHECKS HIS MAIL AND DISCOVERS THAT HIS BID FOR TENURE HAS BEEN DENIED
        by ANDY BRYAN Oct. 10, 2006

        1. Hlao-roo*

          Just an FYI, all comments with links go to moderation. They show up after Alison has approved them.

          The McSweeney’s letter is brilliant!

  87. Reality Check*

    Insurance agent: My complaint is with the advertising. No, people can’t just “name their price.” Otherwise it would be free. No, it’s not always covered. I can’t even wrap my brain around the emu. What does that have to do with anything? Just makes us look stupid. These ads all feed the wildly inaccurate notion that insurance is dirt cheap and covers everything. Makes my job difficult.

    1. ferrina*

      Insurance ads are fascinating. So many marketing dollars go into those things. It’s no longer about a single ad- it’s a years-long strategic campaign. When did that particular industry get into an arms race for their ads?

    4. merula*

      “Save 15% and be completely on your own in all dealings with an insurance bureaucracy even those who work in insurance can’t easily navigate” would be a much more accurate slogan for all the direct-to-consumer stuff.

      (1) The auto rating that’s a far better price than any of the DTC stuff for my situation will never be available DTC.

      (2) Even if it wasn’t, being able to call someone to say “hey this adjuster isn’t understanding, can you help” and getting the issue fixed the same day is worth the entire premium

      But I’m just an underwriter, what do I know?

  88. yllis*

    Also dated a lifeguard who did a stint in the Bay Area. Only healthy hetero guy in the 90s I knew who hate Baywatch.

    “I worked those those lifeguards. The women are tanks of solid muscle who can pull people out of an an ocean, those actress bodies couldnt haul a shell out of there”

  89. HannahS*

    I’m a resident physician. Scrubs was the closest accurate portrayal, though it’s been long enough that I don’t remember if it was medically accurate.

    Mostly it’s wildly off-base. No one is having sex in supply closets; most co-residents don’t date each other. It’s a lot more team-based than is portrayed on TV, and a lot calmer. We have our share of…uh, “personalities” but by and large no one is yelling or being frantic. When there are emergencies (all those “codes”) there are structured procedures that are followed. There can be a lot going on at the same time and it can look and feel chaotic to patients and caregivers, but it’s a routine process. TV shows also miss how mistreated and exploited residents are. The physician who sees you in the emergency room of an academic hospital is often being paid less than minimum wage and is required to be at work for 26 hours in a row. It used to be worse.

    1. HannahS*

      Oh, also, that thing where they’re like, “HE’S FLAT-LINING!” “GET THE PADS” “CLEAR!” *kaCHUNK* (the patient flails and wakes up, end scene.)

      That’s not a thing. If you’re “flat-lining” you’ve been dead for while and the jolt won’t do anything. If someone’s heart stops beating, the ECG usually looks like a big zig-zag and the jolt can help reset the flow of electricity in the heart to get the muscle to contract properly. The straight line and the “beeeeeep” just tells the story better on TV.

      1. yllis*

        Reminds me of a guy I dated who was a med student. He couldnt watch ER in the 90s without yelling a tthe screen “THEYRE KILLING HIM!!!”

    2. PsychNurse*

      I’m a nurse, and a lot of shows really make a big deal out of conflict between doctors and nurses. In my experience, I’ve had a good working relationship with most of the doctors I’ve worked with. There’s been a great deal of mutual respect for each other’s roles. Yes, of course there are some (doctors and nurses) that are hard to get along with, which is true of any group of humans.

    3. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      And nobody in the medical shows does any documentation (though occasionally there’s a drama nonsense about how Dr House hasn’t done any of his charting in ten years), so all of these hospitals should be going under because there’s no documentation to create claims from. Because if it ain’t documented, you can’t bill for it. /medical coder

      1. PsychNurse*

        Oh my gosh, I never even thought about this. You’re so right. They just go in there, do a procedure, and leave, and nobody ever goes near a computer.

        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          They don’t document or track or order ANYTHING, every cabinet in the patient rooms has a never-ending supply of every drug imaginable and they just pass them out willy nilly …

      2. Elizabeth*

        I am always amazed at the time that the nurses and doctors spend in front of computers on TV. Looking up lab results, radiology reports, etc. Only the phlebotomist never came to draw blood, the transporter never took the patient to radiology for the CT, and the IT/informatics team never taught them how to use the computer!

        And the only time the billing department matters is if a patient, usually a child, doesn’t have insurance, so someone has to figure out who will pay for the expensive lifesaving surgery. Because every provider is under contract with every insurance plan.

        ER got something right that most people don’t notice. The registrar is early seasons was a young woman with no medical background. She had a fashion design degree and needed the job for health insurance. She understood business management and staffing, because her class work included how to run a business. She was probably the most realistic person on the show!

      3. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        Also, I love Sense8, but when the cop carries a gut-shot 8 year old into an emergency room and they tell him he has to leave because they don’t do gunshot wounds, I about threw the remote. Then a couple episodes later when a character’s mom is trying to bully her by saying things like “Your procedure is going to be expensive and you’ll need our health insurance to cover it,” I DID throw the remote, because if she’s even ON their health insurance (which I don’t think she’s of an age where that’s viable anyway), they’re not going to refuse to cover a procedure just because mommy wants to punish her.

        1. AABBCC123*

          Former Volunteer EMT. My local hospital would try… “Why did you bring them here, weren’t not… a trauma center”. “Because the helicopter isn’t flying, they have an unstable airway and you have whole blood, that’s why”

      4. Nightengale*

        ER got into documentation sometimes. People having to stay after shift to complete charts or catch up on surgical dictations. I’ve also seen some of the newer shows grapple with EHRs. I think Chicago Med is doing an EHR plot right now but – I can’t really tell because the last thing I heard was someone asking to learn an EHR that someone else was using in the ER and I was like, um, no the whole ER would be on the same system and you would have spent 2 days in training for it.

        But overall, I agree

    4. Seven If You Count Bad John*

      Not a doctor, but seeing surgery scenes without masks on bothers me SO MUCH. I know it’s done for dramatic purposes so you can see their emotive faces, but that is UNSANITARY

    5. Ginger Baker*

      The one time I was the most concerned with my mom (well, unlike the end ICU weeks, which were pretty clearly not going well) was the time I am with her in the hospital room she had been moved to ASAP when we got there, and a very orderly, quiet, calm, group of about ten people were all (quickly, but zero running or rushed-seeming movement) in her room with us. (I knew to be concerned because a) there are NEVER that many people in the room, b) the quiet meant Serious Issue, and c) they had a cart ready (the concern was, her heart rate was super mega high and they were about to give her a medication to lower it, but the risk is that it could then drop TOO much and stop her heart – and purely by luck did her heart drop *just before* they gave the med, if the med had gone in one minute earlier she would definitely have needed the cart since her body was about to drop it back down on its own!).

      Basically, my many many hours spent in hospitals in the past 8 years has taught me that frantic is not really a thing and maybe be more worried when things are quiet lol (generally all our nurses and doctors were quite friendly and chatty!)

    6. Zephy*

      I remember hearing somewhere that the rise in popularity of medical dramas led to a lot of new EMTs/paramedics intubating patients wrong, because you can’t really properly intubate an actor for a TV show. Don’t know how true that is, wouldn’t be surprised if it were.

    7. Moose*

      I have a few friends in the medical field who all said Scrubs is suprisingly medically accurate, at least compared to other medical shows.

    8. Irish Teacher*

      The Irish soap, Fair City has one particular doctor, who isn’t a full time character and who we never see outside the hospital, but who shows up every single time a character is in hospital. A baby needs to be delivered, a character has a gunshot wound, an elderly person is suffering from pneumonia…same doctor. Now, I have never worked in a hospital, but I am pretty sure doctors specialise and you don’t see the same doctor for your cancer treatment as delivered your baby.

      They also just ended the last episode with “she’s flat-lining.” I’m pretty sure the character is going to live.

    9. Dr Jane Dorian*

      I’m a junior doctor (not sure what it’s called in the American healthcare system) and I 100% agree that Scrubs is a very accurate depiction of my first year as a clinician. I.e. Terrified most of the time. Some senior residents are real bullies, others can seam harsh but are the ones giving you a glowing review.
      I remember it as surprisingly often medically correct.
      There’s a lot of running though. “We don’t run unless there’s a cardiac arrest “ the head nurse told me the first week.

  90. A CAD Monkey*

    Architectural Drafter here.
    the few times I’ve seen the architectural profession depicted on TV, i laugh. TV people still seem to think everything is still done on big drafting tables and by hand.
    I sit at a computer for 8+ hours a day using a drafting program and a modeling program. I haven’t used a drafting table to actually draw anything since college some 20 years ago.

    1. A CAD Monkey*

      Don’t get me started on the clients. they either “know” exactly what they want or have no clue. Guess what, they’re exactly the same. the ones that “know”, will try to make changes that are either violate code or something completely opposite of what they told you to begin with. the clueless ones are easier to work with most time because they at least let us (the professionals) guide them to a design that works for them and meet code. [Entity] forbid you get the ones that watch home design shows and try to apply that to a commercial setting.

      1. EarlGrey*

        Architects as creative geniuses with artistic vision always makes me laugh on TV. I feel like there’s plenty of room for drama in the more realistic scenarios of negotiating with mechanical engineers for space, or going in circles trying to interpret contradictory building codes.

    2. sookie st james*

      so true – my partner is an architect and has never once been seen running off to a site visit with rolls and rolls of blue paper under his arm lmao. in fact, he’s never even been to a site visit lol, it’s a lot of sitting at a computer running about 10 programs at once.

    3. Llellayena*

      And when people walk into a room and there’s a scale-accurate model of a multi-building complex sitting in the middle of a large table…no. That would be a digital model on a large tv/computer screen instead. And I’m not sure if it’s just the particular shows I watch, but all the architects I see on tv are murder suspects…

    4. Belle*

      Dating myself here but I always think of The Brady Bunch for drafting plans. They would show Mr. Brady near his table with plans out.

  91. LanaO*

    My field (academia) is rarely portrayed in any way that represents reality. First, most faculty now are adjuncts/contingent, working for extremely low wages ($2k-4k a class) with no benefits and often teaching multiple classes across multiple schools trying to cobble together enough income to get by.

    For those lucky enough to be tenure track or tenured, it is not cushy offices filled with antique furniture and leather chairs. It’s 70- to 80-hour work weeks trying to balance the demands of the job, which is not just teaching (a task that takes a huge amount of time, from prepping lectures and class activities to grading, advising students, and the like) but also includes a huge amount of administrative and service work on top of heavy research and publication expectations.

    Add into that the attacks from the extremely un- or disinformed public and from pundits on what faculty do, including what we’re teaching and researching…yeah, television and movies just do not present academic jobs in any way approaching reality. We don’t get summers off and we’re not trying to indoctrinate college kids. College kids arrive to us as full adults with their own minds, and it is truly a struggle just to get them to read the syllabus and assignment instructions. If their views evolve during their time at college, it is largely because they are being exposed to new ideas and new people, not because of some sort of nefarious plot by faculty. We just want to share the love of our subjects with them and make sure they can go out into the world able to write persuasively, reason logically, and function as informed citizens.

    2. Irish Teacher*

      Yeah, I teach secondary school and that “the college professors are indoctrinating my poor baby” always seemed ridiculous to me. My 1st years (12-13 year olds) tend to be still at the “well, my teacher said…” stage. The students who are 16 and over…not so much. Not to say a teacher can’t still have influence over them, but they aren’t going to change all their views overnight because one teacher said.

      I mean, my 1st year at college, I did idolise two of my lecturers and spent a lot of time spouting “David Moore thinks…” “Siobhan Hurley says…” (not their real names) but that was because they held views that I agreed with and one of them was involved in activism I admired. It was a case of “hey, this way more experienced, educated and articulate person is putting into words exactly what I always thought but wasn’t sure how to express/didn’t have enough information to say for sure that it was true,” not “well, my lecturer says it so it must be true.”

  92. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    The Office did more damage to the HR field than all of the unqualified HR “practioners” combined. HR was consistently portrayed as inept and bumbling at best. This is has been a theme for other TV Shows and Movies. Admittedly, our field has some really crappy people holding down positions in HR, but many are highly qualified, highly competent professions who care about the employees with whom we interact.

    1. Odditor*

      I do think the field gets a bad rep from just how badly things can go when they do go wrong, while things going right are largely invisible. We’ve had some incredibly wild stories on this blog in recent years, where the HR reps were out of their gourds and making unpleasant situations much, much worse. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of other HR reps are quietly & happily walking new employees through their onboarding paperwork, answering questions about dental insurance, and updating employee information with absolutely no fuss or fanfare. Thank you to all the HR professionals out there who do their work so well that nobody notices! :)

  93. Mx Burnout*

    In real life, journalists solve about 99 percent fewer murders than we do in tv/films/fiction.

    There aren’t many TV shows/films that get non-broadcast journalism right. There’s a massive gulf between the worst portrayals (Sex and the City — even in 1998 nobody was buying Manolos and paying rent on the UWS by writing one column a week — and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo both come to mind — sorry to Lisbeth Salander fans, those movies are very entertaining but they take a lot of liberties with the field!) and the best portrayals (The Wire, Spotlight). Doing good journalism can be extremely boring and exhausting and involves a lot of getting told no, being hung-up on, or just having your work stalled out for reasons that have nothing to do with whether a story is good or important. There is almost never a smoking gun, or one document that “proves” everything, or one source who has a change of heart just before they shut down the presses to save the day.

    1. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      I did get to yell “stop the presses” once. AND THEY STOPPED. This was in 1989 and I still tell people about it.

  94. Ask an Emergency Manager*

    I’m an emergency manager. I’ve worked for the government at several levels, and now work corporate.

    Disaster movies range in reality. Most are crazy ones that are just insane and unrealistic, but also some that are pretty true to life.

    The disaster shows that most bother me are zombie shows. Zombie preparedness is a really good proxy for general emergency preparedness, so I care more than most. It really frustrates me when people use loud zombie-drawing guns instead of quiet bow/arrow or slingshots, or that they sleep on the ground instead of up in the trees or on top of a van (with an evacuation route). Or when the women are curiously undressed in combat when just a scratch can mean death – though I understand that’s just Hollywood.

    You don’t see much of the Emergency Ops Center life except in the TV series 24, but it’s so off base. EOCs are not sexy and glamorous, for the most part. There’s a lot more coffee, candy, and throw blankets against the freezing A/C than one usually sees depicted.

    Lastly, I freaking love my job. It’s been tough, especially lately, but I love it.

      1. Moonstone*

        World War Z is one of my all-time favorite books! I’ve read it at least 25 times! I just love it so much. The movie is fine but was never going to be able to do the book justice just based on how it was written.

    3. another EM person*

      Ha, I was coming here to say that EM isn’t sexy. I’m always telling people who ooh at my job that I just send a lot of emails (especially since my EM is for an agency that doesn’t do direct response, so it’s more about rejiggering our services to fit the emergency needs). Hell, as I speak I’m sitting in a conference call that’s painfully dull…

    4. just some guy*

      One of my “favourite” disaster movies is San Andreas. Dwayne Johnson’s character is a police helicopter rescue pilot who takes the chopper and goes off to rescue his estranged wife. (Are there any disaster movies that don’t involve resolving family conflicts?) The implications of him abandoning his post in the middle of a major disaster and taking the chopper to pursue personal business instead of working as part of the organised response are never, ever examined.

      More generally, I think disaster movies really underrate the value of planned responses and logistics as compared to ripped guys pursuing individual goals. “Contagion” is one of the few I can remember that paid attention to logistics.

      1. another EM person*

        The ShakeOut website has a great breakdown of that movie from the perspective of real earthquake experts. Highly recommend!

    5. AABBCC123*

      Also, emergency management is (generally) NOT operational. If your emergency manager is the one dragging a hose into a burning building or cutting someone out of a car, or taking a battering ram to the door of the terrorists hideout, something has gone seriously wrong, even beyond why OEM would be involved in the first place.

  95. Keymaster of Gozer*

    Technical Support. I’ve yet to find an IT department in the movies or TV that doesn’t have a load of socially maladjusted nerdy men who can’t get along with women.
    Or the ‘we’ll hack into the mainframe!’ type stuff. Real hacking isn’t something we do – there are professionals for that – and even if we did it wouldn’t be a load of green screen text.

    We’re from all ages, genders, races, and while yes there *is* a slant toward it being a young white man’s occupation it’s slowly becoming better.

    And we’re not scared of women ;)

    1. soontoberetired*

      I do love the hack into the mainframe stuff. hahahaha, just try that.

      Almost all computer related stuff in movies and TV are wrong, wrong, wrong, so wrong on so many levels. I work in IT in a major finance related company and the staff is probably 40 percent female, with lots of female managers. While it is true there is misogyny in the workplace, it isn’t worse in IT than anywhere else in the normal corporate world. things are inproving.

    2. The Eye of Argon*

      When you hack into the mainframe, make sure there’s two of you sitting side by side typing full speed on the same keyboard.

      And don’t forget the password is some oddball word dropped in conversation by a random person earlier that day.

      “Muskmelon! It’s so OBVIOUS!” (tappity tappy tap tap tippity tap)

      1. Aarti*

        These really get me. So if I just made my password Muskmelon1 or Muskmelon123 my computer would be IMPENETRABLE. Or how about Mulder’s top secret password trustno1? Can’t ever guess that!

    3. Miss 404*

      Too true! I’m someone who [i]does[/i], in fact, work with a load of green screen text. Does it involve hacking the mainframe? Hell no! It involves maintaining a database in a programming language written in 1959. The closest I get to “hacking the mainframe” is asking the governance guy for permission to do my job.

  96. Tatiana Forstner*

    I work in aviation safety. The way air crash investigations are portrayed on tv is comical. They always make it out that the ntsb (national transportation safety board) is immediately either collaborating with the fbi or taking over the investigation entirely, and the investigations are always criminal.

    In reality, aviation investigations are very much not criminal. They don’t seek to place blame on an individual but to find ALL root causes. If there is criminal involvement suspected, then the case is completely turned over to the FBI, and the aviation investigation will continue after the FBI concludes their investigation.

    1. AABBCC123*

      I heard, secondhand, that my area did once have an issue with an NTSB investigator who let his blue “raid jacket” with gold letters go to his head and was doing questionable things (i.e. aggressively approaching possible witnesses and demanding their cooperation). LE nipped that in the bud pretty quick though

  97. Turanga Leela*

    Criminal defense attorney here. Most TV gets the basics right. Law & Order is generally correct about what we do, especially in the early seasons, although L&O also tends to show the police always being on the side of the angels (they’re not) and has defense attorneys just sit there while our clients confess (not gonna happen).

    Some media are significantly worse–I loved How to Get Away with Murder, but eventually it went so far off the rails that I couldn’t watch it anymore. Legal procedure has rules, and it’s totally possible to tell a great story within those rules, but HTGAWM just made stuff up. It had people showing up at appellate hearings and presenting new evidence, which is not a thing. There was a novel called The Holdout that, similarly, was so divorced from reality that I couldn’t finish it.

    Good portrayals: My Cousin Vinny is famously accurate about criminal legal procedure. Also, Better Call Saul shows a lot of unethical practice, but their legal consultants were really good–everything that happens in the in-show legal system is basically correct. The first episode has Jimmy giving a passionate closing statement in a total loser of a case, and it felt SO true to life.

    1. yllis*

      I always love how courtrooms in most movies and tv shows are these old, elaborate ones that look like theyre from the 30s but really well maintained.

      Better Call Saul got it right in that they are oversized conference rooms with cheap industrial carpet and bad lights

      1. Turanga Leela*

        BCS filmed its courtroom scenes in a county building in Albuquerque! Ironically, some of the actual courtrooms are nicer. But I agree it gets the vibe right.

    2. Glomarization, Esq.*

      Not a criminal defense lawyer, though some of my best friends etc., etc.

      I cannot tolerate most police procedurals because of the way they tend to put cops up on a pedestal or just brush away constitutional violations. Brooklyn Nine Nine was the worst because they tried to make it all funny (though maybe that’s just me being humorless).

      Agree that Better Caul Saul has been very accurate, and with its depiction of law firm politics, as well.

      1. Sloanicota*

        I admit, I have watched infinite hours of police procedurals but now I understand why people refer to them as “copaganda” and am not so fond of the genre anymore.

      2. AABBCC123*

        Interesting. I know a lot of cops from my work in the emergency services and they all hate the procedurals for the same reasons (no warrants/subpoenas, roughing people up, etc). In fact I don’t know one who thought that they were being produced as “copaganda”.

    3. Courtroom Clerk*

      L&O is definitely well researched. I posted downthread about their portrayal of courtroom clerks.

    4. Sloanicota*

      Did you ever watch a show called The Closer, and it’s spinoff Major Crimes? Both are themed around ways that the police get people to confess or take deals without actually having strong evidence against them (so basically, by lying a lot … for justice). In a sign of the times, I used to find them more interesting as crime-solving shows, but now watching them in reruns, knowing more about police misconduct, I identify more with the suspects and find it kinda dark. I always wondered how much of the legalities are accurate.

      1. Turanga Leela*

        No, I’m aware of The Closer but never watched it. A lot of police do lie to suspects, though, and that’s generally allowed.

        1. sacados*

          Yeah it’s really interesting how much they lie and try to trick suspects in those shows. Like, claiming they’re just interviewing someone as a witness and totally don’t suspect them of anything nope not at all, but “Oh by the way this is just a little bit of police bureaucracy, so annoying, but I’m required to say this to everyone we talk to, red tape amirite? Ok so you have the right to an attorney, if one cannot be appointed…” etc.

  98. Robert E.O. Speedwagon*

    Law – and therefore, lawyers – is either portrayed super correctly, as in the most accurate courtroom movie My Cousin Vinny, or pretty inaccurately but in an oh-so-entertaining fashion, a la White Collar.

    Don’t Be a Lawyer from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is fantastic though.

  99. Lola*

    Oh wow, what a great topic. As a psychologist, we are usually portrayed as evil and conniving or totally incompetent and unethical. I know a lot of therapists, have regular consultation meetings, and literally NO ONE I know has ever come close to even wanting to sleep with a client. Yikes!

    Even the rare “good” ones on tv or movies aren’t very accurate. The reality is, a lot of therapy to the outside observer is fairly boring. The only one that I enjoyed was Dr. Akopian from “My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” I think partially because most of what she tried to tell her client fell on deaf ears. A little therapist humor.

    2. disruptive knitter*

      Hey, yeah, that was a good one! Especially accurate how the character bounced in and out of therapy.

    3. Raida*

      What About Bob I really like because while the therapist is clearly very fond of himself he actually behaves (up until things get crazy) in a very measured, reasonable, practical and professional way.

      He’s meant to seem cold and not-fun, but the reality is that his detachment is necessary and healthy and the boundaries he’s setting are professional and ethical. Plus his advice to Bob actually lines up with real methods

  100. Laurel*

    I was a legal assistant for about 10 years. My job involved 30% paperwork, 30% deadlines, 30% emails, 10% office politics, and 0% sleeping with my boss(es). Why is the legal assistant/paralegal always just there to be the “pretty young thing” for the hot-shot lawyer? I had actual job duties!

  101. urguncle*

    More in popular culture than maybe fictional media, but I am here to tell you that pretty much every company has at least one part of their business that is just full of garbage data. Those extremely prescient and timely ads that come up are most likely because you have something on your mind and less because they actually know what you’re doing.

  102. draculawyer*

    As a corporate lawyer, my biggest gripe is that lawyers are portrayed as bulls in a china shop. If someone on tv hires a lawyer, they’ll storm opposing counsel’s office, spouting case law and being smarmy, and essentially brow-beating them into a settlement. Or if you’re in criminal court, they present Surprise Evidence We Just Learned Of This Morning, Your Honor and play the gotcha game on the witness stand until someone inevitably breaks and ruins their case. If the lawyer is one of the good guys, he’ll inevitably find some esoteric piece of case law or footnote that opposing counsel, who has the same research obligations, overlooked. The practice of law doesn’t consist purely of “Eureka!” or “Gotcha!” moments, and being super rude and abrasive to your opponents isn’t the way to advance your client’s interests, but the profession is distilled down to that in media.

    1. Robert E.O. Speedwagon*

      ” It’s called “disclosure”, ya dickhead! He has to show ya everything, otherwise, it could be a mistrial! He has to give you a list of all of his witnesses, you can talk to all of his witnesses, he’s not allowed any surprises! They didn’t teach you that in law school either?”

      1. Aarti*

        There’s a reason why, when someone perjures themselves in court, or says something completely contradictory, it makes the news. Lawyers coach their clients A LOT!

  103. organize your workplace*

    I’m a researcher for a Union, which is too boring for TV, but I did rewatch an episode of Its Always Sunny the other day where Mac was surprised to see that Union guys are not criminals, like in the movies, but just nerds. That was, in fact, the most accurate portrayal.

  104. The Rafters*

    I want to jump through the screen when I see TV police bullying health providers of any kind into violating patient confidentiality – long after HIPAA was enacted.

  105. Lemondrop*

    I think that depends what kind of advertising you’re doing. My dad works in advertising, but he isn’t writing ads for consumers. He writes “hey, [major hardware store chain], here is why your stores should start carrying the new line of [major brand of appliance]!” type ads. He doesn’t drink at all, he works 9-5 (from home), and takes a ton of vacation time.

    On the flip side, I once had a coworker tell me she was leaving our crappy retail job to be a Marketing Manager at Old Navy. I was like, woah, that’s a big step up for someone with zero experience in marketing, and I asked her what sort of stuff she’d be doing. “Oh, you know, organizing displays, putting up signage in the store, opening and closing, that sort of thing.” So…like a store shift manager. Not a marketing position at all, just a misleading job title.

  106. Miri12*

    My partner is an artist. I always wonder how broke artists in movies and on TV are somehow able to afford gorgeous, airy lofts with high ceilings and huge windows, always inevitably in NYC (one of the most expensive cities in the US). Artist lofts like that do exist, but they are either stupendously expensive, or are subsidized and hogged by artists that have been occupying the space for 30+ years.

    1. cleo*

      Right?!

      I know a lot of artists and I’m always amused by books with artists that magically get gallery shows. Or just kind of accidentally become successful. Which does happen but not very often. And yeah, it’s not that easy to get represented by a gallery.

      Also, artists who just show up and start painting a mural on a wall without doing any prep work (no sketches, no primer, no initial proposal that has to be approved by someone) is one of my biggest pet peeves.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        My dad was a printer, which used to be a day job for a lot of artists. I have never seen that portrayed anywhere.

        He also told me about how inaccurate counterfeiting storylines tend to be based on his industry knowledge.

  107. ggg*

    I gave up on Big Bang Theory when Sheldon was working on superlattice infrared sensors. That is way too applied a problem for a theoretical physicist to be working on! Then again, he’s had the same postdoc position for about 15 years, so he’s probably bored.

    1. KatieP*

      See, I’d have thought he was a post-doc, as well, but then he was up for tenure in one episode, so… he’s apparently TTF, as are Leonard and Raj.

    2. just some guy*

      As a theoretical physicist, what he obviously *should* be doing is getting into a field totally unrelated to his expertise and making a nuisance of himself with that “your field looks really simple, if I ignore all the complications that I haven’t bothered to learn about” bit that physicists do so well.

      (I can rag on physicists because I’m an ex-engineer and we’re every bit as bad with this.)

    3. David*

      Oh yes 100% this. As I suspect you know (posting for readers’ benefit), the problems that the guys work on are from widely varied fields of physics and chemistry. They don’t have any coherent focus; there’s little connection between the scientific topics they talk about from one episode to the next. (And I suspect the same is true for the bio research that Amy and Bernadette do, but my background is in physics so I can’t really attest to that.)

      Honestly, I personally used to give it a pass just because some of the combinations of words actually make sense, and the equations are real and occasionally related to the dialogue, which is a huge step up from other shows that string random technical terms together with no regard for their meaning. But still, TBBT is a far stretch from scientifically realistic. And I kind of lost interest in the show in general after season 4-ish.

    4. Well...*

      I’m a theoretical physicist, and I didn’t watch much of the big bang theory because, as a woman, the whole premise put me off in the first few episodes.

      One thing I will say is that the “we’re so geeky!” thing doesn’t really persist past grad school. Most of the super geek-culture types don’t stay in the field after the PhD. Rock climbing is a way more widespread physics hobby than DnD.

      Some other non-stereotypes: Extroverts abound at the high levels, introverts are more common among students than professors. My field is globally pretty tight-knit, and rumors spread really fast. People are very gossipy and social as a rule, though we are pretty tolerant of (male) social awkwardness. It hurts your job prospects if you can’t put yourself out there at all though. I personally get to travel a lot on money from conference invitations and job talks (I’ve been to three continents for work so far in 2023). I give good talks, but I also think an effort to be gender balanced increases my travel, along with the fact that I’m social and people remember me and invite me back. Also my subfield is pretty leftist politically (we talk politics a decent amount as well). A US centrist democrat would be to the right of center of most conversations. That isn’t just the younger generation, I know multiple professors who protested and left dictatorships when they were younger, and they are still actively involved in political organizing.

  108. I’m here for wit*

    My partner is a federal law enforcement agent featured in a well-known tv franchise. They never seem to show the report writing and vast amounts of paperwork they do (in reality probably 80+% of the job), low-tech computer systems that resemble the internet in the late 90s (and probably cost taxpayers millions), or the 99.999% percent of cases that don’t involve a dead body. Also, they have yet to encounter a quirky medical examiner.

    1. Kali*

      I have met quirky ones, but not in a fun, adorable way – mostly in ways that are just weirdly casual about dead people, even for me, who deals with death/dead bodies on a regular basis.

    2. Silverose*

      I’ve been scrolling looking for someone to mention law enforcement. I giggled that it was this specific franchise because I actually like it…but they still get so much wrong.

      I don’t work in law enforcement but I did internships in high school and college with local police departments that included ride alongs and sitting in on trainings (ie, use of force, responding to active shooters, etc). Cop shows can’t even get basic details like how to hold their weapon safely or how to clear a room/building properly correct, and it drives me nuts – and I’m not even an actual law enforcement officer! You’d think they’d talk to some actual police or federal agents, or have one on set as a liaison so they’d get details like that accurate.

    3. Anon and Anon*

      Came here to say this— and that’s not even getting into the unrealistic timelines or legal process. Subpoena returns can take months to receive, not hours. The ‘probable cause’ demonstrated on tv would never make it past an AUSA/DA let alone make it to a judge’s desk. Investigative action/legal process absolutely cannot be justified by some intrepid investigator’s hunch, and a lot of the behavior portrayed on tv would get someone fired. “Computer, zoom in and enhance” = not a thing anywhere but especially unbelievable in the public sector. And most damningly, what I see NOT portrayed on tv but is so important: some really good and important cases never see the light of day not because Alphabet Soup Federal Agency is bad/amoral/unjust, but because they can literally do nothing with a case unless the USAO agrees in bringing charges—something the media never gets right in real life, let alone tv shows.

      1. New Jack Karyn*

        “The ‘probable cause’ demonstrated on tv would never make it past an AUSA/DA let alone make it to a judge’s desk.”

        I recall an episode of Original Recipe Law & Order, when Claire Kincaid is hearing out Briscoe and Logan’s request for a subpoena on flimsy evidence. “Sure, let’s all pile in the clown car, head over to the courthouse, and tell it to the judge. Come on, guys, I’d get laughed out of court.”

    1. Fast Attack Sailor*

      The only submarine movies that were close were “Operation Petticoat” and “Down Periscope” and only because they showed the kinds of unique personalities and ‘fix the problem now, deal with the paperwork later’ attitudes.

    2. AABBCC123*

      Interesting. I read somewhere that when the movie came out, some admiral saw it and was concerned that it was too realistic and could be giving away classified information. But maybe that was more on the intelligence/diplomacy side rather than actual submarine operations.

  110. HospitalDPT*

    Physical therapist here, Grey’s Anatomy drives me nuts when they portray The Surgeon getting a patient up out of bed for the first time, helping them stand, walking with them in a hallway, etc… Nope. They are completely misrepresenting how involved surgeons are in ANY part of the physical post-op recovery process. I get that they need to dumb things down for a concise storyline without 100 extra characters, but it still grinds me. Can’t we at least get a nameless extra to stand there as the “Physical Therapist” doing the work while The Surgeon asks questions about how it is going? Still not entirely accurate, but at least plausible!

    1. captain5xa*

      My original degree was in PT also. I often find myself yelling things like, “Where the h*ll is the gait belt?! Why is the nurse doing a transfer (and doing it wrong)?! Are you seriously getting that patient up and out of his wheelchair for the first time with no parallel bars, improperly fitted crutches, no gait belt, AND WITHOUT LOCKING HIS WHEELCHAIR?!!”

    2. Dark Macadamia*

      I constantly think about this with Grey’s lol. They are so involved with every aspect of patients’ care and even personal lives and it’s like why are these surgeons also working as PT/lab techs/babysitters/etc

    3. AD Collins*

      This is one of the things that irritated me into quitting The Good Doctor. Every patient would have two or three surgeon with them for everything. The surgeon even wheeled the patient into surgery.

  111. AprilLudgate*

    My job more closely resembles Parks and Recreation than the West Wing, with hints of The Thick of It/In the Loop, and occasional whiffs of Veep and House of Cards

    1. Sparkle llama*

      I work in local government and parks and rec is pretty spot on. Wish it wasn’t but I have way more meetings with the public yelling at me than I would like

      1. Ceel*

        Utopia (and Hollow Men) really nails the daily life working in federal Australian government departments

    3. Jonquil*

      I have worked as a political staffer and I think The Thick of It/Veep are the closest to reality, the West Wing is extremely idealised but has some truth to it (long hours, lack of personal boundaries, the way crises blow up out of nowhere). Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, despite being more than 40 years old, are still quite relevant in my current role in the civil service. There’s not nearly enough of the boring administrative grunt-work that supports people in those jobs (booking and rebooking flights and hotels, dealing with the cars/drivers/security/planes, taking the minutes in meetings, putting their briefing books together)

  112. Obviously anonymous*

    I’m a U.S. Secret Service Special Agent and no it’s not like the movies. We obviously work protection, but also investigate financial crimes too. The protection can be very cool and see amazing things, but mostly it’s waiting around, being ready for hours at a time, standing in hallways, staircases and outside doors. We prefer when it’s boring, an exciting day is not usually a good thing.
    Books and movies also portray us as Olympic athletes and super human. Yes, there are former Olympic, professional and D1 athletes among us. Most though, are average athletically talented people trying to stay in shape while working long hours and traveling a lot.

    1. Robin Ellacott*

      Fascinating! Most jobs are probably less action packed than their TV representations, but this has to be an extreme example.

    2. just some guy*

      I’m curious about the boredom aspect of the job. I know I’d be completely unsuited for that kind of role because my ADHD brain would wander after about five seconds and I’d stop paying attention.

      Is “staying alert and focused through hours of boredom” something that you get trained for as part of the job? Or do they just focus on selecting people who already have that kind of patience?

    3. Skytext*

      What about the movie “Guarding Tess”? I figured that was pretty realistic. Not the dramatic kidnap-rescue-in-the-nick-of-time part, but the early part where there is a team that basically sits around reading the paper, drinking coffee, and playing cards while providing protection to a former President’s widow. It’s not all “jogging down the street alongside the President’s motorcade”.

  113. desk platypus*

    I’m a librarian and Parks and Recreation gets it right in the way that public librarians can have beef with other city departments complete with smiling passive aggressive comments when we run into those departments. And of course other departments openly saying libraries were obsolete, just like Leslie Knope says before she’s given a false library fine as revenge.

    But more so Parks and Rec gets correct the ways public facing city government deals with the public. Wildly exaggerated of course but sometimes… not really. Any town hall clip compilation you can find on Youtube sounds a lot like conversations we’re forced to smile and nod along with.

    1. Thistle Pie*

      I’m a Town Planner in a small town and Parks and Recreation is horrifyingly accurate. Especially the public meetings!

      2. Gracely*

        My brother was on the city council for 4 years, and he said he couldn’t watch Parks & Rec anymore because those meetings were too realistic.

        1. Thistle Pie*

          I’m the same way, watching it isn’t relaxing, it just makes me feel like I’m at work. Although, I do watch compilations of the public meetings prior to having a big presentation or vote because it actually puts me in the headspace to deal with ridiculousness and remind myself I can laugh at it when it’s done even if it feels awful in the moment.

    2. ThatGirl*

      My suburb’s parks department had a years-long feud with the library over the most inconsequential thing, and I kept thinking “wow, Parks & Rec was right” :)

      1. desk platypus*

        My library’s parks department low key feud was how the parks department employed one of the librarian’s husband… and they couldn’t stand him! Though once we did an event with them and they realized the majority of us also didn’t like our coworker’s husband we found good common ground.

    3. Outdoorsy Type*

      (Said this below but adding here to agree!)

      My work brings me in contact with city government, and sometimes I attend public meetings. Sometimes I come home and my husband asks how it went, and I reply, “I found a sandwich and it didn’t have mayonnaise on it!”

      1. Thistle Pie*

        The mayonnaise thing is classic. Not exactly the same but we once had someone come to our park and steal every single dog poop bag out of the dispenser one at a time. There’s like 100 to a roll and they only dispense individually. Plus tons of people bag their dog’s poop and put it NEXT to the bin, which just blows my mind.

        1. AD Collins*

          So true. I know several dog owners in my neighborhood who get all their waste bags from the dispensers ( and they can afford to buy their own). And what’s with leaving the used bag on the ground with a trash can right there!? They’re the reason dog walkers have such a bad rep.

  114. ArchivesPony*

    hahaha not really. The use of cotton gloves when handling paper is the biggest error. Or that you pick up the right box with the right folder that magically has what you’re looking for in it.

    In my broader field, its either the oversexualized Librarian or the old woman who wears cardigans with lots of cats shushing everyone.

    1. alh*

      As soon as I saw this question the first thing that came to mind was the white cotton gloves thing! I’m a rare book and special collections cataloguer, and it’s amazing how pervasive the white gloves thing is. And how quick people who have no knowledge of or experience in the field are to yell at the experts who are handling the books “wrong.” Trust me, I know what I’m doing! I have twenty years of experience in the field to back me up!

      1. NeedRain47*

        Hiya, I came to search this thread for fellow catalog(u)ers!
        Even the other librarians & staff don’t have any idea what we do! (laugh/cry)

      1. ArchivesPony*

        And it’s funny that people comment to me about it because I hate cates and I wear layers but not cardigans!

        Also generally, librarians are awesome, come join us on the dark side ;)

    3. penny dreadful analyzer*

      I did a summer internship at a fancy archive (or at least I felt it was fancy) the summer between my junior and senior years at college, and now I also get very irritated about the gloves thing! I have gone into a totally different field but every time I see the white gloves thing I am like “I learned this was wrong as an UNPAID INTERN when I was TWENTY-ONE this is NOT SECRET KNOWLEDGE”

    4. desk platypus*

      At my current library I found a drawer of cotton gloves and (not having archival experience) assumed it was for the handling of delicate items. Turns out some staff use them when sorting out courier tubs to keep dust/potential stickiness off their hands and they were more environmentally friendly than disposable gloves.

  115. SGPB*

    I am a crime analyst who works for a major city. I’m also fat and wear funky clothes and glasses. I get called Penelope a lot. But unlike Criminal Minds, real crime analysts don’t have access to things like private hospital records, all birth certificates in the US, every newspaper article ever written, international criminal records…. I could go on! It is always funny to me when the techie people on crime shows just have instant access to that stuff and can find it by typing like 3 words.

  116. GovAnon*

    Until very recently I did FOIA-like releases. I fall in the “doesn’t appear on TV” camp–though the news can have some strange ideas–but I will say I can’t watch those true crime shows. Partially because it’s sad but also because I feel for the poor person who had to do probably a month of often complex work when there were actual citizens they could have been helping.

  117. LondonLady*

    I used to work with elected politicians in a UK local government setting. In any TV drama or film where a politician appears you know they are going to be a bad guy or gal – either the main villain or some venal sub plot. In reality, most politicians across all parties are mostly decent and dull, sacrificing huge amounts of personal time and non-political career progression, and getting a lot of social media abuse in the process, to do what they think is best for their community. Their time is spent on worthy strategies eg how to upgrade old people’s homes, how to provide better cycling facilities, and sorting out individual housing or planning problems. They rarely give big speeches and never appoint staff, approve buildings or award contracts single handed, despite TV drama implying that is all they do.

    1. civil service person*

      I work in the civil service in a Westminster-style country, and it’s left me with a love-hate relationship with things like Yes Minister. It’s extremely clever and funny and well-written, but it’s also very effective propaganda towards the idea that the civil service is basically an obstacle to Getting Things Done, bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.

  118. Dino*

    ASL interpreter here. The only media portrayal I can think of was one episode of “High Maintenance”. It was not realistic in some aspects (VRS cubes are tall enough that you can’t see over them, for example), but it was a great portrayal of how not abiding to our code of professional conduct at all times can lead you horribly astray. And I can confirm, probably 95% of us own and use Theracane back massagers.

    2. merpaderp*

      I was going to say… the most frustrating part of being an ASL interpreter watching any kind of media is not (less?) the fictional portrayals, but rather how real, actually-doing-their-jobs interpreters that are not able/allowed to provide communicative access. In particular I’m thinking of the phenomenon where interpreters are hired to interpret some recorded event in order to provide access to the watching audience… and then the people filming the Whatever-it-is just… don’t bother to make sure the interpreter is, ya know, on camera and visible to the audience that is relying on the interpretation. Makes me crazy!

      Ugh ESPECIALLY when the event has been hyped up as Such-and-such Event Now Accessible! We’re Doing the Right Thing! Look how committed to DEI we are! Oh – no we can’t have any messy hand-wavers on the stage! No, no, no! Better to have them off stage “interpreting” to a completely hearing audience with no knowledge of ASL, while tricking the remote deaf audience to tune in to this Great Accessible Event that is actually completely inaccessible!” Like,… Cool. Great job Look how committed to DEI you are.

  119. CheesePlease*

    Can someone in politics please tell me if VEEP is accurate? It feels so accurate. I think it’s so funny. But I’ve never worked in politics nor any related field. Just curious.

    1. kiki*

      I live in DC and have a lot of friends in politics. They say everyone comes into the job expecting the West Wing only to find out it is mostly VEEP, lolsob.

    2. Anansi*

      I worked in Congress for about a decade and Veep is, sadly, very accurate. The movie, In the Loop, made by the same team, is probably even more accurate.

    3. em_eye*

      I work in political campaigns, not the official side which is most of what Veep depicts, so the details of my job are a bit different but the overall vibe is spot on. The storyline where they go to Cedar Falls instead of Cedar Rapids literally happened to one of my candidates.

    5. Political consultant*

      I’m a political consultant who’s worked on a bunch of campaigns, along with brief stints in Congress & the White House. Veep has a reputation among people who work in politics for being the most accurate show about politics. The West Wing gets a lot of the mechanics right about working in the White House – or at least right for its era – but is way too idealistic and especially hasn’t held up well during the increased polarization of the last decade. Plus, it inspired a generation of interns to expect they’d be shaping policy and writing speeches. House of Cards was way too dark & cynical. Veep’s tone nails the reality – it’s a bunch of well-intentioned people stymied by incompetence, egoism and flawed systems and incentives.

      1. disruptive knitter*

        Maybe I spend too much of my time skipping around in fields of daisies, but the only well-intentioned Veep character I can think of is Richard Splett, who is quite simply a treasure.

    6. Jonquil*

      Yes. I am not American so The Thick of It was even more accurate in terms of most people aren’t so sleek and well-groomed, but so accurate. The swearing, the lack of boundaries, the grind of constant travel, the tiny indignities of public events, the mishaps that occur when deadlines are so tight. I’m so glad I got out of that world.

  120. Courtroom Clerk*

    (Former) criminal courtroom clerk, here (I’m still with the court but in a totally different role). Everyone thinks clerks are court reporters (they’re not). Law and Order did an episode once where a courtroom clerk was murdered because her judge was taking kickbacks from divorce attorneys and the clerk was about to blow the whistle. Briscoe and Green interviewed one of her coworkers (another courtroom clerk) on her smoke break (accurate), and between drags the coworker gestured to the courthouse and said “gossip around here spreads like wildfire.” I laughed out loud and figured the writers must have someone on the ground, because court is the most gossipy place I’ve ever seen. Probably because the work consists of hearing other people’s business on a daily basis.

    In the movie Cape Fear, Nick Nolte cheats on his wife with a courtroom clerk. Psycho Robert DeNiro learns about this, seduces her, and bites her face violently. I didn’t like that portrayal all that much.

  121. Not My Real Name*

    I work in academic publishing, managing production. I’ve never seen my profession on TV. Although you may fleetingly hear about a character who is a professor or researcher that’s been published in XYZ prestigious journal. Well, somebody had to make the article and publish it so they can brag about it!

    1. JournalPublishing*

      I work in academic publishing as well at one of those XYZ prestigious science journals from the publishing/operations side (not an editor/content expert). Building a process that can take the thousands of items that come in, whittle it down to just the most important articles, ensure that all of the content is accurate, and then handling editing/graphics/web – it’s a huge process that people don’t really understand. It’s a lot more complex than taking a Word document from an author, tossing it onto the website, and calling it a day.

  122. Megan*

    I’m a public defender in Manhattan. I cannot tell you how angry basically every TV portrayal makes me. Law & Order is just..laughable, basically everything they do is illegal?

    I also graduated from a great law school, have never slept with a client, am very competent, care. huge amount about my clients, and a public defense job NYC is one of the hardest gigs to land in the country and legal aid’s work is a huge drive criminal justice policy in the state…so.

    On a less serious note, they film in the wrong building because the actual courthouse isn’t cinematic enough.

    1. Mr. Met*

      My dad was a NYC public defender and a former legal aid attorney. For nearly 50 years he defended all manner of people because they deserved a defense. He was occasionally vilified for it, but the public should not get to pick and choose who deserves justice. His grace and acceptance to support what he believed in the face of those who might not was admirable and I am a better person because of him and people like him, including you!

    2. Turanga Leela*

      Ha, I commented upthread about how the courtrooms in Better Call Saul are less pretty than some of the real courtrooms in the area.

      From a fellow PD–thanks for your service! I am also competent and have never slept with a client (is that a thing??).

      1. Megan*

        Yea, it seems like a common theme on L&O. Either PDs are borderline illiterate buffoons or sleeping with the client/their family/the judge/ADA…someone inappropriate!

        I do love Better Call Saul and think the “no law just vibes” is a pretty realistic portrayal of a lot of state court.

        Thanks for YOUR service!

    3. AABBCC123*

      Unfortunately though, I would assume that the parts about the public defenders having a very high caseload , and comparatively less funding (to the prosecution side) is correct though?

  123. Cant Stop Inflating*

    lol I’m a crime scene investigator and can assure you that everything you see on television is, at best, an exaggeration (DNA results coming back in days, facial recognition software, enhancing of video surveillance) and at worst outright lies. TV also does not portray medical examiners appropriately. The truth: in my state, bodies are the jurisdiction of the medical examiner (not all states have MEs, some have coroners, and coroners aren’t required to be doctors – in most states, it’s an elected position and you simply need to be over 18 with a clean criminal history). That means the first responders are allowed to check for signs of life, but once death is verified, we aren’t allowed to touch the body. At ALL. We’re not allowed to manipulate the body – check the pockets, flip them over, look at their fingernails, etc. unless there’s a pressing need (such as if we think they have a bomb – which I’ve never heard of nor witnessed, but hypothetically I guess it’s possible in the interest of public safety). The ME does all of that, not the CSI. Also the ME would NEVER “pop” a decomposing body on scene or cut into them in any way on scene.

  124. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    hahahahahahahahahaha

    I’m an engineer who works in software, networking, and security.

    hahahahahahahahahahahaha
    gasp
    hahahahahahahahahahahaha

    There’s a natural reason why legal & cop shows are so common. There’s a built-in antagonism and it’s straightforward to write a satisfying conclusion. Most professions don’t have those things.

  125. SqueakyWheel*

    As a (former) analytical chemist, this question makes me shudder. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen an accurate portrayal. It’s always magic little black boxes that can tell you that the sample has a trace impurity that was only present in a certain brand of Hungarian hair conditioner manufactured in the late ’80’s.

    That’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works.

  126. sharpened pencil*

    Physicist here. The first season of the big bang theory got the clothing choices right. And the alpha-male thing. Didn’t watch any of the rest.

    3. Miette*

      I mean, I came up in the 90’s and there was a lot of sex back then…

      But seriously, so. Many. Spreadsheets.

    4. La La*

      OMG! I have no idea where I internalized my ideas about marketing, but I can tell you my job (in marketing) is MUCH LESS SEXY sexy than I’d thought.

  128. EngineerGradStudent*

    As a grad student who works in a laboratory, the environment at least is almost always wrong. I’ve gotten some eye rolls from my long suffering friends and family over pointing out PPE issues and lack of proper chemical storage in more than a few shows. And they always portray exciting “discovery” parts, never the slogging hours in the lab where you’re by yourself so long you forget what daylight looks like.

  129. Flack*

    Most PR flacks on TV represent a very specific type of PR. Usually involving celebrities, events, crises, or all of the above. These intrepid, ambitious, (usually annoying or superficial) characters are often beating reporters off with a stick or come up with some stunt/blackmail/enticement in getting a reporter to do a story. But, for me (in non-profit or non-profit adjacent industries) the majority of my career has been trying to get mid-range projects press coverage. And given the state of the news industry right now (consolidation, layoffs, etc), perfectly nice mid-range projects don’t have a lot of options.

  130. AKD*

    I work for an architecture firm (not an architect, I’m in marketing/communications). TV shows and movies always seem to show architects working solo – running around town with a roll of drawings under their arm for the big skyscraper they are designing alone, as a sole proprietor. That’s not how big projects like that get built – it’s much more likely a collaborative effort with a huge team. Sure, there are sole proprietor architects, but they are the ones doing kitchen remodels, not high rises. Also architects are portrayed as rich, which they usually aren’t. It costs a lot of money to go to grad school and then takes a long time and a lot of tests to get licensed. It’s not a super lucrative profession (at least for most). And most of the architects I know are married to other architects!

    1. KB*

      Worked in marketing/BD for an architecture firm for 5 years and 100% cosign this comment! If you want money, go into general contracting or engineering. I also married an architect I worked with, they generally work insane hours for not that much money so pretty much every architect I know is married to another architect or someone they met through work in some capacity.

      The one thing that is generally accurately represented on TV: the black, stylish clothing with heavy framed glasses. And the high levels of self-confidence, esp for the dudes.

    2. Zzzzzz*

      Not always that small. I know of one solo who worked w an engineer on “strip malls” and large projects.

  131. Triplestep*

    From Mike Brady to Elyse Keaton to Ted Mosby, no architect on TV has ever been portrayed accurately. At least Ted was not a high earner; Mike never would have been able to afford that house, six kids, a wife, and a full-time live-in housekeeper on an architect’s salary. Elyse would not have been so available to her family. Ted wouldn’t have singlehandedly designed a skyscraper.

    George Costanza’s pretending to be an architect is actually pretty accurate. People find the IDEA of being an architect very appealing, but many of us (including me) have moved on to other related things. A lot don’t even get through the education before switching once they realize it’s not what they thought it was.

    1. Mr. Cajun2core*

      yea, I always knew there was no way Mike Brady could have afforded that lifestyle and I am not even an architect!

  132. kiki*

    I work in software engineering. Silicon Valley was a really interesting show to watch because it got some things incredibly right and others not so much.

    I think the thing it got most correct is how often ego is at play, even among all these people who claim to be hyper-rational.

    One thing they get consistently wrong is that great code really just comes down to one person working entirely solo just, like, having brain blasts and manically writing code. A lot of coding is tedium– trying, testing, failing, realizing you have a typo, trying again, wandering around, thinking of something brilliant, writing it, realizing it doesn’t work, etc.

    2. ICodeForFood*

      I code, and oh, yeah, can I ever agree with this, especially “wandering around, thinking of something brilliant, writing it, realizing it doesn’t work…”

  133. Bird*

    I work in animal research as a regulatory compliance professional. Far too much of a hot button issue for an accurate portrayal. The only one I can think of is Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde.

  134. chs.29*

    I’m an event planner for a nonprofit. The event planners I see on TV are usually meticulously professional, always-in-a-hurry but still always put-together, simultaneously collected and answering 4,000,000 questions. I think that’s pretty accurate for what it’s like *during* an event, but they definitely miss the very unglamorous parts :) like when a coworker lost the three a-frame signs I desperately needed for an event, and I had to go pick up barricades from my dad’s construction company instead… while wearing a full formal dress.

    1. I’m looking at you, Caroline Forbes of Vampire Diaries!*

      How about when the very Type-A character comes in at the last minute, barks a few snotty comments like “the centerpieces should be facing this direction!” Orders event staff around like slaves, and refuses to get their hands dirty to provide actual help – but they’re still the savior of the event. Any planner who actually acted like that would be without a staff and without a job. Doesn’t matter how beautiful those centerpieces are (facing west so they pick up the sun).

      1. chs.29*

        So true! I have run into a few vendors with that personality, and I never continue using their services if they bark orders at staff. There are definitely moments when I’m more direct, like if there’s an issue and I need to communicate that very clearly, but having a kind, positive, warm personality is a big part of having staff that will work hard for you, imo.

      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yup, if you’re an event planner who doesn’t appreciate that events require all hands on deck actually doing useful stuff to make the event happen, you won’t be an event planner for long!

  135. The OG Sleepless*

    I’ll reprise my previous answer and expand it a bit. Veterinarians are usually portrayed thusly:

    1. as sidekicks for criminals: oh hell no we don’t treat humans for gunshot wounds and such, nor do we sell them drugs out the back door. Also, if any criminals want to break in and steal ketamine, it is not sitting out on the shelf next to the antibiotics and stuff.

    2. as comic relief: admittedly, the idea of using advanced medical knowledge to treat patients who will do things like eat a sock is inherently funny, and I suspect we laugh far more throughout the day than our human counterparts do, but if a vet appears for a few minutes in a movie, something ridiculous is happening.

    3. as, well, just not very professional: so, NatGeo decided several years ago that they really wanted to have a reality show about vets. For some reason, most of the vets they approached just weren’t entertaining enough for them. They were committed to the idea of having something more like the above. They ended up using the father-in-law of one of their camera operators, who unfortunately practices medicine that is so substandard and outdated that he got his license to practice suspended for a year after the show went on the air. You probably know his name. The above are just annoying, but that one makes me angry. Most of us are over here using sterile technique, state of the art pain control, and gentle handling, but every day clients tell us cheerfully that they know just what our jobs are like because they watch this clown on NatGeo.

    I’ve wished for years that somebody would make a fictionalized show about a veterinary ER or teaching hospital that had vets consulting with the writers, along the lines of ER. The stories we could tell you guys! (I know “ER” didn’t portray human medicine very accurately, but it was on when I was a new graduate from vet school, and I always thought it captured the feeling of being a young doctor really well.)

    Somebody asked me in the original thread if “All Creatures Great and Small” was accurate. I haven’t seen the show. I read the books when I was a kid, as all veterinarians of that era did, and as far as I know it was quite accurate about that time and place. My job in the 2020s in US suburbia bears little resemblance to James Herriot’s in the rural UK in the 1930s, though.

    1. Nea*

      It’s my understanding that the original books are accurate and that the show from the 90s is accurate, but the modern remake has decided to bail on accuracy (even 1930s accuracy) for draaaaaama.

    2. Limotruck87*

      I’ve also seen tv/movie accounts that don’t seem to recognize or convey that a veterinarian *is*, in fact, a doctor, who’s been through very similar training as human doctors. One of the seasons of Walking Dead featured a character with a gunshot wound–the big reveal that the “Vet” character who would be trying to save him was actually a veterinarian, and not a combat medic, was met with horror and fear. The veterinarian’s attitude was very much ‘I’ll do my best and try to figure this out but I have no idea what I’m doing’ and I found myself so frustrated.

      He’s a rural mixed-practice vet, people! He’s done thousands of field procedures on patients who won’t hold still, AND it’s highly unlikely this is the first gunshot wound he’s treated.

      2. The OG Sleepless*

        The only problem with that, and the reason I would be extremely hesitant to treat a human even in dire circumstances, is that one thing you learn over and over in vet school is the tiny but important differences between species. You just never know what tiny fact about a species you’re not trained in is going to completely bite you in the ass.

    3. Art3mis*

      FWIW, I can’t watch any of those animal shows because they are too upsetting. True Crime, sure, murder adults, kids, whatever, doesn’t bother me. Step on a dog though, and I’m all weepy. But I’m pretty sure I know what show you’re talking about. I’ve never watched it, but I’ve seen commercials.

    4. Alpaca Clinician*

      Completely agree about a fictional show about a veterinary ER – truth is definitely stranger than fiction, the number of weird stories I have is pretty high and I haven’t even been practicing all that long!

      I understand most media has to start with scenarios that the general public are familiar with, but it’s also a bit frustrating that TV/movie writers think all vets wear lab coats (always spotlessly clean for some reason) and work in small animal private practice and magically have answers for all the sick pets they see in a reasonably short work day (I’m writing this comment just before I leave work after a relatively light 10.5-hour day). I’m in academia and work exclusively with large animals – my day today consisted of a morning performing a complicated procedure on a single animal, then an afternoon in front of a computer or on the phone looking up research on that specific animal’s condition while keeping the other patients in the hospital stable, followed by a long conversation around quality of life and end of life decision making. Granted, this isn’t very “cool” for TV viewers but there are so many neat things that you can do with a DVM that I’m sure they could find a cool (and accurate) way to portray us on screen.

      (Side note about the comic relief: my sister finds it endlessly entertaining that I refer to “regular” hospitals as “human hospitals,” since I work in a veterinary teaching hospital and that’s my default in my brain for what a hospital is)

      1. The OG Sleepless*

        Hello from a much older colleague! I went to vet school intending to do large animal and possibly research, and here I am in GP/ER small animal.

        I can totally see an ER-type storyline where the new grad sees a possible foreign body obstruction, and all of the usual head-scratching ensues about whether the X rays show an obstruction or not, and the new grad nervously goes off to surgery and finds sexy underwear wadded up in the small intestine,
        as the techs collapse in laughter. The new grad shows the undies to the owners, to which the wife says…you know it…”Those aren’t mine.”

        1. just some guy*

          I would watch the hell out of a veterinary CSI show. Who got up on the kitchen bench and licked the butter? Whose barf is that under the bed? Who stole the human’s chair as soon as they stood up?

  136. Outdoorsy Type*

    My work brings me in contact with city government, and sometimes I attend public meetings. Parks & Rec is pretty accurate on this front. Sometimes I come home and my husband asks how it went, and I reply, “I found a sandwich and it didn’t have mayonnaise on it!”

  137. booknerdjob*

    I work in publishing now, which I think is portrayed as WAY more glamorous than it actually is. To be fair, I work in academic publishing and not as like, a big fiction literary agent, so it might be slightly more glamorous for others. I do know that NY trade publishing staff are woefully underpaid and attempts to unionize are being squashed, which isn’t quite the fun perception on TV.

    But I briefly worked in political campaigns and I have lots of opinions on that! I got into politics because I grew up watching The West Wing and had this optimistic vision of what it would be. Ultimately, I found Veep to be the most accurate depiction of working in politics… a lot less inspiring and a lot more awkwardly funny situations.

    1. Riot Grrrl*

      I also work in a publishing-adjacent field. I don’t know if it’s the fault of TV and movies, but I agree–there’s a glamor surrounding it that it doesn’t deserve. People often have an idea that it’s almost a form of academia; they imagine I’m sitting in a den somewhere with by snifter of brandy contemplating character arcs in a novel or something.

      No, my friend, it’s a BUSINESS. It’s mostly just different kinds of email and spreadsheets. Just like many other businesses.

  138. CollegeCounselor*

    Oo, a rant close to my heart! I work as an educational consultant for college applications, including SAT tutoring, and it drives me NUTS when films/TV show people applying in like, May of senior year. Or worse, finding out AT GRADUATION that they got into their dream school/got a scholarship (cough, Say Anything, cough). Applying to college is a several-months long process for most kids, followed by several months of waiting, not a “I’ll pop out an essay on Friday, and by Sunday morning I’ve been accepted with a full scholarship/I’ve been rejected and my life is over.” There’s a lot more paperwork than that, at the very least, and a gagillion more choices/things to do whether you get in or not.

    (Also, no one ever shows high schoolers working the amount they do. My students have school, then practice/clubs until 4 or 5, then tutoring until 6 or 7, then eat while they do homework until 9 or 10 pm. The amount of hanging out in basements chatting is MINIMAL on weeknights. Most high schoolers I know are crazy ambitious, very nervous about their futures, and pulling a TON of weight. The lazy stoners are a big exception, IMO.)

    1. T.N.H.*

      I’m with you! Also, in every movie, the student magically gets a “full ride” and doesn’t have to work or pay any money for college. That isn’t really a thing that exist (many student athletes for example are literally starving because they can’t afford food).

      1. Not my real name*

        My kid did get a full ride, but she had to pay taxes on the part of her scholarship that wasn’t tuition or books. She had extra money withheld from her summer job paychecks to make sure she was covered. HR called her to make sure the amount was correct because her first (partial) paycheck was only about $20 after withholding.

    2. Irish Teacher*

      Absolutely agree on the amount of work. Here, most schools recommend that 6th years (the equivalent of 12th graders) do a minimum of 3-4 hours homework and study each night (and usually expect more at weekends), plus a lot of students get grinds (extra tuition).

      There aredefinitely teens who don’t care. I have some students who do virtually no homework, but…those tend not to be the kids aiming for college at all. The thing that strikes me as completely unrealistic in most fictional portrayals is the kids spend their whole time dating, hanging out in basements, going to discos, parties, etc and then end up getting top grades and into medicine or some other very competitive course.

      The other Irish-specific thing that annoys me is the kid from the poor family worrying about affording college fees. College fees are means tested here and only about 50% of college students have to pay them. The kid from the council estate who parents are both unemployed…his family income is not going to go anywhere near the threshold. The kids who should be worrying about this are the kids from middle-income families who are just above the cut-off point, but nope, it’s always the kid whose family is on social welfare. If it were “there isn’t a college in commuting distance and I don’t know if my grant will cover rent,” that would be reasonable, but…college fees aren’t going to be an issue.

      1. Irish Teacher*

        I mean, the last annoys me in Irish media when they are talking specifically about colleges here. I know different countries do things differently.

  139. Lemon Shark*

    As a medical student, while the portrayal of what doctors do all day is often wildly inaccurate, I don’t actually mind much the medicine being fudged or depictions skipping over the sheer volume of charting that has to happen (presumably not good tv). What I do mind is the huge lack of professionalism, especially tropes where doctors date or fall in love with patients. This would be hugely problematic behavior for, I hope, obvious reasons. And to see it so casually depicted (and often portrayed in a positive light) is jarring and upsetting.

    1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      I have heard from residents that Scrubs, believe it or not, does a better job of portraying that phase of the MD lifecycle than anything else.

    2. Boof*

      Word. although I’ll admit, “shocking a flatline” was bothering me for a while because I was wondering if it would train people to wonder why doctors weren’t doing it in a crisis. I actually haven’t seen someone shock a flatline in a while, though!

  141. KT*

    I work in higher-ed fundraising in an operations/support role which is not something I see portrayed too often, but I had a weird career detour where I ended up becoming a certified phlebotomist (never actually employed as one – I did a 3 week externship and realized that I hated hated hated it) but oh boy can no one on TV or movies draw blood. Literally makes me cringe because a bad blood draw can hurt – as you find out in your phlebotomy class where all the students practice on each other.

    Also many people on TV do not know how to hold a musical instrument. Surprises me how few shows don’t take the 15 seconds needed to google which hand goes where on a flute.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I’m a violin player and watching people fake-play violin is THE WORST. Big Trekkie but I despise the TNG episodes that have Data playing violin, ugh.

      1. Random Bystander*

        Have you ever seen TwoSet (youtube) do reviews of depictions of music performances in movies? (Mostly violin, since they are both violinists.)

    2. The OG Sleepless*

      The doctors on Grey’s Anatomy always had their stethoscopes on backwards, which made me shriek every time.

  142. Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet!)*

    I “studied” for Evidence class in law school by watching police procedural dramas and identifying all the things they did wrong, figuring out what evidence would be admissible at trial, and whether the admissible evidence would be sufficient to prove the charges. The answer was almost always no.
    I’m very tired of being told to watch Suits and My Cousin Vinny. Not because they aren’t excellent, but because I am a trust and estates attorney.

    1. Turanga Leela*

      This is funny because I got an A in crim purely from remembering old episodes of Law & Order. (My professor was… not awesome.)

      1. Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet!)*

        I love this. I’ve heard Law and Order actually gets case law right most of the time. Never seen it myself. Maybe I would have scored higher in Crim if I had…

    2. Courtroom Clerk*

      Niche! I’m a probate examiner now. No one knows what that means. LOL. People barely understood my work as a courtroom clerk, but it was criminal so at least they had the tv understanding.

  143. AnotherLibrarian*

    Another Librarian here – I’ve worked in public, academic, and special libraries and archives. I think a big misconception is that everyone in a library is a librarian. In general, librarians are not the ones checking in and out books or shelving. And librarianship is very technology focused. My degree is a MLIS which is a Masters in Library and Information Science. To be successful in libraries now you need to love books, tech, and people. We are constantly helping people with their devices, laptops, and software. Plus we assist with research, work with copyright, OER/OA, and book/material selection.

  144. Jessica*

    911 telecommunicator/dispatcher – The reality shows are highly accurate (911 Crisis Center, Emergency Call, Nightwatch) even if they are condensed to be interesting for television. But the dramas (Fox’s 9-1-1) is so inaccurate and crazy that I don’t even know any real telecommunicators that watch it or care about it.

    1. ms.independent*

      I couldn’t even try. Just knowing that I already yell at the TV when 911 is called and the first question is “what is your emergency” and not “where…” and there’s no way I would have been able to get through even a fictional 911 show.

      1. AnotherDay*

        Our center asks “What is your emergency?” rather than “where”. I brought this up once and was told something along the lines of “Oh, yeah, we should look into that. “, but nothing has changed.

    2. Electric Sheep*

      9-1-1 is wildly unrealistic, especially for anything to do with police investigations (rampant evidence mishandling! Unrealistically fast timeframes! Their processes are so bad I, without any professional knowledge, know it’s wildly wrong.) However it’s so bad that actually I find it easier to watch knowing they aren’t even trying to be realistic – it’s like saying a child’s toy phone doesn’t realistically portray what a phone is like, aka they are in it only for the entertainment.

  145. Finance Bro*

    Look, I work in finance.

    You’ve seen the wolf of wall street, wall street, the big short, none of those are anywhere close to my day to day boring office job. I’ve worked 30 years without a single office party where there are lines of cocaine being done off escort’s backsides, and blue horseshoe doesn’t phone me stock tips.

    I mostly just laugh it off, but it seems a bunch of policy people in government think they need to tailor regulations to rein in the fictional portrayals, one side particularly loves to villainize ‘wall street’ and I’ve only ever been there once.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      I’m not in finance, but my husband works in the mortgage industry, and we were front and center to the 2007 housing crash. The people in The Big Short may have been more colorful than their real life counterparts, but the events were pretty accurate.

  146. Lalaluna*

    Librarian. I love murder mysteries. In EVERY episode I’ve ever seen involving a library (i.e. the police want info from the library regarding a person’s reading habits or library records), the librarians all just freely tell the police any and all information. In real life we do NOT do that. Show us a warrant and then we’ll talk. Possibly a subpoena. We won’t tell anyone library record related information “off the record”. NOPE. Not any kind of library. Public, legal, university, etc. Makes me irrationally angry every time I see it. Also, while yes a high proportion of us wear glasses and love cardigans; on the whole we’re a wacky bunch and aren’t frumpy/frousy with a stern expression. We’re most of us nerds and love expressing our interests in our appearance, clothes, jewelry, etc. TV librarians are terrible.

  147. Green Tea*

    I work for an international conservation nonprofit. This field is not depicted a huge amount in media, but when it is, the storyline tends to be focused on white characters saving nature and poor people in non-white areas. And that would be fine if the story dissected that mindset and portrayed it in a critical light like a kind of modern colonialism – after all, plenty of Western people working at international nonprofits do feel that way, and this causes a lot of harm. Instead, it’s a lazy story shorthand to communicate that this white character is a wonderful, generous human being, written by someone who has no understanding of this field.

    I’d love to see more stories that show international conservation best practices, including rigorous safeguards, and in high-conservation areas, showing more locally-led or locally co-developed projects – with non-white, non-American conservation professionals as the center of the story instead of either nonexistent, or tiny side characters. And I’d also like to see flawed human characters depicted, who have ambitions, pet peeves, and personality conflicts, not total saints who are always dedicated to the cause and perfect human beings.

  148. Anxious Bee*

    As a nurse, most medical shows have a startling lack of nurse staff. I always love seeing the TV doctors ambulate a patient or put in an IV. But the worst show is Nurses. From silly things like mixing up the titles of Charge Nurse and Nursing Supervisor to bigger things like having ED nurses follow their patients to work on whatever floor they’ve been admitted to- it also has the most BLATANT violation of HIPPA I’ve ever seen, in the VERY first episode. One of the main characters has a pregnant patient who never told her ex wife she got pregnant and he LOOKS IN HER CHART AND CALLS THE EX WIFE WITHOUT HER PERMISSION TO TELL HER THAT HER WIFES IN LABOR. He’s a ED nurse he shouldn’t even BE in L&D much less breaking HIPPA in the worst way possible.

    1. Anxious Bee*

      Oh! Also Chicago MD is usually ok, but one episode has a former abuser of one of the nursing staff show up as a patient and the doctor accuses the nurses of refusing to do care on the patient. His proof? His blood draw was a couple hours late. Depending on a person’s veins and how busy nursing staff is, sometimes your lucky if it gets drawn at all. A gentle reminder from a doc asking if you can prioritize blood draws is one thing. Seeing labs haven’t been drawn and Immediately going to charge to accuse your staff of neglect? That’s a DICK move

  149. fifteen minutes of indiscriminate screeching*

    oh this is so incredibly funny to me because the first question i get when i tell people what i do is “oh, so like in Moneyball?”. depending on how much i feel like elaborating at the time i either explain that baseball analytics as a whole has moved far past the moneyball state of things, or i just sigh and say “yeah, like in moneyball”.

    (the funniest part is that i’ve never actually watched moneyball.)

    1. The Eye of Argon*

      I’m a nerd who has never seen “Napoleon Dynamite” and who loathes both “The Big Bang Theory” and “The Princess Bride”. I can sympathize.

  150. A. Ham*

    This is a specific example from quite a while ago, but I remember feeling my entire industry collectively gasp and yell at the TV during an episode of “Smash” where the main character is upset and runs off stage and into Time Square, still in costume.

    There is no way any theater, much less a Broadway theater, would ever let that costume leave the building.

    that kind of thing seems to happen all the time in TV and movies. that and super short rehearsal times, magical scenery/costume changes and odd casting choices. (Why would a soprano and an alto be up for the same role in a musical?).
    My other favorite is when Jody’s entire costume, INCLUDING HER POINTE SHOES, turn red in a matter of seconds in Center Stage.

    Sometimes they get things right. I highly recommend Slings & Arrows. And, oddly enough, “Waiting for Guffman”. those people actually exist y’all. Those characters are not an exaggeration.

    1. curly sue*

      I did a search on the thread before writing in about Slings and Arrows – it’s absolutely the best portrayal of theatre life I’ve ever seen on screen. (‘Noises Off’ is great as a total farce version, mind you!).

      I full-body wince when Cooper drives the motorcycle on stage in Center Stage (the floors!), but even though it’s entirely film magic and utterly physically impossible, I still love that stupid red costume change.

    2. Yes And*

      I came here to recommend Slings and Arrows. Most other depictions of theater in the media seem to have been made by movie/TV people who think that theater is just like movies/TV without the cameras. (In particular, most depictions of musical theater seem to be made by people who have never seen a musical, much less participated in one. Smash is a prime example.)

      1. Nea*

        Slings and Arrows was written and performed by the people who perform at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Nothing like people talking about their actual careers to guarantee that something is completely accurate!

    4. Here for the snacks*

      Not seen Slings and Arrows (I’m UK-based, and don’t have Netflix :-) ), but I was hoping someone would comment on theatre. I’m a stage manager, and we scarcely exist on TV/in film, and if we do, it’s a mousy ASM who is in love with the lead actor.

      Like so many other jobs, my work is a ^lot^ of paperwork, planning, working out health and safety issues, and sitting in meetings, but that doesn’t make good TV.

      However, I often wear a headset, and sometimes carry a clipboard

  151. S*

    I’m an economist and for some reason, people don’t make a lot of movies about us? Puzzling.

    But there is one: the main character of Crazy Rich Asians is an economics professor at NYU who uses her expertise in game theory to lose/win a game of mah-jongg with her extremely scary potential mother-in-law. Unfortunately, despite the name, game theory has nothing to do with playing games and would provide no mah-jongg guidance whatsoever. Still, there’s an economist who isn’t a white man, so I can def live with this portrayal.

  152. Majnoona*

    Professors. They always portray our jobs as being about teaching – our evaluations are actually based (almost) solely on research. Also we don’t generally have huge offices with books enclosed in fancy shelves (we use those books). The Chair got bits of it right (the banishment to a terrible office, deans worried about very low enrollments) but lots wrong too.

  153. frustratedlinguist*

    I’m a linguist, and anytime a linguist is on TV, I know they’re about to use the most outdated and racist lies to come out of the field in the last century. It’s especially bad if it’s a crime/police show.

    1. PsychNurse*

      Do you remember on Friends, though, when Ross (a famously nerdy paleontologist) is trying to hook up with another professor? He says, “She’s in the linguistics department. They’re *wild*.” It still cracks me up.

    2. And the award goes to*

      Have you seen Arrival with Amy Adams? The filmmakers did consult with a linguistics professor.

      1. connie*

        who apparently didn’t know much about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (e.g., it doesn’t exist as such, nor how to pronounce “Sapir”).

  154. Veruca Salt*

    I basically have Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and one episode of I Love Lucy for reference.
    There are a lot fewer Oompa-Loompas than the former would have you believe, and incidents where children blow up like a blueberry or are lost in a chocolate river are pretty rare. Also zero great glass elevators (but that’s another story).

    The confections coming down the belt to Lucy and Ethel…. not the *worst* representation.

  155. socialstrategist1234*

    I work in social media and it’s not at all like Emily in Paris. Most posts do not go viral and it takes a lot of time to plan and get client approval.

  157. KatCardigans*

    I’m a librarian and teacher at an independent school. Lots of librarians and teachers have already weighed in here on those professions as a whole, so I’ll just mention that the world of independent high schools—in my experience, at least, because I do know it varies—is pretty different from the plaid-skirted halls of the various private schools I see on TV. There’s much more oversight and supervision of the teenagers, for one thing.

  158. Snarkus Aurelius*

    I work in politics and government.

    I hate Aaron Sorkin. I hate the West Wing. I hate that mainstream media still references that show when talking about modern politics as if that show was realistic. I hate the generation of selfish, clueless, sexist, privileged white men who use that show to turn my workplace into a mansplaining environment where we all must stop what we’re doing and listen to him point out obvious things like they’re brand new. I hate how West Wing taught far too many viewers that problems can be solved in 40 minutes and budget law doesn’t exist. I hate that people would rather watch that show than do anything to change their own government. I hate that the actual West Wing was far more diverse than the fictional one.

    On the upside, when a man (it’s always a man) tells me West Wing is his favorite show, he’s really telling me he’s not worth my time.

    1. Morgan Proctor*

      THANK YOU! Bravo! I also hate this show and Aaron Sorkin! The misogyny is killing me on the inside!

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        You can totally tell that all the bloviating male characters are supposed to be Sorkin.

        Sorry, broseph, but we’re not all secretly in love with you nor are we pretending not to be in love with you. Some of us women got into this field because we’re smart and qualified and we like it.

    2. American in Ireland*

      I liked it at the time. But it really does NOT hold up on rewatch. And the sexism is just awful.

    3. Roscoe da Cat*

      I also hate that they are always walking somewhere. Where? The West Wing is so small, major members have large closets for offices.

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        The actual West Wing has no hallways that are long enough to hold those long conversations while walking. And you wouldn’t be blabbing your stuff out in the open anyway where anyone can hear it.

        Most of that information happens in meetings and we don’t stare longingly at each other nor do we explain the basics because we all know how government works.

        Someone like Donna would never be hired because she asks too many questions and she should already know most of the answers. And never pester your boss with that crap in the middle of a crisis.

  159. Powerpants*

    When Kayla, the admin assistant, on Hacks says something like, “I think of emails to send.” I was like, “Yup, that’s it!”

  160. The Coolest Clown Around*

    I’m a mathematician and every media depiction I’ve seen portrays us somewhere between awkward and distressing weird. While most mathematicians I know are almost by definition nerds, the vast majority are perfectly capable of acting like normal adults. I’ve never even had to take my clothes off to “feel closer to the math”, which happened in a Sherlock episode.

  161. Joyce to the World*

    Health Insurance- Only as the evil large corporation denying needed medical care. When in reality we all do what we can to get things paid.

    Now I am on the Product team and I don’t think I have ever seen Product Management in a movie or series ever.

    1. Triplestep*

      I have a connective tissue disorder whose surgical treatment is performed by plastic surgeons. My insurance company settled a class action lawsuit which required them to establish a policy to pay plastic surgeons for medically necessary (non-cosmetic) treatment of my condition. They still won’t pay. So if what you say is true your colleagues are making you look very bad. But I’m inclined to believe the TV portrayal is accurate.

      1. Art3mis*

        Having also worked in health insurance I would say that 1. Not all health insurance carriers are the same. and 2. If they are denying something as not medically necessary that actually is, it’s because the provider hasn’t given them enough documentation to support it being medically necessary, or your medical records aren’t complete enough to support it.

        1. Not A Doctor*

          No offense to either of you personally, but: horse apples. I am absolutely sure that’s how it feels on the insurer side, and it’s how things are explained to employees by the insurance companies, but it’s categorically untrue that providers don’t know how to substantiate claims and also sick and terrible that this is a component of the healthcare system at all. It is not necessary, it is done intentionally to profit off sick people and the burden it places on patients and patient care providers is a huge contributor to the stressed-out and dysfunctional system we have. You are not doing a service to people and just have your poor hands tied by these silly doctors not proving that their patients reaaaaally need their medical care.

          We can also show empirically that employees of insurance companies are not, in fact, usually just altruistically trying to get things covered. There has been plenty of examinations over the years of many different insurance companies, and the patterns are not flattering. Hell, ProPublica release a report just last week about UnitedHealthcare’s bogus and sometimes fraudulent efforts to deem established treatments “medically unnecessary” to get out of covering them.

          1. Triplestep*

            100% in agreement.

            Coincidentally (or maybe not) I have United Healthcare. I am gong to have to look for this report you mention.

              1. Not A Doctor*

                This is absolutely the one. There is no level of generosity in reading that can interpret this as a bunch of people with pure intentions.

        2. Triplestep*

          I submitted over 100 pages of documentation showing that I ticked every box for diagnosis and for treatment under the terms of THEIR policy, line by line. In fact, my submission was so good, they actually approved of the first of several staged surgeries, but then refused to approve the others. Some how they were unable to see that they themselves had approved one, they’d say it wasn’t covered. The reasons they gave were in conflict with their own policy (which I included with my packet so they’d have it handy.)

          One of the surgeries was partially approved; they said “if your surgeon agrees to one night in the hospital and not three, this will be approved”. When they were asked how the doctor can indicate his approval with this plan, he was given instructions which he followed. They said no. This went on a few more times (with months elapsing) and finally I decided to call repeatedly and ask the same question in the same way and take the answer I got the most times. “How can my surgeon indicate he agrees with your stipulation so this can be approved?” I called eleven times in two days and got seven different answers to the same question phrased the same way. Does this sound like an insurer wanting to help?

  162. Managercanuck*

    Non-profit management isn’t usually depicted unless the character’s embezzling or something, which isn’t something I’ve seen in 16 years in the field. (shrug)

  163. JustMe*

    I currently work at a university, and before that, in a variety of other types of post-secondary institutions. While the situations are exaggerated, I actually think the movie “Accepted” is somewhat accurate. Anyone can start a school if they really want to, and the American higher ed system is basically a conglomeration of institutions formed by a few passionate weirdos with a notion that they wanted a new kind of educational program. Unfortunately, very few people actually understand the importance of accreditation and quality assurance and are lured into fake schools because they have all the traditional trappings of a post secondary institution (a mascot, a campus, a website, letterhead, you name it). To receive accreditation, you often do start with a probationary, temporary accreditation in which you start putting together school stuff, and at very small, non-prestigious institutions, it often is just a small collection of people throwing a campus together and hoping it works. I remember once walking some accreditors through an empty would-be branch campus that still had no teachers, no finance person, a long list of potential students, and desperately hoping they would let us become a real school.

  164. Didi Nic*

    I’m an admin at a consulting firm, and the only consulting show I can remember is House of Lies starring Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell. Although, they were management consultants and I’ve never run into those.
    The thing I always found funny about that show was that they always flew first class to their client visits, and as the person who does the booking and the expenses (and keeps track of company expense policy), my people always fly economy unless it’s a long oversees flight. We could never get away with expensing the client for first class airfare.

  165. JMR*

    I’m a scientist, and my pet peeve is that all TV shows and movies portray scientists as being experts in… all science. Somehow every scientist is a geneticist, an anthropologist, a microbiologist, a particle physicist, and a cardiologist. They can program a robot, sequence some DNA from a sample found at a crime scene, and diagnose someone’s pancreatic cancer. In reality, science is so specialized that as an immunologist, there are literally types of immune cells I know next to nothing about.

    1. Not my real name*

      Yes, and every entomologist can immediately identify any insect by sight and give a full life history including its geographic range.

    2. Queen Ruby*

      In real life too! My family thinks just because I have degrees in bio and biotech, I know everything about all the science. Uh, nope. I don’t know much beyond genetics and molecular bio.

    3. Ancient Llama*

      My husband and I laugh that we feel this all started with the Professor on Gilligan’s Island. What was he a professor of? I would have thought English or history, but apparently he was professor of (all the) Sciences.

  166. Late4theParty*

    I am now retired but my career as an event planner is never accurately portrayed. Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner came close with the jacket with all of the emergency supplies. However, a tackle box is more accurate. The Celebrity Apprentice was full of events that were “planned” by a team or individual. Still laughing about that.

  167. The Eye of Argon*

    I work in local government and we are not indolent slobs who sit around with our feet up on the desks reading the paper and telling desperate townsfolk, “that’s not my department”. We’re not here to keep the average citizen down with bogus rules. We don’t levy taxes just to make people’s lives miserable. None of us are sleeping with the mayor and/or pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Oh, and except for town council and the mayor, none of our positions are elected, so telling me you’ll never vote for me again really isn’t going to get you what you want no matter how loud you yell it over the phone.

    One more thing: breaking the rules isn’t going to get you hailed as a hero by a joyful populace. It will just get you arrested or cited and branded a troublemaker by your neighbors.

  168. Morgan Proctor*

    Well, I have a couple of concurrent careers, and some are portrayed better than others. I’m a capital-A Artist, I have both a BFA and an MFA in visual art, and I have never seen a good portrayal of artists, art school, or the Art World. These concepts are mostly portrayed as extraordinarily pretentious, and artists as miserable people who are inspired by their suffering, and it’s almost never like that. Artists are mostly fun people who like to party and enjoy making art. They also tend to dress really well and have good aesthetic sense. It’s writers who are miserable and can’t dress!!

    And that brings me to my other career. I’m a writer of fiction for my day job, and I also have a personal writing practice and have been published many times. Artists are a blast to hang out with; writers are kind of a downer. Writers love to sit around and talk about how hard writing is, which TV and movies mostly get right, because they are, in fact, written by writers. Fancy that!

    1. cleo*

      This made me laugh. Fellow MFA here and yes, artists and art schools are not usually well portrayed.

      I couldn’t get through the movie Art School Confidential with John Malkovich – it was excruciatingly bad. But there was one scene of a class critique that really captured the experience for me – a student looks at this abstract paining by another student, sighs pretentiously and is like, “I just don’t get it, it’s like bad Cy Twombly”). It still makes me laugh thinking about it.

      Two authors that I think portray artists well are Charles DeLint and Audrey Niffenegger (she’s a print maker, so that makes sense).

  169. Mr. Cajun2core*

    I am a staff member in academia. I don’t recall ever seeing a staff member portrayed significantly in a show. It is always faculty and administration. Copies get made, repairs get done, and budgets are balanced automatically!

  170. Irish Teacher*

    As I said on the previous thread, the most common poor portrayal of teaching is the young awesome teacher who gets the difficult class and manages to not only motivate them but have them all achieving at grade level or above by some “inspiring” tactic.

    This is usually placed in juxtaposition with the older, staid members of staff that think the students are just lazy and should be punished for their lack of motivation.

    For one thing, those two options aren’t as far apart as the media portrays them as being and neither comes close to the truth. Both assume the problem is merely one of motivation and if the kids were motivated, they could gain grade level in a matter of months, despite reading at maybe a 7 year old level at the age of 16. In reality, the reasons for behavioural problems and poor achievement are many and varied and…no, just getting a “cool” activity is not going to have a student with an IQ of 70 performing at grade level or immediately overcome the effects of dyslexia or ADHD or dyscalculia or make a child who is being bullied feel comfortable at school or give a teen parent with little support time to study.

    Plus, different things motivate different students so no “cool activity” is going to interest an entire class and even if it did, it’s one class. I have had students who became engaged in my class when they were noted for poor motivation (but I am talking maybe 4 or 5 kids in a number of years, not entire classes at a time) and…some of those still ended up dropping out or being expelled because enjoying three classes a week does not make up for the other 20+ that they hated.

    And also…a lot of the so-called original and innovative methods…really aren’t. I have come across plenty of cases where English teachers used rap lyrics or song lyrics as poetry, where they have had students act out the play being studied (this is pretty much default stuff), where teachers have started school choirs or sports teams or had students write novels or make videos. If those methods engaged all students, teaching would be a whole lot easier.

    Specific to Ireland, one thing that has me rolling my eyes are the “kid doesn’t get into secondary school because they failed the entrance exam” (it is against the law to refuse a student on that basis; entrance exams are to see what students need additional help and sometimes to see what class to place students in if the school uses streaming, not to decide if the kid gets a place or not).

    1. Green Tea*

      I’m curious if you’ve ever seen Abbott Elementary? I’m not a teacher so I don’t know for sure, but it feels a lot more real about what being a teacher is like than most shows or movies I’ve seen.

      1. Irish Teacher*

        No, I haven’t, but seeing the comments on it here, I think I’m going to have to see if it’s available over here.

      2. Middle School Teacher*

        Abbott Elementary, minus a few exaggerated bits, so perfectly encapsulates what teaching in a low-income, large school district is like. I’ve spent my career teaching in Chicago and Denver and the topics they address hits so close to home in the best ways possible. The two thing that get me are that neither Ava nor Gregory would have become a principal without some kind of prior teaching experience, and some of the things they teach at each grade level don’t exactly line up. Minor issues in a comedy that really does hit what it is like teaching on a day-to-day basis.

        Bonus – my boyfriend is from Philadelphia and he says that they nail a lot of the Philly culture. I have to take his word for that one though.

    2. Ex-prof*

      The world’s worst teacher trope:

      Some dude (it’s always a dude) who is not a teacher finds himself thrust into a teaching position through no fault of his own, despite having no background, experience, or education, and is instantly the best teacher anyone ever heard of anywhere on the planet. All the inadequate teachers bow down to worship him.

      This trope is so pervasive that, at least in the US, actual education departments of actual states have created teacher certification bypass programs to get this remarkable and fictional guy into the classroom stat.

      1. Nea*

        That’s because those state departments also believe in the trope of the Blatantly Propaganda-Driven Professor Brainwashing Their Students.

      2. Irish Teacher*

        It seems like a lot of people think that because some people are naturally good at small-t teaching, like training new people at work or teaching their child to tell them time or whatever, that means teaching requires no training and somebody with “natural talent” can just walk into a classroom and teach as well as an experienced teacher with no familiarity with the curriculum, no knowledge about child development or psychology, no training in how to recognise learning disabilities or assess learning, etc.

        My first class as a student teacher, I had about 15 minutes of work planned and was then like “um, what do I do for the other 25?” I hadn’t intended to have so little time planned, I had just overestimated both how long things like calling the roll would take and how willing 12 year olds were going to be to speak up to a strange adult in front of new classmates in a strange environment. So I had thought “we’ll spend 5-10 minutes discussing what the think x in the story means” and in reality, I got muttered “I don’t knows”.

        I’m not sure anybody is a great teacher their first couple of days at it anyway. (I’d be impressed if anybody was great in their first two years.)

        1. Dark Macadamia*

          Yes lol it takes several years to actually feel like you kind of know what you’re doing. Any first-time teacher going in thinking they’re going to inspire children with the strength of their earnestness is going to have a rough time!

          1. Ex-prof*

            Yes; the movie version of a great teacher is centered on what a great guy the teacher is. A real life great teacher is centered on the students.

  171. SometimesALurker*

    I work in museums and hooo boy there are a lot of inaccuracies. My favorite type of inaccuracy, though, is when people are portrayed as having roles that are wildly out of synch with the budget or scope of the museum where they work. Museums in the media are almost always multimillion-dolar complexes or dusty local historical societies, with the occasional university museum or collection attached to a university department. Nothing in between. But on TV you always see a well-paid curator with a fancy title in giant museums handling every single detail that might be relevant to the plot (the heist / trail of the arcane magical artifact / the important moment in the artist’s career). I get why they write it like that, but I keep muttering “a museum that size would have a registrar, art handlers, event planners or an event planning service,” “oh okay the curator is also the conservator despite the fact that it’s supposed to be a world-class collection,” etc. And in the tiny local historical societies on TV, the “curator” spends all day researching exactly the thing relevant to plot, never mind the fact that they also need to do artifact conservation, cataloging, school field trips, and set up the chairs for that evening’s rental. More plots where the hero’s research is set back because the small local museum’s roof started leaking, please!

    1. Former Stage Manager*

      I’m in events now and speaking of – event planning is never right, either! It was always portrayed as just someone futzing around with a clipboard (now futzing around with a tablet) swanning around a party.

    2. Katie Porter's Whiteboard*

      Also for the love of rainbows, stop having people wear white gloves for handling everything. It’s such a small thing but it makes my eye twitch every single time.

      1. workswitholdstuff*

        I am *here* for the white gloves rant. I have the BL’s excellent blog on the topic saved permanently to post when people start on that….

    3. FedMuseum*

      I’m a collections manager/registrar and NOTHING is ever right. The number of times I’ve yelled at my tv bc security guards are somehow in charge of taking down an exhibit and shipping everything out that same night, and packing artifacts in janky wooden crates with straw is to many to count. Or the tour guides being able to just wander in and out of collections storage. Or randos just casually picking up artifacts with bare hands. Or the insanely complicated security systems – NO ONE HAS RETINAL SCANNERS.

    4. Sweating the Small Stuff*

      I can’t believe there are so many archaeologists, geologists, and librarians who have commented and not mentioned museums yet, lol! I’ve worked in museum exhibits for many years, and the thing that drives me crazy in movies and shows is how many action/fight scenes happen in museum galleries where artifacts and art get smashed up.

      Night at the Museum, Moon Knight, Scooby Doo – it feels like scenes like that happen all the time, and the thing I can’t help but imagine (and comment to my husband about every single time) is the five-alarm-****storm that happens when security or other museum staff walks in after the fact and realizes what has happened. Or gets the security alarm notification, which these places never seem to have. A true administrative, collections, and exhibitions nightmare!

    5. Kay*

      YES, came here to say that museums are nothing like they’re ever portrayed on TV. There’s this whole trend for having immortal beings be curators in superhero movies (Wonder Woman, Eternals). I think so few people realize how much the degree of specification OR generality is wildly dependent on the museum. They either think curators/archivists/docents are interchangeable OR the curator is a nebbish loser who only knows about old stuff and has yet to experience the Real World.

      I actually have taught a few university classes on museum studies and I often bring in TV and movie clips for my students in the first few days of class to talk about the popular portrayal of museums and museum workers. It’s always a great conversation starter for them.

      There have been a few things that get the spirit of it right. The bit early in Black Panther when Michael B. Jordan’s character talks about stolen artifacts (though tbh at a museum that size the curator’s not going to come out on the floor to talk to a random visitor) really nails a lot of the big field conversations. The Doctor Who scene in which they bring Vincent Van Gogh to a museum exhibition of his work in the future absolutely nails the power of museums to connect people through art.

      Do not get me started on National Treasure.

      1. workswitholdstuff*

        Oh, I watched that in the cinema and full body flinched at a few points.

        (I adore the the Dr Who scene with Van Gogh. The anniversary ep with the Tom Baker as ‘the Curator’ though I loved it for many other reasons, did have me muttering ‘that’s not what a curator does ‘ though…)

        And I’ve lost count of the ‘Night at the museum references that get made

  172. achinatl*

    I am an art critic. Art critics are often shown as:

    * incredibly powerful and influential. With perhaps 2 exceptions in the world, we most certainly are not.
    * wealthy. Hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
    * making judgments mainly based on intuition and feeling. Any piece of writing worth anything usually requires tons and tons of research. Art criticism is not poetry; it’s research, which brings me to…
    * being instantly poetic on the spot about a piece of art. A few critics actually can do this; but it’s probably about the same proportion of people in the world who happen to be brilliant impromptu speakers. The vast majority simply take notes and then go home to do research and think things through like any normal writer. On a related note, very few if any critics are walking around with an encyclopedic knowledge of all of art history or cinematic history in their heads. Everything that ends up on the page is the result of looking stuff up.
    * being personally spiteful or otherwise personally motivated. Dear lord, I am not in the business of trying to crucify artists. Anyone who thinks that is vastly overestimating my personal emotional stake in this. I’m simply trying to let people know how they can look at things in an informed and interesting way.

    1. Lynnerd*

      This is definitely going to adjust my perception. And they always have some sort of sleek, severe haircut!

  173. It Takes T to Tango*

    TV/movie portrayals are hilariously horrible for IT. My favorite is still NCIS where they had 2 people typing on one keyboard trying to stop a hacker. No. Just no. Besides, hacking isn’t a race to see who can type the fastest. Oh, and I love how nobody ever makes a typo.

    The security procedures shown, especially for digital forensics, range from “not entirely wrong” to “you should all be fired – from a canon”.

    Shows/movies love to have the resident geek (who’s an expert in far too many fields so they can save on casting) start to babble what’s going on then the lead tells them to just shut up and fix it. That’s to save the writers from having to know how things actually work. 1) IT pros usually know how to explain things quickly and succinctly and it’s important for higher ups to understand what’s going on. 2) I’m shocked the resident geek doesn’t quit on the spot from the continual, rampant rudeness or become a mole for the first person that treats them decently.

    1. Nea*

      I’m not even an IT expert and the shows where you see money being “stolen” by watching a dollar amount tick downwards instead of just not being there make my teeth grit.

    2. sacados*

      Sort of related to the “nobody makes a typo” thing but it always amuses me in Criminal Minds whenever they’re telling Penelope to look up background on someone and she ALWAYS MAGICALLY JUST KNOWS HOW TO SPELL THEIR NAME hahaha. Half the time, I’m like “No, there are at least three different ways I can think of off the top of my head that would be totally common to spell this person’s name but she just automatically knows it’s Stephen.”

    3. Scandinavian Vacationer*

      What about Chuck? I laughed my head off at the Buy More setting (veiled reference to Best Buy.)

  174. TrH*

    I work in theatre backstage, often in the costume department as a dresser, and the film The Dresser with Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay is a pretty good representation (except for the Blitz). The Canadian Series Slings and Arrows is spot on for all the behind the scenes stuff in theatre, especially the marketing department, which is of course over the top. I enjoyed that series. I haven’t yet seen Mozart in the Jungle. It’s next on my list.

    1. Indolent Libertine*

      Symphony musician here. We LOVE Slings and Arrows, and between my husband and me we have been in *all* those meetings. But there’s zero realistic about Mozart in the Jungle, just FYI.

  175. Abe Froman*

    I work in a non-profit. We are usually depicted as young, hip, and passionate, which is very misleading. Many of us are old, terminally uncool, and exhausted by everything.

  176. Dinwar*

    Paleontology definitely isn’t. I’d give two limbs and a kidney to find a dinosaur, but the reality is 99.99% of us spend our time working on shallow marine invertebrates, because those are the most common fossils by far. Even those who do get to work on vertebrates (and I’m unusually lucky here) tend to focus on Cenozoic stuff, particularly ice age stuff–a lot of field work in paleontology is monitoring construction sites, and most construction sites are on alluvium.

    There is a bit of art/life interaction, though. Allen Grant has become an icon, and it’s not unusual to try to model one’s self after him!

    Environmental remediation is also shown poorly. Everyone on TV and in the movies is in full Level A PPE–the full space suits. The guys in “Among Us” are in Level A, for example. I’ve been in the field for 15 years (doing both paleo and environmental), a LOT of that time spent on Superfund sites, and while I’ve gone to Level C (construction outfit plus full-face respirator) I’ve only put on Tyvek to avoid staining, not because of the contamination I was dealing with. To be clear, people absolutely do wear Level A! It’s just not as common as everyone thinks. Most of the time by the time we’re involved we just need to wear nitrile gloves and safety glasses.

    Also, environmental sites aren’t barren wastelands. If you want to see what a typical environmental remediation site looks like, go to a gas station or dry cleaning shop. Gas stations leak BTEX and dry cleaners leak PCE/TCE, two of the most common contaminants in the USA.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      I worked as an undergrad research assistant to a paleontologist. Everybody is FASCINATED when I tell them this. What we did in reality: we traveled to a nearby cave a few times a month. We removed dirt in specific strata from specific rooms and put them in carefully labeled bags. We washed them in trays with a hose out back. We sat in front of dissecting microscopes and picked out tiny bone fragments and placed them in carefully labeled boxes. A couple of years later our professors got a couple of papers published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. It wasn’t a bad job, largely because the professor was extremely chill and we could pretty much work whatever hours we felt like, but it wasn’t exactly movie-worthy.

      1. Dinwar*

        The labeling….That comes up in both paleontology and environmental remediation. If you ever want to give a geologist heart palpitations, say “Hey, was that a 3 or a 5 on that label?” They’ll go through every jar and box and PostIt note they wrote on for the last six months because they may have gotten it wrong. I’ve seen people fired for mislabeling samples. In both careers 99% of it is mind-numbing tedium, but it all feeds into that 1% that’s NOT mind-numbing tedium. Folks who understand that tend to stick around; folks who don’t, tend to leave quickly.

        Also, I miss microvert fossil picking. Put on an audiobook and hunker down for 10 hours where no one’s allowed to bother me. The only downside is that if you do it in a group people’s brains melt at about the five hour mark, and the conversations get a bit…not safe for work. Suffice to say, folks who collect road kill and have pet colonies of flesh-eating beetles have a slightly different view of what constitutes shop talk than the average person!

        1. The OG Sleepless*

          Ha, our usually chill professor finally chased us all out of the lab one evening because, as our group of bored undergrads were plowing through the third or fourth hour of fossil picking, the conversation had gotten very loud and NSFW. It really was a fun bunch to work with, and another reason I have fond memories of that job.

        2. Evil loaf of bread*

          The labeling, oh the labeling! For me it’s 4s vs. 9s. Or simply people leaving off a digit entirely. Evil loaf of bread didn’t mean it when she said this field was mandatory, right?

          Agree about the group conversations going down interesting paths too!

    2. Art3mis*

      I really wanted to be a paleontologist when I was in college. Except I couldn’t get a passing grade in a Chemistry class. I just don’t get it. And, also, I read somewhere that there are more job openings every year for state governor than there are for paleontologist.

    3. Evil loaf of bread*

      I’m a paleontologist and I actually do work on dinosaurs, but we don’t find complete skeletons 2cm below the surface with our magic radar machines. I also spend far more time writing reports and grant applications, dealing with students/volunteers/public, and analyzing data than is ever shown.

      Also I have yet to be invited to a private island by a sketchy billionaire.

    4. OlympiasEpiriot*

      I’m a hazwopr trained geotechnical engineer. Someone, after all, needs to design the cutoff sheetpiles or “walls” that allow a zone to be remediated w/o interfering with the adjacent zones. I have worked only as high as Level B, and that was with supplied air, not a scba.

      That was 1 job in 20 years of it.

      Of course it was in August, w/o shade, along a river at a site owned (unsurprisingly) by a power company. It was PCBs, if you’re wondering. Our driller was, poor guy, not happy in that suit, even with the cool air getting piped in and definitely needed a lot of breaks due to the heat. One of the safety team kept coming around and checking our temperatures every 10 minutes.

      I don’t see that aspect ever done well.

  177. Lynnerd*

    I’m a motion & graphic designer with a degree in animation. Some things I’ve seen that have creamed my corn:

    – Enhance! After a point, raster images can’t accurately enhance past their original scale. It’s pixels. Stop it.
    – Someone adjusting an animation by … hitting a few keys. Animating is the most time-consuming, tedious, fussy little task in the whole wide world and any animator will make it VERY clear when they see this*. We’re fun.
    – Not really a grievance, but those little “bleep bloop bloips” computers make. Bless.
    – I know I’m getting in the weeds here, but someone showing a digital character rig with flowing clothing and hair all perfectly rendered in real time. If you watch the behind-the-scenes of Shrek, for example, you’ll find that animators are working with super simplified character rigs with hardly any texture/hair/clothes. That’s a whole separate step in the process.
    – A picture that’s supposed to be “real” in a show but is so obviously Photoshopped (which is admittedly pretty amusing).

    *For an accurate portrayal, see The Office episode “Local Ad” where Pam stays up almost all night animating the little outro. Also Parks & Rec’s “Comeback Kid” in which Ben has a mental breakdown over his claymation project. I’ve never felt so seen.

  178. Richard Hershberger*

    I work in a law office, so the answer is obvious. I am commenting to add the observation I once heard that the show Mozart in the Jungle brings to classical musicians the experience long enjoyed by doctors, lawyers, cops, etc.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Hmm, as a classical musician I have shunned Mozart in the Jungle because I’m worried it’ll traumatize me.

      1. Richard Hershberger*

        In the opening episode we learn of the major New York orchestra that, having an opening for an oboe player, holds auditions without telling anyone ahead of time, but making up for it by letting people walk in off the street. It gets better, but this nearly blocked me from watching more.

        1. Orchestral Musician*

          Hahaha I definitely misread your first comment as saying the opposite of what you meant, oops

    2. Orchestral Musician*

      I’m a classical musician and I really had the opposite experience with Mozart in the Jungle! (That said, I appreciated that they made the effort to hire a lot of real musicians in the music scenes!)

      Hilariously and upsettingly, Tár really did resonate with a lot of my colleagues. A shoutout to a book that has a great portrayal of a classical musician is Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans, which isn’t about music as a profession but does feature a musician character prominently.

      In general, classical musicians in media are often portrayed as tortured geniuses, Type A competitive go-getters, and/or the kind of people who hear a car horn and go “ooh, that’s a B flat.” There’s a little truth to all of this, but I’m waiting for a show that portrays people thinking about dinner during rehearsal, or being mildly annoyed with their stand partner because they used a weird-smelling shampoo, or getting into arguments at union meetings. (Basically I want Armando Iannucci to write a workplace comedy about orchestral musicians.)

      Also: conductors are very rarely glamorous; they’re basically just like any other boss!

      1. Scandinavian Vacationer*

        What did you think of Shine? (movie with classical pianist obsessed with the “Rach 3?”

  179. steliafidelis*

    Until recently, I worked as a teller at a bank and it definitely makes certain genres of tv/film much less credible!

    1. Cash counters work perfectly for drug dealers on tv. Less so when you have fistfuls of crumpled bills and your cash counter is jamming every 3rd bill. (woe betide you if you miss the random penny stuck in the middle of the bills)
    2. You’re not getting $50,000 for ransom money today. Probably not even $10,000. If you do get it, it will be in almost all 20s. (and also, showing up at the bank in a panic asking for huge sums of cash is going to have us asking lots of questions!)
    3. haaaaaate the “law enforcement happens to be in a bank while it’s getting robbed” plot. They always escalate the situation unnecessarily, and the employees never follow any kind of procedure for these situations.

    2. Skytext*

      I was a manager for a Walmart that had a bank in it. I always assumed they had some sort of high security vault or something back there behind the counter in the employees-only area. One day I was called back there because the alarm on the fire door was going off. I was like “are you sure it’s okay for me to go back there?” All I found back there was a nondescript room used as a combo break room/storage room lol. I think it may have had a small safe, much smaller even than the one in our cash office. Come to think of it we probably had more cash on hand than the bank did.

  180. Berlie*

    I can’t think of any shows that portray my field. I work with books and work from home. So people mostly picture me sitting around in a comfy robe typing away, sipping tea surrounded by books and cats.

    And well… yeah that is me 100%.

  181. Spearmint*

    Government bureaucrats are often portrayed as soulless drones who don’t care to move quicker. In reality, if we seem that way it’s usually because we’re constrained by law, policy, and procedure, not because we don’t care or revel inefficiency. Sometimes the “red tape” actually makes sense and it would be bad if we got rid of it. In other cases most of us agree it would be better if the red tape wasn’t there, but the people with the power to cut through the red tape are many layers of management above us, or in some cases the legislature itself.

  182. Donation*

    I’ve been working in various aspects of organ and tissue donation for 15 years. Organ recovery, tissue recovery, tissue processing, hospital systems, policy, analysis…the crushing part is all the bs that I see in movies and TV shows where there is so much reality that would make a fantastic story line.
    OMG, how many stories I’ve seen about stolen organs. A run of the mill general practitioner cannot transplant an organ! And any real transplant surgeon would never, never, ever risk their license, job, and reputation in a shady deal.
    One of the toughest parts of my job is reviewing cause of death. The general public has no idea of the tragic deaths that happen around them.

  183. Mrs Vexil*

    My husband is currently working as a delivery driver for a florist and it’s a lot more brutal than you would think. It’s not just handing bouquets to pretty girls. You know those gigantic arrangements in fancy hotel lobbies? Someone had to bring them in from a van. We are just getting over the heartache of Valentine’s Day at my house.

  184. PinkLady*

    I work in higher education – admission to be specific and really EVERYTHING college related always gets me! FERPA (student privacy) is a thing and tv/movies always seem to forget that!

    2. Unladen European Swallow*

      Our office arranged an outing to the movie theater to watch the Tina Fey/Paul Rudd movie “Admission” when it came out. Before it did, the paperback book made its way around the counselors to read.

      Oh boy, so many times we laughed outloud during the movie to see how our work was depicted. Not pictured: Bleary eyes after 8+hrs of concentrating on your laptop screen/monitor reading applications online. Most schools had moved beyond paper apps by the time the movie came out.

  185. Former Stage Manager*

    I used to be a theatre stage manager and anything to do with theatre is hardly ever accurate. Auditions, maybe. But rehearsals? Rarely. I always find this ironic considering at least a good portion of the people making the tv show or movie have, presumably, done at least some theatre.

    1. Box Office*

      Theatre box office manager, and I have a hate-list for these!

      “La La Land” – no one’s film career is getting launched because they wrote and starred in an autobiographical one-woman show

      The children’s movie “Sing” – you actually do have to pay people for their work and pay for your utilities, even if you are a cute koala. The people who are refusing to work for you anymore because their checks bounced are not the bad guys.

      “Birdman” is the BIGGEST offender! Doesn’t matter how much of a big effin’ deal your lead is, they would not be allowed to show up drunk; substitute real alcohol for prop alcohol; or SEXUALLY ASSAULT THEIR SCENE PARTNER ON STAGE by deviating from the intimacy choreography!

      1. A. Ham*

        Have you seen “My Favorite Year”? it’s about the behind the scenes of a TV show, not theater, and it takes place in a much different time period than our own, but your comment made me think of it. Peter O’Toole plays the “big effin deal” star. it has the famous line “I’m not an actor I’m a movie star!”

        1. New Jack Karyn*

          I loved that movie as a child–Peter O’Toole was very charming as the drunk, washed-up movie star–but it’s so cringey now when I think of it.

    4. desdemona*

      Even performances are crazy (setting aside the ridiculous budget for sets & lights that Glee etc seems to think public high schools have).

      In the play episode of “Euphoria”, they were taking the light cues out of order, and each time the SM called a cue, the operator typed a bunch of things! On what looked like a sound board! I was so distracted. Also, the SM was calling cues while running around backstage.

    5. Roland*

      Haha, I watched the new Magic Mike last night with some friends including a former stage manager. We all had a lot to say about the SM in that movie. Like, he’s busy calling the show! He’s not going to tell Mike how great he is, he’s gonna tell him to get the hell out of his booth!

    6. No Longer Working*

      My husband was a HS theater teacher and his big beef with productions portrayed on TV/Movies was (as he explained in a falsetto) “let’s put on a play!” and boom – done. Beautiful sets, few rehearsals, etc.

  186. Sabrina Spellman*

    Almost all mention of registrar’s offices are in one comment about dropping/withdrawing from a course.

    1. anonanonny*

      And FERPA violations all over the place! “I need to know everything about this student!” (Registrar) “Sure! Here you go!!”

  187. WomEngineer*

    As a young woman in STEM, I see the most representation in reality TV that highlights real people (Mission Unstoppable), game shows where contestants just happened to be women engineers (Domino Masters), or both (Battlebots).

  188. Free Meerkats*

    We’re also invisible. Except for when the police procedurals need something to happen in a manhole, water and wastewater conveyance and treatment don’t exist.

    The only exception is the new program “Sewer Divers” on on Discovery. And I have many problems with that show, mainly safety. I just hope the OSHA types in those states are watching and taking notes.

    2. Dinwar*

      My wife won’t watch shows like that with me since I started working as a safety officer because of the OSHA thing. She’s not terribly thrilled to drive by construction sites either.

  189. sundae funday*

    I work as a psychology assistant. And nope–not accurate at all! Most movies and shows feature super fancy offices with well-tailored suits and rows of leather bound books. They’re also usually spending all their time doing therapy.

    In reality, mental health is a very underfunded field. I’m sure you could find someone with a fancy office with upscale clients, but I live in a city with tons of poverty. My boss (the owner) doesn’t make very much money. He doesn’t personally do therapy because it pays so little, so we do psychological evaluations.

    And as for the well-cut, well-tailored suits? Well, even if he had an extra few thousand laying around, we spend most of our days crawling on the floor, testing 2-year-olds for autism. You definitely don’t wear anything too fancy to the office!

    And that fancy bookshelf with the leather-bound books? Yeah a kid with ADHD is gonna try to climb that.

  190. Elizab*

    I’m an epidemiologist. Sometimes field work is exciting, but it’s usually less “jabbing people with needles of quickly produced serum” and more “interviews with people with diarrhea” and computers running statistics.

    1. Cimorene-turned-Morwen*

      Also epidemiologist. I’ve hosted watch parties for “World War Z” because of how hilariously awful that movie is (both to the source material and to epidemiology). But I can’t even hate-watch “Helix.” It’s actively enraging.

    2. Riot Grrrl*

      I’m not in epidemiology at all, but I always get a kick out of disease breakout movies or zombie breakout movies where the main characters collect samples from the disease outbreak site AND do the lab work to assess the microbes AND care for the sick patients AND brief the press AND investigate the origins of the disease (traveling to Africa and/or the Caribbean and/or the Middle East as necessary) AND tell the politicians how benighted they’re being AND …

      Can’t remember the name of it, but I remember one terrible TV show in which the rando CDC guy investigating a mysterious disease on an airplane picks up a phone and calls airport security demanding that they shut down all entrances and exits in and out of the airport. Which they immediately do without question. Correct me if I’m wrong but that… does not seem realistic.

  191. Whale*

    Teacher. The closest thing I have seen is Abbott Elementary. In fact, I couldn’t watch more than a couple episodes because of how similar that school portrayal was to my actual working environment,and I needed my TV to be an escape from work lol!

    1. carriem*

      Last year was my first year of teaching and I literally had the same experience, despite loving the show. My favorite part was at the beginning when no one wants to get sucked into the new teacher’s vortex of failure until she rights the ship and then they can lend a hand.

  192. Susannah*

    Journalist here.
    Oh, how they get it wrong, and offensively so. Why, go why, do female reporters need to be sexualized – either by sleeping with a source (Absence of Malice) or just being some Hollywood creation of the pretty girl reporter who really knows her stuff, but of course has a hard time communicating that because, if course, she’s so pretty?
    A former colleague at the Boston Globe told me that when the (great!) movie Spotlight was being developed, the writers or producers wanted the female report on the investigative team to be involved with one of the other reporters as part of the narrative. The real reporters, I was told, pushed back – successfully. Is a female reporter’s Pulitzer Prize winning work not interesting unless you can also show her in bed with someone?
    Also, nope, we don’t dart through alleys with guns, or mingle our personal relationships with reporting (State of Play). And the idea that an editor would be fired for some comment he made to a female blogger at the paper – but another editor was openly LIVING WITH one of the reporters who reported to him? And that reporter later had sex with someone on Air Force One (or maybe it was the Sec of State’s plane – and with someone who was related to president or Sec of State as I recall) – that was Political Animals.
    The Year of Living Dangerously (movie) really got it right – how you can get a little addicted to risk, or maybe inured to it. Saw that myself when I was reporting in war zones. The Newsroom (HBO) annoyed me because the female characters all needed to be rescued in some way (give me a story! Give me a Xanax! Give me valentines!) but it really captured how a news org can do everything right, painstakingly fact-checking a story – and getting snowed on it anyway. I admire the work that went into that.

  194. The Other Evil HR Lady*

    I don’t think anybody portrays (most of) HR correctly in any kind of media. Maybe it’s because when one of us messes up, we mess up BIG. I mean, do y’all remember that one post where the person needed time off and HR kept asking when they were coming back? That, to me, seems like a rookie mistake – as if someone who just got out of college with a degree in HR is in charge of HR. But HR is like being a lawyer. You don’t go in front of a judge the minute you graduate from law school! And, in reality, HR deals with SOOO many laws, that we do – indeed – need to interpret them just like a lawyer would. There’s no way that a fresh graduate could handle that level of complexity – and there’s no way that writers of shows would have enough experience to see what HR professionals *really* do. We’re like ducks: gliding along on a lake, but our feet are going 1,000MPH under the surface.

    Also, we’re employees too! We suffer from demoralization, burnout, mental health problems, bullying, discrimination, all that good stuff. But we’re also expected to be immaculately professional at all times, no matter what, so when we feel the pressure just like everyone else, and we show it, we become Catbert the Evil HR Director from Dilbert.

    1. Spearmint*

      I think the other issue is that “HR” means so many different things depending on the role and the company. Sometimes HR is mostly administrative. Sometimes they focus a lot on culture, mediation, and other “soft” topics. Sometimes it seems like they’re full on experts on employment law and may even conduct investigations.

      1. The Other Evil HR Lady*

        And some of us do… All of that… in one day – in one hour, even! So, yeah, I agree that it’s very dependent on company size.

  195. PDB*

    I was in the music business-engineer and mixer-and whenever musicians play in a movie or on TV the sets are always ONE SONG LONG. I had a friend who would alway exclaim, “Another short set!”

  196. MediumEd*

    Prof here. I thought The Chair came close to what our experiences are like, but still way too dramatic and campy. There is a lot of focus on budgets (or “operational excellence”) and enrollment. The vast majority of colleges and unis are experiencing an enrollment decline, mostly due to demographic trends. If anyone has ever seen the show A Very Peculiar Practice (I believe on the BBC in the 80s) that is what my day to day experience can be like. Just replace the doctors with educators and administrators. Higher ed is a farce, a black comedy, more than a stylized drama.

  197. Temperance*

    My husband once tried to get me to watch Franklin and Bash, which was a lawyer show that was supposed to be a comedy, I think? It was so camp and outrageous that I lasted for maybe 5 minutes.

    Most lawyering is incredibly dull, paper pushing. But no one would watch that.

  198. Phoenix*

    I am in change management – think engineering changes or documentation changes. My department handles changes to documentation across our organization, including defining and improving the process for analyzing, managing, and auditing those changes.

    My field is most accurately represented in documentaries about engineering failures, especially corporate engineering failures, because failure to follow change processes is very often close to the root cause of those issues. “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” is a very good example.

    I haven’t seen any movies or tv about this one, but I did read a really compelling blog post somewhat recently about the 2000 Sydney Olympics gymnastics vaulting debacle, where the vault was set too low and it wasn’t corrected until halfway through the all-around competition. The article detailed a documentation control error related to the vault equipment norms and posited that this was the direct cause of the competition debacle. I sent the article to my boss, because it was like a professional horror story for us. The title of the article is “2000: The Sydney Vault Debacle and the Apparatus Norms Hypothesis”, if anyone would like to read it.

  199. Vanilla latte*

    It seems like every Hallmark movie has a main character who works in marketing/advertising.

    From my experience, it’s not always…accurate. LOL

    1. Dark Macadamia*

      You mean you’re not a joyless workaholic who hates Christmas until you return to your quaint hometown and meet a lumberjack who teaches you to believe in love and Santa with the help of a loveably precocious child?

  200. Anonys*

    Videogame industry dev, here. Some stuff in shows like Mythic Quest are hilariously accurate. Anything involving Sue and community interaction in general comes to mind – talking to users and talking to coworkers about things that will impact users can get *wild*. The power dynamics between production/management and Creatives (TM) and certain types of programmers is also reasonably accurate, though exaggerated. Especially in companies with “flat” management structures.

    Some stuff is. . . less accurate. TV pretty invariably gets what QA does wrong, for example: in practice QA involves a lot of systematic and detailed bug testing and reporting, it is wildly different from playtesting. The narrative of a Single Rockstar Dev is also regularly done by TV and is just, not how that usually works in practice. It’s actually kind of hilarious to see a character on tv do tasks that would take a full team several months in like, one all-nighter.

    Plus I personally think TV is missing the many, many opportunities to make inter-programmer drama a plot point – come on I want to see an office comedy about Jira wars, chaos caused by altering code that Isn’t Yours, passive-aggressive code review nitpicks, blocking the build, the works. There is so much room for chaos, why write like there’s a single Heroic Dev who does everything perfectly all the time.

  201. Nekussa*

    I keep seeing ads for a new comedy show about the Animal Control officers and I’m curious if it will be accurate in any way!

    1. t-vex*

      Based on the fact that most of cast are men, I’m already skeptical. Animal welfare is extremely female-dominated field.

    2. Roland*

      It’s TV, so no. Not a criticism, just that “no” should be everyone’s assumption until proven otherwise.

  202. Some Dude*

    I work at a nonprofit. I can’t say how well we are represented on TV, but whenever the news reports on us (usually about a nonprofit accused of malfeasance), it is clear that they have no idea what we do, how we operate, how we are regulated, what a reasonable executive salary is, etc. Like zero idea. There will be scandalous stories about executives running multi-million dollar organizations who make, gasp!, $150,000! As if that is an unimaginable amount of money to make in an area where the median home price is over a million and you can’t rent anything for under $2,000 a month.

    1. Some Dude*

      And the comments in articles will be like, every nonprofit needs to be able to report on how they are spending government money! They need to be audited! And it’s like, have you ever gotten a government grant? And did you realize this malfeasance came out during their yearly audit, which is required by the state government?

      1. Aarti*

        More of my people! Yes the only time I have seen it is when the CEO is getting dragged away in handcuffs. We try really hard not to have people dragged away in handcuffs, we’d much prefer you pay us back if possible. And we’re all expected to do it for the love of it! Yes I love it but I also love to eat!

    2. Riot Grrrl*

      whenever the news reports on us (usually about a nonprofit accused of malfeasance), it is clear that they have no idea what we do, how we operate, how we are regulated, what a reasonable executive salary is, etc.

      Yes, and I’ve come to realize that this is true of just about every subject.

      There’s a related phenomenon called the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. It refers to when you know a specific subject very well and can see all the mistakes the press makes when reporting on it. But then you turn the page to a story about Ukraine or the space program and take everything at face value, immediately forgetting how wrong they got everything in the story that you happen to know a lot about.

  203. labrat*

    Not necessarily specific to one type of job, but I’ve worked in labs and manufacturing, and tend to notice incorrect PPE, or misuse of it. Things like a coroner removing a face mask with contaminated gloves to have a conversation, and then putting the same mask back on their face using the same gloves. I’m not a coroner so maybe that’s a thing, but Gross. And in Total Recall when Schwarzenegger is on a construction site operating a jack hammer, shouldn’t he be wearing a helmet plus ear and eye protection, therefore unable to carry on a conversation with his coworker?

  204. TorsionFree*

    Okaaaay this is super niche! But Pat Rothfuss’s *The Name of the Wind* has the hands-down best portrayal of academia in all of fiction. Some of the professors are brilliant, some are just privileged and good at politics, some of them actually care about students and some don’t. And they’re almost all petty AF.

    1. TorsionFree*

      Oh! And the worst portrayal of teaching in fiction is in *The Book of Boba Fett.* Luke’s attempt to teach Grogu is disastrous from beginning to end. I’m just gonna say — if this is Jedi pedagogy, then eff it, they deserve to die out.

      1. Josh*

        Oh come on. The better analogy for teaching the Force is a Karate dojo, not a school. So now let’s get to KungFu panda. Yes, that’s bad teaching. Sorry I shouldn’t comment, not in the teaching profession (but have trained in a couple of martial arts).

  205. Not that Jane*

    High school teacher. What generally chaps my butt about teacher movies is that (a) there is only ever one class of ~20 students portrayed, giving the teacher time to build rich relationships with each individual student. The lowest teaching load I ever had was 70 students in a year when we were under enrolled. And (b) if there is ever a reference to the idea of an intentional, thoughtfully designed curriculum, it is only so that this One Brilliant Teacher can totally scrap it in favor of, idk, connecting with students through class discussions? Which, yes, class discussions are amazing and are part of a thoughtfully designed curriculum- but teaching is not about just winging it because you have such a magical connection with the kids.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Former teacher here and of course a former student as well. I also take issue with that, as well as the teachers who use tough love as a teaching style. Ugh. I loved the movie CODA but I absolutely *hated* the music teacher in the movie, he was awful (I am a musician and was a music teacher so that hit close to home).

    2. Flower necklace*

      The worst part is that this idea has become so pervasive that the higher ups seem to think they can make it happen if they just throw another training at us. I’ve been inundated with so many magical strategies, but I never have any time to plan and actually put them into practice.

  206. ESL teacher*

    Oh man! ESL teachers.

    ESL teachers in movies say a sentence, which the class then repeats back to them, often to humorous effect.

    This is not what ESL teachers do. It may, possibly, be what ESL teachers did circa 1882 but… probably not. And certainly not good ones.

  207. Agoraphobic Ailurophile*

    I have been, at various stages in my career, a systems administrator, a network engineer, and (currently) a cybersecurity analyst.

    The only show that ever got anything whatsoever about computers correct was Mr. Robot, and that was because they had a specialist on staff. To read code on the screen and see that it was doing something real and actually related to hacking was so exciting.
    LOVED that show.

    Silicon Valley was good, too, because they got the attitudes and personalities just right.

    1. a heather*

      So many times code shown on a screen is just, like, a webpage. Or a stupid script. Rarely anything that would actually DO anything they say it is.

  208. PM by Day, Knitter by Night*

    Project Management. Generally ignored except in Return of the Jedi, when Darth Vader showed some excellent PM skills trying to get the second Death Star back on schedule. This scene basically lives rent free in my head.

  209. Paige*

    I work in public health, but not in a local health department or CDC, which is probably what people see portrayed most often. However I know plenty of folks who do. People’s expectations of CDC are wildly more exotic than the vast majority of the work. Contagion was…. closer than Outbreak, shall we say. It’s honestly a lot of your typical office antics and only a select few people are actually running around getting samples.

    I work globally and spend surprisingly little time cuddling babies, building wells, wearing cargo vests, and hiking to remote communities, as you would expect from movies. I DO spend a lot of time in protocol meetings (shake hands, look interested) and a fair amount of time dodging farm animals. However it’s a lot more working in a regular conference room that just has frequent power cuts.

    I can imagine that local health department stuff is more in line with the absurdity of Parks & Rec.

    1. Jackie*

      Biopharma field here. Yeah, outbreak. What’s with the mad hunt to find the monkey that first carried the virus? How exactly does that lead to a cure? I wished at least the main premise made some kind of sense.

      1. Paige*

        Exactly!! Outbreak holds up as fun romp but it does NOT make sense. Contagion leaves the cause thing to the end, which is more realistic for sure.

  210. Moose*

    I work in book publishing and oh man, no. No! Maybe some crazy 1970s version of publishing but certainly not now. It is not glamorous. It so much about admin and management and chasing down deadlines. It is not well-paid.

    My favorite is Elf, in which Will Ferrell’s dad is a wealthy high-powered heartless male children’s book executive, and so is everyone else he works with (except the secretary…). Again, maybe a long time ago, but no. Publishing is a very women-heavy field, not to mention how underpaid everyone is…..

      3. C Baker*

        I’ve heard this is the reasons doctors make less in Russia than in the USA – because there it’s a female-dominated field (because women are so caring) and, welp, there went the compensation. (Google supports the premises here – female dominated field, low pay – but the conclusion is harder to confirm through one quick google search.)

        That’s also what happened to secretaries, downgraded from men who know your secrets and are compensated accordingly to women who, idk, chitchat and gossip and make coffee (very much /s!) and, therefore, don’t need to be paid much.

  211. msVal*

    As a creative with a career in publishing, which morphed into creative/marketing which led to work in a media agency (TV), I can say I’ve never seen anything remotely similar to my actual working environments on TV. Most of those jobs are portrayed as kind of glamourous, and most of the work I do is anything but (long hours, wrangling clients/budgets/tech/deadlines/etc etc). And based on historically low salaries in my chosen sector, the clothing alone would mean no eating/apartment (tho we’re always expected to look good). On another note: years ago my cousin worked as a secretary for a decent-sized detective unit at a police department (NYC area) and still maintains that ‘Barney Miller’ is the most accurate depiction of real-life police station life.

  212. Naomi*

    I’m a video game developer, and… yeah, Hollywood has very little idea how game dev works, especially if it’s a game company featured in one episode of a procedural or something. Funnily enough, the example that springs to mind is Westworld; I remember watching the pilot and having a lot of technical questions like “Hang on, they can do a giant story rewrite just like that? How did they implement it so fast? How do they have thousands of active characters and only one writer? Who’s QA testing all this?”

    And hoo boy, you should have seen game dev Twitter when the trailer for Hero Mode came out. NO, a teenager who’s unfamiliar with your game code will not be able to fix bugs overnight that the devs have been struggling with for weeks, at least not without breaking something else. No, people who work in game dev don’t need to learn what “real gamers” want to play, because surprise, most of them are also gamers! And as a project manager, the 30-day deadline gives me hives.

    Mythic Quest seems to be one of the better depictions. Except for the episode where they’re trying to make a mobile game (my company’s bread and butter) and for some reason it involves mocap suits??? Like, no. Just get a 3D artist to make some character models. And that certainly wouldn’t be step 1 before we even had any game mechanics!

    1. Moose*

      Did you read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow? Huge book last year. I’m curious how accurate it was to actual video game design and development. Of course it’s not only about video games, so it doesn’t show the whole process, but it covers quite a bit.

  213. Beatrix*

    CPA here. The movie The Accountant is basically a documentary of my life. 10/10 kinda mad that Hollywood revealed our secret martial arts training to the world.

  214. I Speak for the Trees*

    I’m a transaction coordinator for a real estate firm. And it’s just like “Selling Sunset,” except that:
    A) Nobody is that gorgeous or glamorous
    B) We actually SELL property and represent buyers
    C) There’s very little drama and when there is, it’s about real estate
    D) The only people sleeping with other people in the office are in committed, long-term relationships
    E) Actual business takes place

  215. WellRed*

    I’m a news editor currently watching Alaska Daily and enjoying and relating to it for the most part. The staff cuts, the responsibility to check facts, the thrill of a story and the various conflicts that arise. I’ve found other newsroom dramas similarly accurate (the movie the Paper comes to mind).

  216. Alex the Alchemist*

    My field isn’t portrayed all too often in television, but my dad, who worked in rural local government all his life, says that Parks and Recreation is hilariously accurate, as well as the town hall meetings they showed in Newhart.

  217. allswell*

    I work in parks and recreation. The TV show is 110% spot on, especially for working in municipal government. haha

  218. Posilutely*

    A straight line on a monitor means it isn’t picking up properly, not that you’re dead. Also it neither beeps intermittently when nothing’s wrong nor makes a continuous tone in alarm when there is. You’ll see rare conditions rarely, not all the time (Grey’s Anatomy, you are ridiculous for this. Worst ever: quintuplets, each with separate, unrelated incredibly rare conditions). And for goodness sake, you broke your leg in a car accident, why do you have oxygen up your nose (soap operas)? Why are doctors doing the job of nurses, radiographers, phlebotomists, physios and everyone else? Why is that person on a ventilator with no monitoring? Oh, my mistake, it’s just a tube but not actually attached to anything. Makes perfect sense. Why are people having sex in cupboards? Who would do that? It’s work, people are busy. And nurse uniforms are knee length canvas, what’s sexy about that? YOUR WATERS BROKE LIKE A DAM? Quick, woman, EMERGENCY! Your baby will definitely be born in the next thirty seconds. Not a day or so later. (Disclaimer: occasionally babies do turn up very fast. Most don’t.) Wow, I should never have started this. I’m a nurse, by the way… could you tell?

  219. Buffy*

    I currently work in UX which I don’t think is really on TV, but I used to work in social media & content marketing which generally seems to be portrayed in media as cringey ditzes with no actual discernible skills. Also a lot of acting like a stereotypical #INFLUENCER which is very much not the vibe when you do social for an actual company.

  220. Boof*

    I avoid medical dramas but House was entertaining more for all the ways it was wrong than for the medical mysteries, many of which were – erhm. Deteriorated over time.
    Doctors do not
    — sit around on a team of 3+ other doctors all day mulling over a single patient, day after day
    — break into someone’s house to figure out what’s going on with them
    — spill HIPPA/personal secrets routinely
    — randomly jump between different specialities and then run down to the lab to do your own clinical blood tests

    I mean, I’d love to do some of these things (tho not the mean ones), but just like a baker can’t spend weeks baking a single cake* it’s just not sustainable to have so many focusing so hard on a single person (to be fair, it is sort of implied some of the doctors are doing clinic/other things, but I think impression is doctors have WAY more free time than they really do; most are seeing 30-50 patients a week, working an average of 50 hrs a week, 4 weeks vacation a year and maybe 2 academic/conference weeks a year )

    *I’m guessing??

    1. Cat Lover*

      I kinda like how House (the show) was super open about how ridiculous it was… they openly say things like “what do I pay you for, you see 2 patients a month”

    2. Miette*

      My favorite is on Grey’s Anatomy where apparently no other doctors exist in the hospital who are not surgeons. Rolling into the ED with a broken arm? Good luck, bud, you’re doc (that’s able to assist you RIGHT AWAY) is a surgeon. Low income and need to visit the free clinic? Bam, surgeon’s there to take care of your severe flu. Fiery car wreck? The FD have surgeons too.

      How’s all this getting billed is what I’d like to know.

    3. Nightengale*

      also about House – the doctors on House’s team were supposed to be in fellowship. Fellowship comes with training. And structure.

  221. brandi Lynn*

    I own a pet sitting business. Any depiction I’ve seen online has been some kooky 20-something who is walking like 15 dogs at once through Central Park where there is a meet cute with some guy. Can assure you not accurate hahaha. It’s everything normal about running business, bookkeeping, advertising, client records, etc mixed with lots of driving, picking up poop, and supervising dog playtime. I also do dog boarding in my home and have anywhere from 4-15 dogs my home at one time so lots of logistics and feeding. Also it’s always depicted as a stepping stone or something people do in-between jobs or while in college. I’m in my early-40’s, Have 2 college degrees and make around six-figures doing this. I came from years in the healthcare industry. It’s my dream job but many people think I’m just in between job hahah.

    1. Queen Ruby*

      I was a dog walker during grad school. The rule was always that you only walk dogs from a single household at any time, unless they were confirmed to be doggy friends. Definitely none of that 15 dogs at a time nonsense lol
      And yeah, I made bank dog walking, especially in the summer when everyone went to the shore and left their dogs at home. Like $700-800 cash for working 20-25 hours/week. And I had clients who would stock their fridges for me – snacks, beer, wine. One would make me breakfast and let me sample his $$ whiskey collection. They were my favorites and their dogs got extra love.

      1. brandi Lynn*

        Yeah the bank is insane. I charge a slight premium for holidays and book up weeks in advance. Last year for Thanksgiving I made about 4k for just the 4-day thanksgiving Holiday and the same for Christmas too. To be fair I was working 16 hour days and exhausted but it was worth it.

    2. irene adler*

      I always wondered how they kept those 15 dogs from getting into scuffles or barking their brains out. Or twisting up the leashes.

    3. Dark Macadamia*

      But are you a frequent witness and/or suspect in crimes? I feel like that’s every portrayal of a dog walker or pet sitter I’ve ever seen lol

  222. Queen Ruby*

    Project manager in Pharma. I’ve worked in Big Pharma, tiny Pharma, and everything in between. I promise, we’re not all money-hungry ghouls trying to make/keep people sick for our own benefit. Quite the opposite, in fact – most of us aren’t here for the money. Some jobs don’t even pay that well, despite the amount of education required for the technical jobs. We’re here because we love the science and the warm fuzzies we get from knowing we’re helping people get and stay healthy.

    1. Jackie*

      Not sure I quite agree we are all here for warm fuzzies (some execs certainly make a ton of money), but the idea that pharma would intentionally market a drug that is harmful and suppress known toxicities is inaccurate. While I have to admit there have been some awful cases in history (Purdue pharma is a shame on us all), we are mostly just terrified of getting sued or harming our reputation. We’d never intentionally market a harmful drug (though a drug that is merely not that effective – that is debatable). Also about animal research – the pharma I work is about 10x more careful about ethical treatment, compared to the top academic research institutes a stone’s through away. In general, university animal facilities are horrid and I think need to be regulated a lot better. And from what I hear the farming industry is another 10x worse.

      1. Queen Ruby*

        Oh sure, there are definitely exceptions! But in my experience, no one is doing this work because they are evil scientists trying to kill the world lol.
        I don’t have much experience in animal research outside of my academic work. I found out the hard way I’m severely allergic to mice, so obv that really limited my options lol

  223. Cat Lover*

    I’m an EMT and my boyfriend is a firefighter.. we actually love Chicago Fire because it’s so ridiculous. My BF just goes “that would get you written up… so would that.. and that…” LOL

  224. Fed Up*

    The federal government is super bureaucratic and our systems are largely outdated. Granted, I don’t work for CIA or FBI and they probably get the most screen time, but I really doubt anyone’s job there is as cool as it looks on TV or in movies. A lot of yelling at your laptop to actually load these ancient software programs, a lot less chasing down bad guys in helicopters.

  225. Bacon Pancakes*

    Wildlife Biologist here, every depiction is a mixture of wildlife rehabilitation, Leslie Knope, and Jane Goodall.
    None of those professions are wildlife biologists. I have met rehabbers that don’t know a red-tailed hawk from a peregrine falcon, Leslie Knope managed city parks, and Jane Goodall works in anthropology.

    I did work in retail during college, and SuperStore is VERY accurate in terms of customer service in big box stores!

    1. Crittertracker*

      Right?!
      Or how about the way that media (and let’s face it, most of the public) thinks that Wildlife Biologist= Park Ranger. Like those are two very different jobs- one manages animals and the other manages people (with caveats, obviously)

  226. super secret anon for this*

    Enemy of the State was NOT an accurate representation.
    And neither was the X files.

    Don’t ask me how I know.

  227. Texas Librarian*

    I’m a librarian (public) and I have rarely seen librarians/libraries portrayed correctly. I have some hope that the new Canadian sitcom Shelved will be better. Public Libraries are no longer quiet places (we have some quiet places, but the library itself is not quiet). We are not frumpy spinsters going around shushing people (I wear fun geeky dresses from Svaha). Do I tell people to lower their voices, sometimes, but not often.

    Public Libraries are community centers with programming for all ages, providing a wide variety of programs and services. My library system has a library of things (we check out power washers, cake pans, musical instruments, etc.), we have maker spaces, programming for all ages, and provide necessary free computers and wifi for the public. We also have meeting rooms for the community to use. Right now AARP is providing free tax help. We are an essential modern service. Oh yeah, and we have books!

    1. Picky*

      And don’t forget, stamping books! When is the last time you stamped a book to check it out? It’s like the 90s never happened.

  228. Kotow*

    Lawyer here! I would say that “For the People” was one of the most accurate depictions. They used the same language attorneys use when talking to each other, they depicted low-level criminal cases (basically prosecution and defense being like “what can we do to get this off of our desks), and in general was pretty well thought out. The show “Any Day Now” portrayed Rene Jackson’s character pretty well. There are some episodes where her courtroom behavior pushes the bounds of civility, but it’s well within the range of what I would expect other attorneys to do (especially given her field of focus). There’s one episode though that I remember which was just completely wrong involving expert testimony. **No** opposing counsel or competent judge would ever allow it to come in at trial.

    Family law (one of my practice areas) gets portrayed more aggressively than is typical. Most attorneys aren’t up all hours of the night screaming about custody schedules with opposing counsel! Most of us also try to avoid the “this is a battle” language with clients because it encourages fighting over things like whether a 9-year-0ld gets to have a cell phone. In a Grey’s Anatomy episode though where two characters are in court over whether one could move across the country with the child, the decision is exactly what I would have expected and what is common in relocations.

    General inaccuracies in legal dramas and movies: the timing is far too fast, evidence that shouldn’t be admitted gets admitted, surprises shouldn’t happen, and first year associates don’t try huge cases on their own. It’s also far less common for one side to be entirely right and the other to be entirely wrong. There are also **way** too many violations of Rules of Professional Conduct!

      1. Turanga Leela*

        The criminal law in BCS is extremely accurate. The substantive law is correct (they must have solid New Mexico legal consultants), the procedural stuff is correct, the general vibe in the courthouse is correct. There’s a lot of unethical behavior, but the framework around it is correct. And Jimmy gets in trouble with the state bar at one point, which is probably what would have happened in real life.

  229. Not Australian*

    I have never once seen a typist of keyboard operator on TV/film that looked as if they knew what they were doing; their fingers usually just make pretty patterns in the middle of the keyboard, they never use a shift key, and what comes out should be something like fghinghs tynbebn,kjghkbnv cfhohs rather than coherent prose.

  230. Cait*

    I was a talent manager for six years. TV shows make us look like sharks – absolutely zero morals while constantly yelling on our cell phones, kissing the feet of our clients, and not having a shred of free time because we’re always bouncing between set visits, schmoozing at bars/clubs, and screaming at other drivers as we fly down the freeway in our convertibles.

    Unless you work for a major agency and are one of their top tier people, it is not nearly this strenuous (or glamorous). You likely have more than one client so you aren’t constantly following one person around. Most of your day consists of reading contracts and managing schedules. Also, in my experience, you don’t ever make enough to own a convertible.

  231. VALCSW*

    I’m a clinical social worker & I remember getting frustrated when watching ER. The only time I saw a social worker on the program is when there was suspected child abuse. Obviously that’s appropriate (but I can’t comment on how accurate those stories were told as that’s not my field of expertise), but they often had doctors or nurses perform work that is typically done by social work. I remember Carol Hathaway helped a mother of a chronically ill child coordinate respite services–that’s a social work function.

    In an effort to keep an elderly man out of placement & remain at home with his caregiver wife, Dr. Carter requested multiple consults (dietary, therapy, etc.), which was also appropriate. But failed to order a social work consult; in that instance, the social worker could have coordinated many other services to support caregiving, including home care services, bath aids, DME, respite, etc.

    In another instance, I remember an adult child was a primary caregiver for her elderly mother & she needed a minor medication adjustment that could have occurred as an outpatient. The daughter was exhausted & had thought her mother would be admitted, which would allow her a break (this is actually very common & that was well-represented on the show). Rather than consult social work to coordinate some services, Dr. Chen simply admitted the patient to an acute bed.

    I actually loved ER, but was annoyed they seemed to think social workers only investigate child abuse.

  232. Mark-eh-Ted*

    20 years of marketing and media here. I would agree not one show nails it currently. I started my career in newspapers and some of the folks about to retire who started in the early 70’s did tell some stories that would lend credibility to Mad Men. Some still had the ashtrays on their desks as a reminder of times gone by.

    I will say, I think the show that gets marketing the most wrong was Queer as Folk. I don’t remember the character that ran an agency (Brian?), but he always went in there with little information about the client and their business, would suggest some super tongue-in-cheek campaign based on something sexual he heard at a bar or bathhouse, and poof! the close-minded conservative clients LOVED it!

    Although, in the midwest, there is a hotdog company named Koegel and they ran billboards that featured an extreme closeup of a hotdog with a tagline that read “Serve the Curve”, so maybe my experience was the exception and not the rule.

  233. Jackie*

    I work in the research division of biopharma and “Better off Ted” is about as inaccurate as it gets (but still funny so I watched the first season). In fact any depiction of biotech / pharma I’ve seen on TV is ridiculous. I guess I found the most ridiculous the ‘science’ behind the experiments (you know you can’t just genetically modify a whole person right) and how quickly the research work goes into a product on tv (drugs take about 10 years from research to market).

    2. Mark-eh-Ted*

      Just curious if you watched The Big Bang Theory. What are your thoughts on Bernadette or Penny when she discussed their work at a pharma company?

  234. Moose*

    Anyone in medicine have a show that IS mostly medically accurate? I had a couple medical-field-involved friends who said that Scrubs, while a silly show, was surprisingly accurate in medical terminology. At least compared to shows like ER and Grey’s Anatomy.

    2. Boof*

      You probably have to go to reality TV or edutainment – things like Botched, my 600lb life, etc. I’m not a plastic surgeon but considering those are actual doctors and actual people – it is at least accurate for them!

    3. Nightengale*

      maybe Call the Midwife?

      (OB is not my field and I was not in practice in the 1950s-60s nor in England. So there may be inaccuracies I am not noticing. But it is the medical show I yell at the least. I have finally reached the realization that I must enjoy yelling at medical shows because I keep watching them)

    4. HannahS*

      Heh, it’s not a show but Dr. Glaucomflecken on youtube is a funny ophthalmologist who pokes fun at different specialties. He cracks me up. He plays all the characters and there’s “Bill,” the exhausted resident on all the services who is just dunked on by everyone and wow, it speaks.

  235. Justin McGuire*

    Computer Programmer.

    Mostly not, and thank god for that. My work is boring to watch. Unless it’s a show like Silicon Valley, which is all about programming, I’d rather my profession be shown in some ridiculous manner. Like Swordfish, where a programmer was coding by manipulating 3d shapes.

    Though I will give props to Tron 2 for having bit of realism with the command-line near the opening. That was nice.

  236. kara*

    Professional photographer here. You don’t see many movies or TV shows about professional photogs, but you do see a whole lot of photography work in cop shows and spy movies and that kind of thing.

    1 – They’re always fussing with “focusing” the camera. Modern cameras have amazing autofocus. Quit touching the lens.
    2 – They show people hand holding a HUGE zoom lens and snapping super sharp images. Those big lenses are HEAVY and if you don’t have a tripod or other brace for them, you cannot hand hold that lens to get a good picture.
    3 – Related to those HUGE lenses, it doesn’t matter how big the front element is, you cannot shoot at midnight in the pitch dark, in the shadows of an alleyway, and get a good, clear, non-grainy image. Especially not from a half-mile away.
    4 – Once the image is downloaded, there is no software in the world that makes a dark, blurry, grainy image zoomed in to 1/8th of the whole suddenly be sharp, clear, and in vivid color. And no, that license plate is not readable at that zoom level.

    Oh and this is kind of esoteric, but there was a TV show (can’t remember which one now) in which the photographer/forensic guy talked about how he always used Nikon gear and showed a set of Nikon dSLRs. Later in the show he was very clearly shooting Canon lenses. The Canon pro zoom lenses are white with black accents. The Nikon pro zoom lenses are solid black. You can’t use Canon lenses with Nikon bodies. (It may have been an episode of Bones, now that I think about it.)

    My partner laughs at me every time we watch one of those shows and I turn to him and say very seriously “Just so you know, you can’t really do that with that camera/lens combination”.

    1. Heather Kanillopoolos*

      See also; shows where the forensic photographer is three inches from the dead body, grimly snapping away with a 70-200mm! Good luck with that, my dude.

      (also, totally random pet peeve: CSI Miami in particular looooooves to frame scenes where two characters are FACING each other and yet BOTH have soft, diffused lighting AND strong backlighting AT THE SAME TIME, from opposing directions lolllll)

    2. Heather Kanillopoolos*

      Oh! I also notice that murder shows in particular looooooove the “creepy serial killer photographer” thing.

      Wedding photographers in media seem to only exist to float into frame with a bracket and a BIG CANON-NIKON WITH BRANDED STRAP long enough to say “smile” and get a flash-right-in-the-face grip and grin of the titular characters (which the characters seem to find distasteful and which will CERTAINLY be used for Reminiscing About This Later) before yeeting their milktoast “camera vest” laden self into the sunset(?) never to be seen again.

  237. Major Gifts*

    Fundraiser here with non-profit and University Advancement experience…Horribly represented on TV in general. A specific and recent example: I think that HBO’s ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ gets a lot of the vibe of attending college right, but it *completely* takes me out of the show when the characters get out of some sort of predicament because a Dean or VP of Students is impressed/swayed by a $10,000 alumni donation. Especially at a school that’s supposed to be like an Ivy. $10,000 is wonderfully generous and a lot of money for me personally, but a gift of that size wouldn’t have even counted toward my performance metrics at the state university where I worked.

  238. The Dork*

    My son made me be quiet during the scene in “Free Guy” when they attack the servers cause I was yelling out “They backed it up to Amazon Web Services! Nothing is onsite”. Which lead to a long conversation about data recoverability and redundancy. I’m a lowly system analyst and even I know how back ups work.

    Plus – keyboards only work with one keystroke at a time. So no two people typing at a time. Dumb Dumb Dumb.

  239. zinzarin*

    I’m a metrologist; I program a high-precision machine to perform detailed inspection of the size and location of features on manufactured parts.

    I have never seen this field represented in film or TV.

    1. 1-800-BrownCow*

      Engineer in manufacturing, I know what you mean!

      And I greatly appreciate the work you and other metrologist do! I’m in the medical device industry so we’re producing and measuring very tight-toleranced parts and rely on people like yourself to ensure we’re producing acceptable product, especially for critical dimensions and features.

  240. Andrea*

    I’m a performance engineer in the auto industry, which to my knowledge has never been portrayed on a TV show. There’s that American Auto show, but it doesn’t really cover what engineers do.

    BUT, I’ve always worked in an office, and my employer several jobs ago was basically Dunder Mifflin. I actually won a “do you know a real-life Michael Scott” contest online; I won season 4 of The Office on DVD.

  241. irene adler*

    For my friend Keith, Star Trek fan: Subatomic bacteria.

    That used to just chap his hide to no end.

    Just nooooo! That is not a thing!
    Bacteria are made up of molecules/atoms. So how can there be bacteria that is smaller than an atom??

    Every Monday, we would sit in the lab rehashing the TNG episode watched over the weekend. And invariably, the discussion would end with a comment on how idiotic the writers were in using such a term.

    We worked with viruses and bacteria.

  242. Fluffy Fish*

    Emergency Management and oh hell no its not accurate. We mostly sit behind a desk even in and emergency. We don’t run around saving people from disaster (that would be the first responders). And no FEMA isn’t riding in to save to day.

    I actually just caught a few seconds of some crime drama and some emergency was happening and the FBI was like FEMA’s on its way as in they just show up. Locals and states actually request FEMA’s help and they help with resources.

    1. Red5*

      I’m also an emergency manager. I think the worst part about portrayals on TV shows and movies is how bad the science is. (No, an earthquake on an inland fault can’t cause a tsunami. I’m looking at you, San Andreas.)

  243. AnneSurely*

    Maybe this is slightly tangential to the question posed, but I was sitting here thinking about various TV shows where there are characters who have jobs similar to jobs I’ve held, and realized that one of the reasons I like shows such as The Office is that they do a decent job of portraying people who are people first, and profession second (at most). Because, for many folks, our identities aren’t our professions, as they are in many TV shows. So it’s refreshing to see someone like a Pam — someone who took a job because they need a job, is bored, and whose interests in life bear no resemblance to what they do 40 hours a week for a paycheck. (And honestly I feel like the story arc where she tries sales, hates sales, and then builds a position for herself that actually makes use of her skills, is freaking inspiring. I think a lot of folks can relate more to that kind of career journey.) High five to all my fellow “Excel and Outlook All Day” folks who appreciate seeing portrayals of people who have jobs scattered amongst the portrayals of people who ARE their job titles.

    1. rayray*

      I agree! I really like just seeing normal people on The Office. There was absolutely nothing glamorous about it. The Dunder Mifflin office looks so similar to my first out of college job office.

  244. 1CU81MI*

    I’m a transportation planner for a regional planning agency. Never seen that portrayed, but my job involves working with rural cities and very small town governments in New England. Parks & Recreation got a lot right and also a lot wrong about small government, but nothing was ever as bad as the “town meetings” on Gilmore Girls. Public meetings have agendas that must be posted in advance, they aren’t just called on a whim because the diner owner is in a tiff with the innkeeper!

    1. Kanada*

      Hey! I’m an urban planner who used to date a transportation planner…we got into this show from Australia called Utopia (renamed ‘Dreamland’ internationally) – it is like the Office for people in the infrastructure planning field. More urban than your context but you might still like it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(Australian_TV_series))

      Also if you haven’t seen the Planners from the BBC it’s a reality show from some years back that shows how things are done on the other side of the pond…those planners have real power!

  245. Laurie*

    I found your blog when I worked in corporate America but for the past six years I’ve been in real estate. I’m a Realtor (member of the National Association of Realtors). Phil’s character on Modern Family isn’t an exact representation of our field but two episodes stand out. The first is when he attempts to explain to Gloria the difference between a real estate agent and a realtor. The second is when he accidentially locks himself in someone’s house!!! I’ve lived in fear of that ever since I saw it, lol

  246. NotSoNice*

    I work in public health in a state whose health department was portrayed in a very popular movie about a contagious disease outbreak and hoooo boy was it an inaccurate portrayal that our employees still grumble about 12 years later.

    1. Paige*

      Oooooo you mean you’re not all lab experts willing to give a press conference at the drop of a hat? Please share!

  247. rita*

    I was a magazine editor for a while, and 13 Going on 30 (which I find adorable) almost broke me from the logistics end. Now I’m in real estate, which honestly varies SO much in practice from region to region that while what I see doesn’t at all reflect my experience, it might reflect that of agents in other areas.

    My husband is an architect, and we always make fun of the Richard Gere character in Intersection, who’s futzing around with a model in his house talking about the fenestration. Also, Ted Mosby’s experience in How I Met Your Mother—just casually get the gig to design a skyscraper because my buddy works at the company commissioning it, and that he does it solo and it gets built within a year or so is SO RIDICULOUS.

  248. Let me be dark and twisty*

    Another fed here (I’m an analyst). My agency is law enforcement but not NCIS or FBI. Our go/no go decisions are NEVER as fast or off-the-cuff as these shows make it seem. We always have too many opinions in the room. The Zero Dark Thirty movie gets it right for how time-consuming a go/no go is, how many people are in the room, and how everyone else thinks they know better than the SME.

    The West Wing is problematic because it’s supposed to be the idealistic government — how government SHOULD work, which many viewers and fans don’t seem to realize. IMO, one of the rare few things The West Wing does get right is the scene where the Kate Harper is giving Debbie a lecture about the visibility of her monitor showing the restricted information of First Family whereabouts. We get dragged over the coals and read the riot act for not securing lesser-restricted information.

  249. whatchamacallit*

    I work in electoral politics/campaigns. Have to say, Veep and the town hall constituents in Parks and Rec are disturbingly accurate. (Anyone who has watched a focus group can confirm.) I’d say the biggest inaccuracies I see are 1) not nearly enough cursing, seriously, the language in campaign offices is so, so much cursing; 2) nice campaign offices, HA, every campaign office is in the cheapest real estate you can find that will accept such a short-term lease; 3) the candidate doing anything other than call time, this is what they are doing 90% of the time, they are in the call time room dialing for money, if TV were realistic you would barely be seeing the candidate because they are in a windowless room calling every person they know 8 hours a day; 4) dress code, varies on the setting (the Hill vs. some campaign office) but campaign offices barely have a dress code, show up in sweatpants, no one cares.

    1. Political consultant*

      100%. Also, Parks & Rec got a lot right, but I absolutely could not get over the idea that a small town city council race candidate had enough campaign funds for a custom-wrapped campaign bus.

  250. TotesMaGoats*

    Higher ed: I didn’t watch Community but The Chair was quite accurate in parts. Art definitely imitated life.

    Nursing: I can’t wait any medical shows with my sister who is a nurse. They are all wrong in some way.

    Military: My dad is a military history buff. I cannot watch movies or shows with him because of the commentary. That’s the wrong tank for that war zone. That’s not the right patches on the arms. That’s now how that battle started.

    For one class in college about research, we had to find someone to provide us with data about a thing and do it from memory. I had my dad give me all the land, air and sea “vehicles” used in the Pacific Theater for WW2. It was like a 5 page family tree of military equipment.

  251. Alex*

    I work in publishing, which is often portrayed as flush with cash and power and prestige.

    Prestige maybe, because that is in the eye of the beholder, but people who actually work in publishing are poorly paid, barely making rent, and questioning their overall life choices. Oh and most of us don’t spend our time actually reading books (at work, at least). There’s a lot of data entry and tech work involved.

    1. Sunshine*

      Oh for sure. Not to mention that there’s plenty of publishing outside of book publishing! I worked at an academic journal in the middle of nowhere – very far from the glamour of New York City.

  252. Suzanne Brown*

    This isn’t job specific but I notice that any time someone is typing on a tv show or movie they don’t even try to actually type and it’s so obvious that the actor is just randomly pressing keys. Everything else might be meticulously recreated but never the typing.

  253. Anon in finance*

    I’m a financial advisor. Mostly we are depicted as greedy crooks, or just overpaid. I won’t say depictions are completely inaccurate because unfortunately there are some sleazy people in the business to try to make quick bucks. Unfortunately they make it much harder for the rest of us who go out of our way to help our clients and do the right thing. I wish there were more balance.

    1. Beth*

      I used to have a personal collection of cartoons depicting financial advisors. Some of them were Stupid People Can’t Understand Good Advice, but more of them were Evil Advisor Plots to Take Your Money.

  254. EmmaPoet*

    I seem to be one of the rare librarians who has shelved books! I previously worked in a small special library where everyone did everything, including shelving, and when we were doing curbside pickup only we didn’t have our pages for several months so we all ended up shelving stuff.

    I think the most egregious sin that movies/tv commits is the idea that we can hand over a record of everything you’ve ever checked out. First off, that’s not legal and could get us in a huge amount of trouble. Second, we don’t actually track who checks out what. If we know a patron really well, we might know if they check out Danielle Steeles exclusively or something, but as a rule I have no clue. And third, our software doesn’t keep track either, it will tell you who last returned a specific barcode that’s attached to a specific book, but that’s it. We can’t tell if you read and returned the Anarchists Cookbook last month if someone has checked it out during the intervening time.

    1. Green Tea*

      That’s so interesting, because my library card for digital books/audiobooks has a record of the last 10 books I’ve checked out, and also shows my history when I check out the same book a second time. Like ‘you last checked out this book April xx, 2021’ which feels like unnecessary shaming it’s taken me 2 years to get around to finishing it.

      I wonder if that’s only for digital books, or if it’s set up so that only users can see that data, and not the library.

      1. EmmaPoet*

        I just looked at my Libby account and it does have a list of my checkouts, though they can apparently be removed from the list. It doesn’t tell me that I checked something out a second time, though, fortunately, because I like to reread books and don’t want to have the app scolding me!

    2. EmmaPoet*

      We also can’t tell if you sit and read the book at the library!

      And we don’t know what you’re doing on the computer unless someone reports you’re watching porn, at which point we hand you a privacy shield and tell you to use it or get off the computer. Or if you’re caught watching CSA, in which case we call the cops.

    3. Critical Rolls*

      In most of the systems I’ve seen, the default is “no record after return,” but patrons can elect to enable that function on their account. Interestingly, this became the industry standard in response to Patriot Act provisions that let law enforcement demand those records *and place a gag order on the library.* Appalling.

  255. learnedthehardway*

    LOL – I understand there was a scheme at some point in my industry to build a TV program around it, and it was universally and unanimously decided would be a VERY BAD IDEA and that nobody should ever participate.

    The only thing I have seen about my specific industry was a movie in which the solution to project problems was to blackmail people into doing what you wanted them to do, and while that might be creative, it’s highly unlikely to work. In fact, things just cannot work that way, given what I do, so it was highly amusing but highly unrealistic.

  256. Problem!*

    My spouse is an actual CSI agent. So uh…. yeah. They say that The Wire is the most accurate cop show for what it’s worth.

    My field is a weird niche technical thing that most people don’t even know exists so it’s never on TV. My former career occasionally had documentaries about it that were very very broad and skipped over a lot of what actually happens but that’s to be expected.

  257. cabbagepants*

    I’ve had science and engineering roles and overall we have the ugliest, clunkiest software ever! No glowing blue text floating in the air, no sleek UI, and definitely no code that runs without debugging!

    1. Recovering Astronomer*

      OMG, this!! Although I laughed in Jurassic Park when the teen girl said “This is UNIX! I can do this!”

  258. McFizzle*

    I work as a data analyst. Yes, it’s “magic” to pull out data accurately, as well as compiled / assembled in a way that makes the data useful (graphs, total numbers, breakdowns by sub categories, Pivot tables, formulas, etc). Pulling from multiple data sources and compiling is also great, but all of this takes time. Additional time also needs to be accounted for QA to make sure the numbers are well… correct!

    Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds, while I love her non-data-person fashion, types rapidly for 2 seconds, and has managed to:
    1. hack into one (or more) public / private databases, or at least instantly find the servers / logins needed in a massive jiffy
    2. find the data she needs exactly in another 2 seconds, usually by also cross-referencing other completely separate data sources
    3. merges and compiles all of this information into something meaningful in another 3-5 seconds, and then
    4. is entirely confident in her answer.

    Harry Keshegian from The Equalizer would be another great example.

    I understand that it’s TV, and time limits mean everything has to happen very quickly.

    Except that then in real life, people seem to think it’s reasonable to expect that kind of time table.

  259. elefent1204*

    I’ve worked in government/politics and I have to say Veep made me feel so seen. I’ve also encountered plenty of people who remind me of the random Pawnee citizens on Parks and Rec who scream at town hall meetings.

  260. publicsectorprincess*

    I cringe whenever an aspect of Family Court and Child Welfare show up on screen or in the news, because it is always full of misrepresentation and malpractice. So many cop shows, hospital shows have a CPS worker come on screen to do some egregious bullshit, or literally give children to random people seemingly with0ut any court involvement. Crazy.

    There was a show Judging Amy following a family court judge and her mother who worked for a child welfare agency, but its not available for streaming anywhere, so I can’t speak to its accuracy.

  261. Technically a Director*

    Alison, I’d love to see a follow-on topic about how people would *like* to see their careers portrayed on screen.

    Seems like many commenters get that they have to cut out the boring parts to keep things entertaining. But I bet there’s room for improvement, and entertaining improvement at that!

    After all, this site is proof that people can be entertained by stories about various people’s jobs…

  262. Erin*

    LOL no! I work in the fashion industry. Most people think my life is very glamorous, and Devil Wears Prada/Reese Witherspoon’s character in Sweet Home Alabama.

    While yes, I’ve been to some over the top events and been in the same room as major designers, it is pretty mundane. I’ve worked for brands that everyone gets very dolled up for on a daily basis, and I’ve also worked for brands that hoodies & a ponytail are the norm (and tbh, the higher level of brand/designer usually equals the most casual atmosphere on a day to day basis).

    I do love some of the fabulous swag I’ve gotten over the years. Some of it is considered “vintage” now.

    1. Betsy Bobbins*

      This. Most designers are more order takers for their merchant overlords rather than designing the next red carpet dress. Design is not done at a drafting table with a beautifully curated selection of pens in an exquisitely decorated office; it’s usually done in a cubicle at a regular desk on a computer when you’re not answering emails, in meetings or tending to spreadsheets/PLM systems.

  263. nora*

    For the last time, I (a social worker) have no interest in taking your children away.

    For one thing, most social workers do not work in child protective services. For another, it’s actually *extremely* difficult to remove a child, even when it’s warranted.

    I began my career doing casework for various nonprofits and government agencies. I now do alternative dispute resolution for a different government agency. It’s deeply unglamorous work so I doubt anyone would ever want to commit it to film, but I love it.

    1. Don'tEvenHaveClients*

      I’m also a social worker but in ~macro~ practice. I don’t have individual clients, I don’t do therapy, I don’t want to take your grandma off of life support or take your child. I honestly avoid telling people I do social work because it’s impossible to explain what I do to the general public once they know me as “the social worker”.

    2. Irish Teacher*

      Ugh, during our children’s rights referendum in Ireland, we had somebody argue during an actual TV debate, “but in Eastenders…”, which is a) a soap opera and b) a British soap opera and this is one area where British and Irish law is completely different. I suspect the point they were trying to make was that, the referendum, if passed, would make our laws more similar to the British ones, but…they are still completely different, perhaps a little less different, but that’s all.

      All the political parties and all the children’s rights charities and pretty much everybody anyway involved in the issue was in favour of the referendum, so they had to get the most random people to argue against it, but…”but in Eastenders, a child was taken into care unjustly, so we shouldn’t make it easier for children to be adopted,” was one of the more bizarre arguements advanced.

  264. Weaponized Pumpkin*

    A story from the other side: I was a lifeguard, and Baywatch started around the time i was in training — our city’s pools director was impressed how much effort the show put into depicting realistic saves and proper techniques. (Those bathing suits, on the other hand, less realistic.)

  265. journalist*

    Journalists and media people are portrayed so poorly in movies and TV. It’s fine if they get particulars of the industry wrong, since I’m sure that happens with portrayals of most industries. But what do film and TV writers have against journalists that they are almost always shown as unethical, shady, desperate and only motivated by their own self-interest? (Notable exceptions include some films based on real-life journalists, such as Spotlight)

  266. Maya*

    I’m a daycare teacher. Every time a daycare set is shown on TV, without fail there is always a big easel with open pots of red, yellow, and blue paint just sitting out in the open. No toddler classroom would ever have paint just sitting at child level. That stuff is locked up.

  267. I have a lot of scars from angry penguins (how DARE I clean their home!)*

    I’m a zookeeper! The only media I’m aware of is the “schlubby guy” comedy movie Zookeeper, and Bill Murray in Osmosis Jones. Both are gross dudes who just act like animal jailers.

    In real life, we all have a B.S. in zoology, wildlife biology, ecology or even psychology. It takes years of unpaid grunt work to land an actual paid position, and when we do get it the pay is terrible because it is a “passion career” and we should be grateful to have the job at all. My daily work is part vet tech, part sterile tech, a TON of intense behavioral observation (a slight limp or loss of energy could be the only clue that an animal is suffering horribly, and a call to immediate action), part psychologist (+R training is more complicated than you’d expect), part biologist (we do wildlife rehab and need to identify a ton of small bird species), part educator (we lead tours of the facilities and talk to guests about our animals for hours every day), part disaster management (we have been dealing with avian influenza prevention for more than a year now, which is really scary), part daycare teacher (we need to give our animals a rapidly changing, engaging environment and that means different enrichment for everyone every day), part animal advocate (we sometimes get ARAs who like to argue that our animals are better off dead than in human care), and part academic researcher (staying on top of current biology, animal welfare, and disease ecology research).

    Also, in real life the VAST majority of zookeepers are young women. The sparse few dudes in the field are BABE MAGNETS (look at this picture of me cuddling a penguin!) or queer and not interested in women.

    I genuinely love my job, even though it is gross, depressing, physically exhausting and pays less than Taco Bell. My facility lets me study and work with the most amazing creatures on earth, and I never lose track of that.

    However no one I talk to understands how hard it was to get to where I am today – I don’t just “love animals” and I am in fact pretty darn educated and knowledgeable. If you think it’s so easy, YOU look at this flock of 30+ spoonbills and tell me which one is acting slightly off. If you’re wrong, that could be the only indicator that the animal is sick, and will die without veterinary intervention. Good luck :)))

    1. Posilutely*

      It sounds like Adam Sandler’s character in 50 First Dates might have ticked a few of the boxes?

    2. Em*

      My sister was a zookeeper (still works at the zoo, but nowadays she does educational programming) and watching Jurassic Park etc with her is the BEST.

    3. CreepyKeeper*

      Fellow zookeeper unite! I’m fish and inverts so even in media whenever a keeper is thrown in for “yay cute animal playtime/hijinks” my stuff is left out. Something that is also left out is the universal importance of poop-is an animal pooping? How much/what’s it look like? Poop is often the easiest and least invasive way to tell how an animal is doing and the majority of our job revolves around cleaning it up.

      As a fish person I’m also heavily involved in maintaining and knowledgeable about all the plumbing and mechanical systems involved in keeping everything working and running smoothly in an aquarium. Ask me about water quality and how my life support plumbing isn’t interchangeable with standard building or house plumbing!
      Ask me about how this beetle requires the exact right soil composition and quality to develop correctly! Ask me about how I monitor and manage my populations of 100+ beetles and cockroaches to ensure I have a stable population to put on exhibit! (No seriously, ask me, the one thing that’s true about keepers is that we love to talk about our animals. We love the animals we work with and we want more people to appreciate them the way we do)

    4. Animal worker*

      Great description of the many, many, components of this field! I’m in the zoo field too, 35 years and counting, in the curator ranks these days. Lot of scars and CreepyKeeper capture the really diverse skills, especially the importance of noticing little things and definitely poop quality, that are critical.

      Coincidentally to this question I just rewatched Mr Popper’s Penguins the other day – pretty entertaining Jim Carrey movie – and the zoo keeper depiction in that movie was really nuts. Another crazy depiction was in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the one with the hyenas. And not too long ago I saw a rerun of the 70’s show Emergency, showing a rescue of someone who fell into a lion exhibit that they did with the lion still there – that wouldn’t happen.

      With the various zoo behind the scenes shows out now people can see a bit more of the reality, but of course since it’s entertainment it’s a total cherry-picking of situations and not at all representative of a day in the life of anyone in the field.

  268. RMNPgirl*

    I’m a medical laboratory scientist and absolutely not!
    Either the lab is never portrayed or very incorrectly.
    My two favorite examples are:
    House – where the doctors do their own lab work. That’s hilarious, if a doctor ever went into a hospital lab they’d be lost. Also, their “lab” was quite small. I guarantee at a hospital the size PPTH was supposed to be, the lab would have been at least 1/2 a floor (and probably in the basement).
    ER – this one drives me nuts in an episode that aired almost 30 years. In season 3 with the family in the car accident. Abby Keaton is operating on the infant and asks Gant, the intern, why they want to try and avoid transfusing the baby. Gant’s response is that transfusing a baby is more difficult due to the fetal hemoglobin. This is wrong on so many levels!
    1 – There are plenty of reasons to try to avoid transfusing a baby (generally you don’t want to expose someone that young to foreign stuff, babies usually need mannitol free because they can’t metabolize it, CMV negative, irradiated, O negative – units of blood that are available but not in abundance).
    2 – fetal hemoglobin has a higher affinity for oxygen than adult hemoglobin. This is because the baby’s blood needs to pull oxygen off of mom’s blood while in the womb. What this means is that fetal hemoglobin doesn’t give up oxygen as easily to tissues. So by giving a baby a transfusion, which is adult blood, their oxygen saturation would actually improve.

  269. GythaOgden*

    I work in healthcare and I love ER. (Dr Mike on YouTube scored it the highest for accuracy, but I’m not in the US. Having been through a relationship a lot similar to Elizabeth Corday’s relationship with Mark Green, minus the petulant stepdaughter and separation, I don’t think it would ever get old to watch that storyline right through though). I watched our own UK medical soaps for a bit (both Casualty and spin-off Holby City) after being in hospital myself, and yeah, they’re reasonably accurate.

    More general work coms are fun: I’ve never had Michael Scott as a boss, but working closely with the IT teams, you see a lot of Dwight Shrutes around. (I found the UK version really cringey. David Brent and, for that matter, Basil Fawlty, are just too much to really find funny. At least Michael Scott’s heart is in the right place even if he’s a complete wally most of the time. And it was good for them to show female on male domestic issues.) For anyone familiar with British sitcoms of the 1990s, I’m Dorothy from Men Behaving Badly and Joy Merryweather from Drop the Dead Donkey mixed together. (And I look a lot like Joy :D — that is, the complete opposite of what her name suggests.)

    But I’m not sure there would be much market for my direct job being turned into a sit com. You could make a Samuel Beckett play about it, but not really a TV show.

  270. Nonke John*

    Globalization/localization/translation professionals don’t seem to be represented much, but TV and movies definitely perpetuate the laughable idea that anyone who speaks two languages can accurately sight translate between them on the spot. The investigator in the police procedural will hand the owner of the corner grocery store a clue in the form of a piece of old paper, and she’ll immediately start a glib run-down: “Let’s see…Whereas the corundum of the Star of Tbilisi was mutatis mutandised into retained earnings by my nasty ischemic sister before we fled Georgia, I hereby angiosperm her from cumulonimbusing any of my cnidaria to the seventh antinomian generation. [flicks eyes upward over glasses at investigator] That’s important, isn’t it?” Actual translation is a little more complicated, even if you’re gifted and experienced.

    2. sacados*

      Also, just because someone can translate, does NOT automatically mean they can do interpretation too — especially not simultaneous! (Signed, someone who does both)

    3. Mameshiba*

      Oh man yes! And they can just pick up languages so quickly. I watched a movie where a native speaker of an Asian language read a bunch of Latin overnight and was able to speak perfectly when time traveling to ancient Rome!

      I do love whenever non-native speakers are cast or depicted or language struggles are shown. It’s very rare and usually downplayed. But for example even in the recent Avatar there was a lot of not-English spoken, various skills with the language, etc. and it was so nice to see! So many people speak a second language that it’s surprisingly rarely depicted.

  271. nmitford*

    Proposal manager for a government contractor here. We’re never portrayed in film or television, because our lives would bore people to tears.

  272. nmitford*

    Proposal manager for a government contractor here. We’re never portrayed in film or television, because our lives would bore people to tears.

  273. Sunshine*

    Marketing is the most laughable one for me. Maybe at big companies it’s more high-powered, but I’ve worked at a few small marketing agencies and it’s more like a bunch of overworked 20-somethings cutting as many corners as possible just to get the bare minimum done for our clients! When you have a portfolio of 20+ local businesses, not everyone is getting amazing, customized marketing campaigns.

  274. Lindsay*

    I’m a dog trainer and the popular dog training “reality” shows definitely make my job harder than it needs to be. Partially because they make training look like a quick fix (training, particularly for dogs with trauma or fear/aggression issues, can take months or years to improve and is typically managed rather than “cured”) and partially because most of the popular tv trainers have no credentials and use extremely dated and unscientific methodology. A lot of my clients think I’m going to just show up and use my secret magic whisperer formula to “fix” their dog, and then they’re disappointed to find that not only are *they* usually the ones who need to change the most, but that training is an unentertaining and lifelong process. The public narrative around dog psychology is unfortunately off the mark and it’s in no small part due to television.

    1. GythaOgden*

      We have a dog trainer come to the horticultural show that my parents run. I’ve learned a lot about dogs, their behaviour, their care and, importantly, how to get to know them when encountering them outside from them. They specialised in rehoming and rehabilitating former ‘guard’ dogs that had been cruelly treated in order to turn them into monsters. They were gorgeous dogs and it was so nice to see that it was possible to salvage such beautiful animals from human abuse. I also learned that white Alsatians/German Shepherds exist, which was great because I wrote one into my fantasy novel.

      I’d love a pupper of my own. Sadly I think I’ll just have to settle for my massive plushie Shiba Inu. Thanks for all your hard work.

  275. TaylorK*

    Claims Adjuster for Auto insurance company (Flo is our mascot)
    What they show us on TV or movies is sadly pretty accurate. About the only difference I see is we actually do want to help you people and get your problem resolved…. but we are not gonna break the law or lie to do it.

  276. Tavistock*

    I am a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Psychiatrists are portrayed in the media as: 1) having no boundaries; 2) serial killers, or; 3) victims of serial killers (and then sometimes the serial killer assumes the psychiatrist’s identity).

    Interestingly, movies and TV often assume psychiatrists do more talk therapy than many of us do. I do almost all therapy + meds because I am an analyst, but it’s sadly a rarity. I do think so much gets missed in the very short med check, and it does not serve people well.

  277. ChemistbyDay*

    I’m a chemist. Shows are meh in terms of accuracy. At least they have the correct machines, and results that could theoretically come from those machines. The least accurate is how long it would actually take to run that unknown sample on GCMS (hint, it’s not 30 seconds).

    1. ChemistbyDay*

      Edited to add – the only very accurate thing I’ve seen in labs on tv shows is the possessive nature of scientists with their machines. That’s eerily similar to many of the labs where I’ve worked.

  278. WannabeAstronaut*

    I work in aerospace. I got through about 1.5 episodes of Space Force….it was like being at work. I couldn’t handle it.

    (I also hate the Big Bang Theory, as I am a woman with a background in physics. Please do not compare me to Sheldon if you want to remain my friend, holy crap)

  279. Camp staffer*

    I work at a summer camp, and the campers are supervised at all times, including in cabins, by staff who are fully trained. Meals are tasty and nutritious, bus drivers have CDL licenses, and hooking up happens on the staff’s own time, away from campers. I love a lot of the summer camp genre movies, but they are nothing like real life.

  280. RomComs are 84 minutes long*

    First I have to admit that I LOVE the Hallmark type romcoms, especially the Christmas ones. I worked in retail all my life, from running a checkout in a store to a corporate office. I have to laugh when the story has them getting an idea for a new product at Thanksgiving, finding a factory to make it, getting advertising and marketing arranged, shipping the product to stores, and it sells out and it’s a huge success (and saves the company from bankruptcy!) by Christmas. And they still have time to fall in love! It just doesn’t happen that way. It also makes me suspicious of how accurate the stories are for other jobs and professions, but I watch them anyway.

  281. Anna*

    I’m a music therapist, so we’re not portrayed often, but there is a movie on Hulu called Harmony From the Heart that is all about a music therapist. When I tell you it could not be further from an accurate representation of our work, I am not lying. Essentially, the MT claims that she can make a man who cannot speak because of a stroke learn to speak again in JUST TWO WEEKS. There is no music therapist out there who could do that LOL. It’s a wild ride.

  283. Optimistic Prime*

    I used to be the Night Manager of a hotel. Sad to say that Tom Hiddleston isn’t accurate. But hotel workers are usually over-the-top bubbly or sleazy motel workers. Both are accurate. :)

  284. AcadLibrarian*

    I can’t read almost 1,000 replies, so if someone has mentioned it already, I’m sorry.

    LIBRARIANS

    Nope, nothing like that. (Ok, every once in a while you’ll meet one. I had a coworker that would wear her cardigan backwards with her nametag on her back).

  285. A Genuine Scientician*

    Not even remotely. I’m in academia (sciences at a large university). A few points:

    – Almost no one wants to be Chair of their department. It’s generally a big push to try to get someone to agree.

    – Research faculty spend most of their time writing grants to get funding for their students to do research. Tenure does not grant research funds.

    – Summers are not off. Most people work over the summer, often unpaid.

    – Nearly all research professors each have their own lab for their grad students. Labs where research is done are not the same physical spaces where lab courses take place.

    – A lot of the large enrollment intro courses are taught by non-tenure-track, purely teaching faculty, who all have multiple courses every term. Higher ed mostly does not have substitute teachers available. A lot of places don’t even have time off for the teaching faculty.

    – Very few people come to office hours.

  286. geological engy*

    I work at a mine as a geotech engineer– there are pretty much NO representations of my work let alone modern mining in media. Gold was a good movie, but not really representative of mining (more exploration phase).
    We use a lot of Zoolander Ben Stiller mining GIFs in the work chats, but suffice to say it is not a realistic representation.
    The portrayal of the Aberfan Disaster in The Crown is pretty tragically real and was definitely a rough watch after a long day at the mine.

  287. ms.independent*

    Former
    Disaster Relief responder – somewhat accurate, there is more stale coffee, carbs, weird hotel rooms, lack of coordination, and people aren’t always happy to see you or think you are doing enough

    911 Dispatcher – most 911 centers are working with much older tech than people realize, we can’t tell where you are to a precise location unless you are on an old school landline; if we have the staffing – we work in teams, so the person talking to you may not the be the person pushing the buttons to send help (which still needs to drive through traffic to get to you); Dispatchers are not considered to be first responders in most of the US, and are often forgotten in the first responder fervor that comes up every few years… I could go on for days…. Most importantly though, we don’t care “what” the emergency is before we know the “where”.

    Volunteer EMT – some hospitals have the good crunchy ice and share it with providers. Your emergency determines how fast you are seen at the ER so that ride we just gave you is in an expensive taxi ride….

    Volunteer manager – really never seen a show where one is included, but its like herding cats and requires a lot of random soft and hard skills.

    and now Data Analyst….. (if there is a show that has a character that loves spreadsheets, let me know!)

    1. Cat Lover*

      “Volunteer EMT – some hospitals have the good crunchy ice and share it with providers. Your emergency determines how fast you are seen at the ER so that ride we just gave you is in an expensive taxi ride…”

      Yep I’m a volly EMT as well and I’ve dropped pts in the waiting room during busy times (holidays, etc).

  288. SpeechQueen*

    Ugh! I hate how college professors are portrayed. For my discipline, public speaking, NO ONE wants to give a speech, no one knows how to give a speech, EVERYONE HATES having to give a speech. I have to have my students seriously unlearn what they see on TV. And then, according to shows, we profs come in, pontificate about nothing, or have a seriously hilarious lecture that is completely factually incorrect, and then go about solving crimes or having affairs: not once do we have to grade, create material for our classes, do committee work, (SO MUCH COMMITTEE WORK), do outside community interactions on behalf of the college, hold student hours, papers, panels, publications, etc. We can figure out the murderer, tell a happy anecdote in class, write our best selling dissertation, and has a racy romantic evening in an hour show and be done with it. And we can’t dress ourselves and are the absent minded prof, or we can be pretty and fashionable prof, or all of the above and sleeping with all my students and co-workers prof. I have yet to see a truly (even somewhat closely) accurate portrayal of a professor. Oh, I take that back. Indiana Jones having to work in his seventies for academia because (despite what you see on the news, professor pay overall is a disgrace for the amount of work we do) he can’t afford to retire and lose health benefits, often the reason we stay in the job. Sigh.

  289. Cheap Ass Rolls Royce*

    I work for my city’s Parks & Rec department, and it’s EXACTLY like the TV show. Down to a strained relationship with animal control and a rivalry with the library!

  290. ChillChaplain*

    After serving 1 summer as a student chaplain, I now make mental lists of ‘top times someone should have called a chaplain’ when I watch medical TV shows. The doctors and nurses don’t have to be grief counselors or try to help their patents solve the theological problem of evil, and they shouldn’t have to! Call the chaplain! It’s our whole job to just be there and listen, and we also support hospital staff in their work. Just call us!

      1. ChillChaplain*

        I could really pitch some articles to religious media about this, if only ER was actually still airing they might want it, haha.

        1. Anonymous-ish*

          Grey’s Anatomy is (somehow!!) still happening! I only started watching that show after I began working in this field and between the lack of chaplains and the blatant ethical violations it makes me regularly have a rage stroke!

  291. cardigarden*

    I used to work in the senate an honestly, of all the shows about the government, Veep was the most accurate to my experience.

  292. Magenta Sky*

    I work in IT. Your question is to laugh. I have never seen anything even remotely accurate in the portrayal of IT in TV shows. Cop shows are the worst.

    My favorite is when they use magic enhancement to turn a grainy security video into somethin that magic facial recognition can identify. The conversation *should* go like this:

    Detective: Can you enhance that so we can use facial rec?
    Tech: Sure. Who do you want it to look like?

    Because that’s how it actually works.

    One show got magic facial recognition to work based on the reflection in someone’s eye. Another got a fingerprint off a car door, in a photo.

    Real life cops and prosecutors *hate* cop shows, because people believe that’s how it works in real life.

  293. Jae*

    None of the fields I work in, or my industry, has ever been represented accurately in tv or film, though some of the archetype of people in my industry has…

    1. Jae*

      I forgot to add – I work in the video game industry, usually community-facing roles. Nothing has been accurate, but watching Mythic Quest brought the CPTSD of working with ‘geniuses’ out in full force. The studio and job representation isn’t accurate, but the ‘sole genius’ at the center isn’t too far off…

  294. KatieP*

    I work in higher education, and when a scene or a program is set on a public university campus, I annoy my spouse with my commentary. Specifically, I work in finance, and when they talk about anything to do with money, he’ll say, “Yes, I know, that’s not how that works.”
    The Big Bang Theory is one of my favorites to pick on for a lot of reasons. Here are some of my favorites:
    * One HR staff member for an entire public university (never mind how Howard still has a job. Sheldon/Leonard/Raj, I get, but Howard doesn’t have the clout to save himself)?
    * The President of the University is assigning offices?
    * All of the faculty and staff eat in the same dining room (which has no franchise restaurants or branding deals? They got the Cheesecake Factory on board, could they not get Yum! brands on board?)?
    * Sheldon gets to go through 12 years as a tenure-track faculty member and only teach one course?
    * The other two tenure-track faculty members presumably have teaching assignments, but we rarely see them working on the service requirement for tenure.
    * They had extra money in an account with no purchasing restrictions on it, and they couldn’t find anyone to take it? Nonsense – there’d be fist fights in the hallways for that at a public university.

  295. Forty Years In the Hole*

    Reaalllyyy dating myself here. Very early in my military career, the movie “Stripes” came out. As a then newly-minted military policewoman, the portrayal of MPs was…hardly accurate. If anyone had come at me with a spatula that way – boy oh boy!
    And women in uniform, are generally rarely if ever portrayed other than the full Colonel in full dress uniform tagging along behind the 1-star General with nothing to say/do. Mostly in science fiction/fantasy/apocalyptic movies, though a few of the more recent offerings at least have women embedded in the platoon/squadron.

    1. New Jack Karyn*

      As a kid, I liked the TV show Private Benjamin, but that probably wasn’t very accurate, either.

  296. Different Name for This*

    I’m an IRS agent auditing small and mid-size businesses (assets less than $10 million – Not Criminal Investigation).

    We are not all boring people, with no personality, obsessed with the tax code. To the contrary, most of my co-workers are interesting and fun people who I enjoy conversing with. Also not all left leaning politically. Our office is pretty evenly split from what I’ve deduced based on many conversations with many people over the years. We have very little power. We cannot “generate our own work” meaning that we cannot get mad at someone and go look at their tax return and decide to audit them. Or see that our neighbor bought a $100,000 car and pull their tax return “just because.” That is a fireable offense and access to all systems are heavily monitored by multiple teams of people. Not sure if anyone really thinks this, but we also don’t carry guns (only CI carries guns). While there are lazy people among us, the vast majority of colleagues who have stayed past the training period (2 year training period) are good people who are doing the best they can with the limited resources and caseloads that we all have.

    Govt bureaucracy and red tape are oh so real. The frustration the public experiences exists internally also. Procedures, procedures, procedures. And forms, forms, forms. Everything takes much longer to accomplish that you ever think it would, which is due mostly to procedures, forms, and awful software/tech.

    1. Mistakes Were Made*

      I ended up with an unfortunate tax issue a few years back. It was one of those “best of several bad options” situations. Totally my fault. Anyway, when the IRS finally came knocking, the thing that surprised me the most was how HARD it was to get and keep any particular person’s attention. The case kept getting shuffled around and it was like pulling teeth to get someone to call me back or respond to queries, etc., which was very necessary as I had a relatively complex case.

      It was far from the stereotype where you imagine IRS agents tracking you down through the city and busting in to “seize” everything in sight. The biggest hurdle to getting things resolved was the energy it took for ME to stay on the case, not them.

    2. Tax Collector's Daughter*

      I was going to mention IRS agents as well. I’m not one, but my dad was for most of his working life, and I too found that he and most of his coworkers that I met were just trying to do their job and get taxes collected. They were willing to work with people and were only jerks to people who refused to cooperate in any way and were jerks back.

      Relating to TV, several years ago there was some program (CSI, I think?) that had a special episode on or around April 15 (for non-USAians, the date our taxes are due) about people murdering IRS agents. I watched it with my dad, and was super amused by his complaints about the show. Things like someone bragging that they’d filed a whole bunch of [insert form number] to pad their numbers, and he said something like, “That form is the one you complete when you’ve made a mistake and have to amend things; NO ONE would be filing lots of that form to make themselves look good.” And so on. He was kind of distressed by the show, though; I remember him telling me before we watched it that people hate the idea of tax collectors enough already, and he wasn’t keen on a show that advertised murdering them as an idea.

      1. Different Name for This*

        Sounds like your dad was a Revenue Officer (Collection). I am a Revenue Agent (audit/Examination). But yes, so many misconceptions about them also. I have several great friends that work in collections. There are soooooo many opportunities to cooperate with both exam and collections before adverse consequences befall a taxpayer. The govt does not move at warp speed….far from it. I do believe that your dad’s job was/is more dangerous than mine. When liens, levies, & seizures start occurring, s*** gets real and people can react very negatively and unpredictably.

        On a funny note about forms. My spouse will randomly throw out form numbers and sometimes he’ll actually get one right. Like, do you need to fill out a bunch of 872’s? I think I know the episode of CSI you’re referencing, and I can say that, in general, there has been a lot of negative sentiment and misformation about the IRS in more recent years and it makes me much more cautious about disclosing where I work to people that I don’t know well.

  297. Marigold*

    I work as an account manager and I feel like it’s rarely portrayed. Sales? Yes. But not just managing an account and making sure it doesn’t fail. I don’t have to actively sell things.

  299. Holly Gibney*

    I’m a writers’ assistant in TV (goal of writing on a show) and this is all very interesting to read, not to mention wildly entertaining (dare I say more entertaining than a lot of TV out there right now?). Inaccuracies bug me more than most writers I know, so I will come back to this thread when I need details for portrayals in the future!

    In terms of my job being shown on screen, it’s pretty frustrating that the only time Hollywood assistants are shown they’re being sexually harassed. Most of my friends and I have extensive psychological trauma from our line of work–the criminally low pay means we can’t really afford to live in LA while our bosses have three houses within a hundred-mile radius; we’re all terrified to speak up about literally anything we have an issue with because of the “do you know how many people would kill to have your job, I could replace you in a millisecond” culture (coupled with the racism, sexism, ableism, etc); we work insane hours which means we don’t have much time to work on our own portfolios, and if we do manage to have a decent script, getting anyone (even your mentors) to read said script in a timely manner is next to impossible… and then something actually happening with it (getting an agent, getting staffed, selling the script) is even harder.

    You want to know why there’s no diversity in Hollywood? It’s because you literally have to have some other source of money to afford the many years it takes to rise up the ranks, if it happens at all. Most people I know who manage to get staffed are married to people who have careers in other fields that actually pay decently. Wow, this turned into a bit of a rant. But just know that the “rampant sexual harassment” you see on screen is, like, a very small percentage of a much, much larger problem! Also, most men I know in this industry aren’t super creepy. There’s definitely a culture of preying on ambition but, at least on the writing side, that usually doesn’t involve sexual abuse.

    Oh, but I do know people who have had to miss their grandma’s funeral because their boss wouldn’t let them take a day off. That part is accurate!

  300. Nebula*

    I am the manager of an apartment complex, and there is a girl who has become quite popular on TikTok playing the role of a “leasing manager.” While we don’t have a leasing manager role at my work, this girl is my assistant to a T.

  301. Brand Recognition*

    I work for a certain youth-serving organization that is very very well known for the sweet treats those youth sell to earn money. While no shows glamorize the life of the non-profit staff behind the scenes, I’m still always caught off guard when we’re referenced (and truly – my organization is mentioned ALL THE TIME).

  302. Pink Hard Hat*

    I work in heavy civil construction as a project manager, and while that doesn’t pop up on TV all that often, I don’t think I’ve seen any good versions of it. Some of the the examples I can think of are:

    -In Jane The Virgin, at one point somebody murders somebody, puts the body in a hole where they were constructing something, and has a concrete truck come in in the middle of the night to pour concrete over them. All I was thinking is – do you know how expensive it is to order concrete in the middle of the night? (Very). Also, how long will it take for that concrete to crack, since a human body is much weaker than an equivalent volume of concrete/rebar?

    -In Riverdale, Archie and his dad own a construction company, but clearly the closest the writers have come to a construction site is driving by it. At one point there is a pile of asphalt that needs to be broken down into smaller pieces, and Archie starts hitting it with a sledgehammer. With his shirt off of course. So not only is he not wearing the correct PPE, we have machines for that.

    -In Buffy, Buffy and the gang are always chasing the vampires through the sewers, which apparently don’t smell, have no toxic gas, and very little water? And conveniently have electric lighting? And are large enough for people to walk through? True, there are some old cities like Paris or parts of New York that have large enough sewers to walk in, but in a newer city like Sunnydale your sewer pipes are going to be typically 2-3 ft dia at most.

    Clearly I only watch the highest caliber of television.

    1. Cool Tina, Train Conductress*

      You’re forgetting that Sunnydale was built on a Hellmouth by an immortal demon mayor. The sewers were likely built to accommodate giant sentient serpent gods and the minions under their command.

      1. Pink Hard Hat*

        Surely the giant sentient serpent gods & minions would have preferred separate tunnels where they won’t get covered in poop? Although I don’t know a ton about their likes, maybe that would a plus.

    2. QED*

      But if Archie doesn’t hit it with a sledgehammer while shirtless, however will the CW hit its quota of shirtless characters per episode?

      1. Pink Hard Hat*

        I forgot – this most recent season has him “building railroad tracks” meaning randomly hitting parts of the rail with a sledgehammer, on his own, while shirtless. I can’t decide if the bad construction work is better than the boxing?

  303. straws*

    My husband is in building security & access control systems. Any time I’m watching something that involves visible laser grids as part of a security system, it’s almost guaranteed that he’ll walk into the room, look at the TV, sigh heavily, and leave.

  304. Yoyoyo*

    I’m a social worker (LICSW). Never once have I taken someone’s kids away, slept with a client, diagnosed someone I’ve never met based on a description of their behavior, gossiped about a client, or approached a client in public. I am, however, guilty of having gotten into the field due to subconsciously trying to process my own shit. C’est la vie.

  305. WonderWoman*

    I used to work in the apparel industry, and it drives me nuts how its professionals are portrayed as unintelligent, frivolous, and driven by emotion. It’s a highly competitive multi-billion dollar business, and roles within it require a high degree of skill and specialization, just like so many other fields. Most people who enter the industry have degrees in fashion, work long hours and take unpaid internships just to get their foot in the door.

    And as with so many other things, liking clothes and shopping doesn’t necessarily mean you would excel at creating them!

    Project Runway was a fun show, but like most reality competition shows, it’s not an accurate representation of what it’s like to be a working apparel industry professional. You’d never get such weird prompts thrown at you with so little time. Also, designers don’t typically sew clothes as part of the job. Sewing is a skill you learn in school, and it’s important to know how clothing is made, but it doesn’t make sense for clothing companies to pay designers to sew samples when they can hire much cheaper labor to do it. Manhattan’s garment district still houses quite a few sweatshops for producing samples locally, and bigger companies have their own in-house sewing team.

    But yeah, a lot of people do have eating disorders.

    1. La Triviata*

      I am not in the apparel industry, but I enjoyed the scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda (Meryl Streep) explains to the young assistant (Anne Hathaway) who’s fairly contemptuous of the whole enterprise about how a specific shade of blue became fashionable and generated a huge amount of money in the industry.

  306. SMP*

    While not a dedicated events planner by trade/title, my job included organizing many conferences and corporate events.

    The way TV shows and books can magically pull top tier events off at at the drop of a hat is crazy. Read a book recently where a person working at an (evil) events company secretly planned a giant event unrelated to that company. The kind of event that would take a TEAM 8-12 months. In the book, she pulled off this magnificent event by herself with a few phone calls in less than 3 weeks – and no one at real job noticed she wasn’t working on company projects.

    Or ones they have one consultation with key stakeholders and then everything is set.

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      Fellow events planner here and I completely agree. I plan one annual event for 500 people and I’m essentially planning it for 12 months a year, even though a lot of the details don’t change from year to year.

      The same goes for weddings. No, you can’t plan a Kardashian-style extravaganza in 6 weeks. All the best wedding vendors get booked up at least 18 months in advance. And be prepared to pay a 50% premium on top of normal event prices for any vendor that uses the word “wedding” or “bridal”.

  307. Beth*

    I have a particular pet peeve regarding one tiny item in my field, which I’ve seen egregiously mucked up in novels, movies, TV, etc.

    Wiring money. Especially a very large sum. ESPECIALLY when the client profile is slender (that is, the money is being sent by a Mysterious Person, or sent to a Mysterious Person, times a billion if it’s going to cross any international borders). The few moments it takes for the electronic transmission to actually get zapped from one place to another are nothing compared with the amount of administrative time at each end.

    Wiring is complicated and it TAKES TIME. It’s not instantaneous. You CANNOT wire the blackmailer a billion dollars, steal the evidence from him, rescue the hostage, escape to the next chapter and somehow “cancel the wire” while he’s still walking out of the building.

    Wire transfers get checked by human beings at both ends, reviewed, approved, then reviewed again by the departments responsible for making sure the funds exist, the sender exists, the receiving institution exists, the parties aren’t on the finance equivalent of the Do Not Fly list, then reviewed again by the department responsible for AML (Anti Money-Laundering). This is all done during office hours in the given time zone. The bigger the sum, the closer the scrutiny, especially if it’s being sent to (or from) somewhere regarded as dodgy.

    None of this makes for Intense Drama, and there’s not much room for clever capers and cunning plans. I suppose you could have a Bad Guy who actually thinks wires work that way, and have a clever scene where he’s conned into thinking he’s already received his money, but somehow that never happens. The standard Bad Guy is already successful in financial dealings, and probably already knows all that.

  308. NeedRain47*

    I am a librarian in a niche of librarianship (cataloging/metadata) that even other librarians have no idea what it is. It mostly involves sitting in front of a computer so unless the cataloger was also secretly a “hacker” or something I don’t see how this would make for entertaining TV.

    Mostly, I am happy when I see people in tv/movies going to the public library to find information in shows/movies. That’s a general concept I want to encourage.

    I am unhappy when I get to the part of It’s a Wonderful Life (spoiler alert for a movie from 1946?) where Mary is an OLD MAID who works at the LIBRARY which is a fate worse than death, and other varieties of the old fussy librarian.

  310. I Don’t know Geralt stop asking*

    I’ve been a sellsword for a few years now and the toxic “we’re a (found) family here” stuff gets turned around in the media as heart warming camaraderie. Makes for good entertainment but sooo inaccurate! Also when the customer hires some random magic dabbler to work with you on a job it is NOT impressive or in any way helpful. Media always has them saving the day but in real life it just increases the risk of a bizarre death like getting eaten alive by your own spleen

  311. Mary Ellen*

    Oh, the portrayal of libraries and librarians, oy… we are not all little old ladies in cat-eye glasses and cardigans, we very rarely shush people, and we do not sit and read all day (much as I would like to). Public libraries are not hushed, dimly-lit, wood-paneled rooms filled with ancient, leather-bound tomes. They are bright and busy and loud and active, and we’re running around helping people use our computers, and print, and fax, and make copies. We have noisy, joyful storytimes happening. We are a community hub! We exist to serve our community, from the most vulnerable on up.

  312. Not Ted Mosby*

    I scrolled pretty far and didn’t see anyone mention architect – obviously, elaborate models are good for TV but most of the job is a loooooot of time at a desk in front of a computer, making small adjustments and troubleshooting for projects which are rarely glamorous. Architects aren’t as well-paid as they’re portrayed (unless you’re the guy at the top – and it’s always a white guy), we don’t use blueprints anymore, and everything is done by a team of overworked people revising a design for the permit deadline – not one singular design genius with a sudden burst of inspiration.
    I always hated how Ted Mosby was never working and had endless time and energy to sit around at a bar with his friends. We are tired and probably living in a crappy house surrounded by symptoms of the delusion that we’ll be able to fix it up on nights and weekends.

  313. Jane*

    I work at a daily newspaper, and I particularly love the shows/movies that have lots of reporters trying to convince their editors to let them write a story, or pitching ideas that their editors keep rejecting. And so they sit around sadly in the newsroom with the other overlooked reporters, all with nothing to do except to scheme about how to get assigned to a big story.
    This is not how it works at all anywhere that I’ve worked. What manager anywhere can afford to have large numbers of employees who aren’t doing anything? And especially in the under-staffed, struggling daily newspaper industry, where there is a constant need for new content? It would be more realistic to portray a reporter who is run off their feet, trying to figure out how to carve out time to do something bigger and more time-consuming. But that sounds pretty boring as a show premise!!

    1. ThatGirl*

      even when I was in newspapers 20 years ago that’s not how it worked; I don’t think it EVER worked that way.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      Or the reporters who go missing and who casually tell their boss they’re onto something big and “trust me”.

  314. wordswords*

    I’m not sure I’ve ever seen translation as a profession portrayed in a movie or tv show. You get people who call themselves translators, for sure, but they’re all actually interpreters. (Translation is written documents, interpretation is spoken. Some people do both, some do one or the other; they’re overlapping but different skillsets, and being bilingual/multilingual is necessary but not sufficient.)

    Now, what I have seen is a lot of professors/archaeologists/etc doing translation, nearly always of ancient texts. Usually they sight-read it without reference to a dictionary or puzzling over the grammar or context or synonyms, and odds are good that they’ll instantly produce a single, definitive translation (possibly rhyming, almost certainly prophetic) with no “or, uh, you could phrase it as this” or other workshopping. If it’s a modern text, it’s somebody’s literary or philosophical passion project, and they maybe learned the language specifically to translate this book as it deserves to be translated. Nobody ever does pragmatic translation as a day job in fiction!

    1. Video killed the radio star*

      Check out Babel – fantasy about translators! The author has clearly, thankfully, worked in the field!

      Otherwise I agree entirely – it’s never portrayed as a job and anyone who has to translate anything can do so correctly and instantly – which is almost never how it actually works!

      1. wordswords*

        Yesssss, I haven’t read Babel yet but it’s very much on my list! I’m holding it out as a treat for myself.

    2. Ginger Baker*

      I did like how on DS9 there were a few things they were trying to translate from [Ancient Bajoran probably?] and it a) took a while and b) ended with [sample not an accurate recounting here..] “there’s something about a big wind and…maybe an explosion? or an offended family member? this word could mean a few different things and that’s presuming we have the right one at all?”

    3. Beth*

      Stargate did better than most with this — translations usually took time, often lots of time, and they made regular use of “This is an unfamiliar dialect” any time the plot needed the cast to get something wrong/be unable to read an inscription.

      There were even a couple of episodes where archeologists were shown doing reasonably accurate work on digs — lots of notes being taken and not much in the way of finds.

  315. 1-800-BrownCow*

    My career is no where near interesting enough for tv or movies, lol.

    My spouse is an EMT/FF though and he gets annoyed with most medical shows that are drama based as they are widely inaccurate. CPR is always a big one that gets on his nerves. Or when they show the EMS crew sprinting toward a scene or putting themselves in danger to help someone. One of the first things he was taught in EMS school: If you get injured trying to help someone else, you can no longer be helpful. Obviously firefighting is different, you do go into dangerous situations, but even then there is a reminder to do things safely as it makes the situation worse if others have to rescue one of their own. Because of incorrect portrayals, my spouse has had to deal with people who get angry because they didn’t rush quick enough or do a certain thing right away.

  316. Third or Nothing!*

    Not me, but my husband: every time a character welds something on screen, he cringes. Apparently most of the welding scenes portrayed are all one specific type of welding, which usually doesn’t match what the character is actually trying to do. There are a wide range of weld styles out there, each specific to the metals or the type of weld needed for the job.

    Also, like half the scenes don’t even have the characters wearing proper PPE. If you’re not wearing a welding hood and a jacket, you’re going to get blinded and you’re going to get burns on your arms.

  317. metadata minion*

    Yup, another librarian here. Though I will say the one movie I’ve seen that gets close is Desk Set, a little-known Katherine Hepburn movie where she plays a *corporate librarian*, a role I have never seen represented anywhere else, even badly.

    1. Snow Globe*

      That is my favorite Christmas movie (well, Christmas-adjacent). I’ve read it is based on a real woman who worked for CBS research for many years.

  318. Lemon It's Wednesday*

    I work in biotech manufacturing and have spent too many hours gowned into clean rooms. TV/ movies rarely show people gowned in correctly unless they are in a BSL type lab.
    Also the aseptic technique shown is so so so not good.

  319. Recovering Astronomer*

    The very beginning of Don’t Look Up, when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character was at the telescope with his graduate students, was surprisingly true to life. The kind of throwaway line about how he hadn’t done any sort of orbital calculations since he was in school, what the comet looked like on the TV monitor; all of that felt very real, in all of its unglamour. Compared to, say, the “astrophysicist” in Top Gun.

  320. Kali*

    Detective here. Obviously, sentiment is shifting in media. (Justifiably. Sigh.) There are so many different portrayals that it’s hard to pick one that is or isn’t accurate – they mostly get a lot wrong, even if there are bits that are scarily accurate. (I generally say that Brooklyn 99 and Hot Fuzz are the most accurate day-to-day portrayals I’ve seen, but then you’ve got The Wire mixed in too.)

    What they get right is our irreverent and sarcastic views on life and death, our general suspicion of everyone that’s not one of us and closing ranks when we think we’re being attacked (not great, kids!), our tendency toward not talking about our feelings and bottling things up instead. The shows with mountains of paperwork are accurate, as is any scene with terrible management making decisions that confuse and anger street officers (or punishes one nonsensically). Rivalries abound – not just between management and front line officers, but between patrol and investigations, between investigation units, and sometimes between PD and FD. The quote from Jack Reacher is right – “There’re three things cops never do: they don’t vote Democrat, they don’t drive Cadillacs, and they never use personal vehicles.”

    What they get wrong is how all TV cops only seem to work one case at a time (I wish!) and get lab results in a day or two (I wish x2). We don’t get that close to our cases’ victims, and we tend not to know anything about how our cases turn out unless we testify in court, which is rare. You can’t be arrested for refusing to talk to the police – that’s not obstruction. Street cops usually don’t Mirandize someone – you only are Mirandized for a custodial interrogation, so it’s usually detectives doing it. We generally don’t get to wear jeans and leather jackets to work either.

    The lists of both of these go on and on, and it’s often highly location and department specific.

    1. New Jack Karyn*

      I remember people used to say the show Barney Miller was an accurate depiction of big city detectives in the 1970s. Cops with their quirks, citizens doing batso things, criminals who were nowhere near ‘mastermind’ intelligence. Strained marriages, awkward workplace romance, intraoffice rivalries, and just absurd things happening in the squad room.

  321. Anonymous-ish*

    I’m a chaplain (hospital and elder care settings). It’s very rare that I see my job portrayed at all— the only example I can think of is Fr. Mulchahy from MASH.

  322. Museum Conservator*

    I’m an art conservator, and I think the only representation we’ve had is Ghostbusters II. At any rate, my job is a lot more paperwork and a lot less “restoring the Mona Lisa” excitement.

  323. AnonymousForThis*

    Working in accounting, the 2016 movie “The Accountant” comes to mind. Also, this time of year, the tax commercials are on as well, though I don’t do taxes.

  324. Mel*

    I’m a clinical pharmacist. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pharmacist accurately portrayed in a movie or tv show. It’s almost always retail pharmacists that are shown and, then, they’re often portrayed as either bumbling or a psychopath. And I’ve never seen a pharmacist portrayed in a hospital setting/medical drama.

    1. GlutenFreePharmacist*

      Same! I work in managed care (office-based) but it’s always a retail pharmacist who is completely clueless or they have some master plan to distribute drugs. From my days in retail, they need about 10 angry customers, a frazzled pharmacist who hasn’t had anything but coffee 8 hours into their shift, 6 lines on hold and someone having a breakdown in the corner.

  325. Selina Luna*

    I’m a teacher. I’ve taught both high school and middle school. I’ve seen two portrayals on television and in movies: the teacher who gives so much of themselves that they have no free time and sometimes suffer awful consequences (Escalante’s actual, real-life heart attack!), the “hero” teacher whom we’re all supposed to aspire to and who is constantly pooped on and dragged down OR the teacher who is obviously, clearly committing fireable malpractice (tenure doesn’t work that way).
    In both cases, and regardless of whether it is “based on a true story” or not, the requirement for drama often has the teacher interacting with students in ways that are inappropriate, or that get the teacher into unnecessary trouble with the school.
    This is wildly inaccurate. Teaching is a job. I am NOT a superhero. I’m a teacher who has a house, a mortgage, a young child, a dog, and hobbies. I am getting a master’s degree and I participate in after-school tutoring, but that’s also driven by money. I get paid more to have an advanced degree and I get paid to tutor.

    I have experience with other jobs that are inaccurately portrayed in movies and television, but the portrayals of teaching are just bad.

  326. Ms. K of PreK*

    I teach preschool.
    Toy Story 3’s portrayal of a classroom drives me crazy. Especially when the Barbie’s hair gets dipped in paint. That classroom is a level of chaos I’ve never witnessed on my wrist work day ever. No you cannot completely control a tiny human, but I don’t think an adult was even present in that classroom.

    On the flip side, on How I Met Your Mother, when Lily and Marshall are trying to choose a baby name, and bad students keep ruining names for Lily is dead accurate.

    1. Selina Luna*

      OMG, yes. I teach teens, but I have had no fewer than 5 baby names ruined by students who were just jerks.

  327. Tedious Cat*

    An attorney friend swears up and down that Night Court is the most accurate show about the practice of law. I know it sounds strange for a show that wacky but the court parts are tight!

  328. Environmental Compliance*

    I would love to hear about TV shows or movies that showed anything to do with HSE. Or environmental compliance work. Not remediation, not lab work, not field work.

    Though as prior state/county gov’t I really loved Parks and Rec.

    1. Moose Law*

      Have you seen the guy on Tiktok who does LOTR work safety inspections? I think there is mileage in the concept. The first season of “Miracle Workers” was also ripe for an HSE storyline!

      1. Environmental Compliance*

        I have a few H&S TikTokers I follow that absolutely crack me up!

        We could have an HSE Office/ Parks type show pretty easily. I can contribute some wacky but actually happened storylines.

  329. D'Arcy*

    EMS is definitely portrayed as vastly more “action-y” than it actually is, since TV shows pretty much run 95% emergency trauma calls versus the reality being that routine interfacility transports are very much our everyday bread and butter, and even 911 calls are more often medical than trauma.

    (IFTs are taken by an ambulance as opposed to a non-ambulance medical van anytime a doctor signs off that the patient has ongoing treatment and/or a medical condition which requires EMS monitoring just in case.)

  331. Jayne not Jane*

    I work in procurement or in layman’s terms I am a Buyer. The only representation that I can think of is Rachel Greene in Friends. I do not work for the fashion industry in any way shape or form. There is a procurement team at many companies and for all types of industries. Its not as glamorous as one may think. But I find it fun, and if you are lucky some places can be a bit like online shopping all day everyday (VERY company dependent). But procurement is neat in that we work with nearly every dept of every company. I have worked on teams with Maintenance folks to big wig engineers and software developers. Its really neat to see everyone pitch their ideas, collaboration and buy everything to make it come together.

    1. Hybrid Employee (Part Human, Part Wolf)*

      *waves from beneath a pile of forecasting spreadsheets*

      As one of the apparently few millennials who wasn’t into Friends, I didn’t realize there had ever been even one depiction of a Buyer on TV. Thanks!

      I agree with you on all points about what’s fun about it; almost nothing I do is anything like online shopping, and hardly any of it could be entertainment. I almost never have fun work stories; the most exciting thing this year is that I figured out a new way to optimize a report in Salesforce. I would not watch a TV show about anything at my company, let alone in my department, but I enjoy doing it.

  332. Tuna Casserole*

    I’m a librarian. They never get it right in TV shows or movies. Where do I start? Many depictions of librarians show us as shy, sexually repressed spinsters. In It’s a Wonderful Life, being a librarian was depicted as sad and lonely and to be avoided at all costs. Rarely do you see librarians in media doing actual library work (I’m looking at you, Aurora Teagarden) and even rarer still are any librarians who are people of color, or men. And can we talk about the shy librarian by day and sex kitten a night trope? Or the authoritarian librarian who rudely shushes everyone? It’s getting better, I think, but most librarians in movies are still background caricatures. The one stereotype I wish were true is where the librarian pulls one pin out of her hair and it falls beautifully about her shoulders in shiny waves. My hair does not do that. My hair will never do that.

    1. SaffyTaffy*

      I was literally JUST explaining to someone today that the modern librarian stereotype is pink-haired, far-left, LGBT+ (that is, ME), and very different from the humorless frump. When people tell me “you don’t look like a librarian” I ask them right out when they were last in a library.

  333. No but I play one on television*

    Archivist/Curator- Hahahaha!
    Stop with the white gloves already!
    Are you Mickey Mouse?
    Then no just no.
    Handling certain objects like photographs, maybe but that is it.
    Everyone loved the book Cartographers but I couldn’t get past the central character donning gloves to examine a paper map.

    Also in movies- clothing. high heels, pencil skirts, silk shirts yikes. This is pretty dirty work sometimes.

    1. amouse*

      Literally just finished The Cartographers earlier this week, and yeah. So much about that book just drove me absolutely nuts! (technical services archivist here). I can suspend disbelief for the magical realism parts of the plot, but the parts based in reality (i.e. materials handling) should be accurate!

      I will say though, my boss does wear high heels to work almost every day, and I’ve only seen her wear pants once in 8 years. Then you have me, who regularly gets mistaken for a college student (I’m 15 years out of college) because I will absolutely destroy any nice clothing I wear to work while crawling around on the ground for stupid reasons.

  334. GammaGirl1908*

    Although I stopped during the pandemic, for 20 years I taught group exercise classes as a side job to my separate 9-5 desk job. OH MY GODDESS does TV not have any idea what it means to teach aerobics. Either it’s a half-naked bimbo hopping around doing unsafe exercises and trying to injure participants, or it’s a muscle-bound meathead flirting with every woman in the place (or every once in a while you get a yoga teacher who walks around just saying, “…and breathe.”). None of them have any coordination or rhythm, none of them use the music, there’s no clue about what’s considered safe or effective, and most of it makes the gym seem like a place to go to get humiliated or hurt.

    Oh, and don’t get me started on extreme weight loss show trainers, who would get fired in a day at a regular gym. Ugh.

  335. Cool Tina, Train Conductress*

    When I think of theatrical directing I think of Slings & Arrows, and how it portrayed so much of regional theatre accurately–except the actual work of directing a play.

    According to the show, directing well is saying absolutely nothing for 90% of the process, watching while your actors terrorize each other, and then saying one brilliant thing while tinkly music plays. It means telling one actor to improvise changes to a *broadsword fight* without telling the other actor, *in front of an audience.* It means changing the entire production design (set, lights, costume) of a large-cast show while you’re already in tech.

    On the other hand, the theater community has generally rewarded irresponsible men with plum directing jobs and mostly ignored directors who can actually be trusted to manage large groups of people, which is a lot of why I quit, so can we really call it unrealistic?

    (The first episode captures VERY realistically what it’s like to be a director IMO. It’s also pretty depressing.)

  336. Don't Send Your Kids to Hudson University*

    I am an in-house lawyer for a major university. My user name is an inside joke with my former rockstar admin/office manager because we were always aghast at the portrayal of Hudson University on Law & Order SVU. In one particularly noteworthy episode, Hudson’s general counsel was actively covering up a criminal sexual assault by multiple student-athletes. The inaccuracies for the role and function of a university attorney were outlandish and comical, not to mention the illegal and unethical conduct, which while possible is not at all standard in this practice area.

    1. Hudson University Library*

      Our academic library was actually used for a scene at Hudson University Library. We were thrilled. The production people didn’t like our signage (the endcap with the location numbers) so they redid it. The new signs looked so great that we kept them.
      Firm agree to not sending your kids there.

  337. OLDSLP*

    I am a Speech Language Pathologist. Children do not magically begin to speak in full sentences after 15 minutes of therapy. Also small children in movies and TV shows never, ever reflect actual normal speech development. As well, adults with articulation difficulties never seem to lead productive adult lives in movies and TV shows while in reality they certainly can and do!

  338. La Triviata*

    Much of what I see of people “working” on shows they aren’t doing much work. They often don’t seem that engaged with their work and, often, the workplaces are opportunities to hang out with friends, make romantic connections, and get out of their homes. And they usually seem to have enough money to afford nice places to live, nice clothes, good food, eating out and so on. My first year out of college, at my first job, I was barely getting by. Having to buy a winter coat just about broke me.

  339. Union*

    Civil engineers are usually depicted as villains or as victims of horrific crimes. [Hm. Maybe I just watch a lot of crime shows.]
    The other end, we’re lumped in with the architects, and for some reason, we still have rooms filled with hand drafters and vellum. CAD isn’t sexy enough I guess.

    2. Engineering*

      Another civil/structural engineer here. I guess I’m not watching the right shows because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on screen. But I got very cross with a Nora Roberts romance with a structural engineer protagonist. It’s been a long time, but as I recall she was only just meeting the architect even though construction was starting, and had suggestions for fundamental changes to the design brief, that should have been raised months previously – or probably not at all.

  340. EchoSparks*

    I used to work as a Sonographer, performing ultrasounds (in the US). My spouse practically tries to cover my eyes any time an ultrasound happens in a movie/tv show. Inaccuracies abound, and I have no choice but to loudly detail all of them while getting increasingly frustrated.

    The most common tend to be:
    – physician performs the exam (most physicians don’t know how to perform an ultrasound, much less the images and reporting needed for the exam to satisfy national accreditation and billing standards)
    – machine isn’t positioned properly, patient isn’t positioned properly
    – probe is held incorrectly (seems like the actors generally underestimate how much pressure is used in an ultrasound and end up holding it lightly from the top)
    – image is completely inaccurate (backwards, upside down, color representing blood flow is showing the wrong direction, what they say is on the screen isn’t at all, fetus waaaay further along than the character is said to be)

    The worst I ever saw was a scene that was supposedly an exam of the patient’s heart (done by a physician, of course) but the image on the screen was a kidney. I just kept whining “It’s a kidney” into a throw pillow until the blasphemy finally ended.

    I know a sonographer who once worked as a paid consultant on a medical show and she said that after getting her feedback around scenes involving ultrasounds they completely disregarded everything she said. She still got paid though.

  341. H.C.*

    I work in public relations / PR, and I’d say its portrayal is skewed toward somewhat niche segments, particularly entertainment publicists & political press secretaries. In my ~15 year career I think I can count on two hands all the times I’ve been involved with red carpet parties or a briefing + Q&A style news conference.

  342. LabRat4Life*

    Medical Laboratory here – it is not all backlighting and colored water in tubes. Also, watching someone draw blood on TV makes me laugh.

  343. Alice in Blunderland*

    I’m a restaurant cook, and until The Bear came out, I haaaaaated the way cooks and chefs were portrayed in fiction. Cooking reality shows aren’t much better, either. But although I thought The Bear was excellent and for the most part startlingly accurate*, it was so close to home that I had massive anxiety watching it at times.

    *The biggest inaccuracy I noted from The Bear was that a struggling restaurant kept on a pastry chef. As a pastry chef who’s been fired because the boss couldn’t pay his bills, more accurately that person would be the FIRST to be fired, not kept on to develop a donut project.

    1. Snow Globe*

      I don’t think he was actually a pastry chef, he just wanted to be a pastry chef. He was primarily tasked with making the buns for the sandwiches. But, yes, he spent a lot of time working on his donuts (which was his own project, not the restaurants’s).

  344. Katie S*

    My field, social work, absolutely is not. It is a dynamic changing evidenced based field that can cover a wide scope of work. Most social workers are portrayed as people taking kids away from families or unethical boundary crossing therapists. So far from the truth. Oh and they also are dressed sloppy and act spacey.

    1. Katherine*

      I’m a social worker too! The only other time we’re portrayed is when detectives come and ask us questions on the street and we publicly provide HIPAA protected information then and there. I do have ADHD so I’m not touching your last sentence.
      Often my job would make a pretty funny black humor type show though, I think, although sometimes I tell my friends a funny story from work and their response is “oh my god, are you ok?”.
      I used to be a therapist and I remember watching a show set in a psychiatric hospital that I was very excited about and then there was a scene where the treatment team was desperately trying to figure out what was going on with a client and one of the doctors went rummaging frantically through a library and then ran in shouting “I’ve got it! It’s folie a deux!” and I screamed “ITS IN THE FUCKING DSM-IV” at the TV. Like, differential diagnosis can be really challenging because there are so many overlapping symptoms and individual differences in presentation and cultural biases and stigma but, like, you figure that out by talking to the people having the symptoms.

  345. I wish I sat around and read all day*

    Librarian. The most recent egregious example was the Leverage reboot.
    The community librarian is played as played by LeVar Burton,(a hero to librarians everywhere, very meta) This character does almost nothing except read and check out books.
    Not what we do.

  346. Geekette*

    I’m a web developer, and I don’t work for a tech startup, or even a tech company. The web apps I build are all sales and marketing tools, not the product we’re selling. I don’t know of any media that acknowledges that this kind of programming work exists.

  347. OlympiasEpiriot*

    Ahhhhh. I wish I had seen this earlier.

    Civil engineer here. We are rarely represented and, when we do crop up, not usually in a good light and not accurately since, seriously, we are not inherently callous with human life. I mean…seriously?? “Civil” is right there in our name! We are building for people!

    So, I still hate that Stallone movie, Daylight, where a city engineer says to just flood the tunnel since it’ll be easier to repair in the long run. (Nope, none of us would say that and, actually, that’s technically incorrect in all situations.) Not happy with Bridge Over the River Kwai, either, as Colonel Nicholson was an ass and, no, my profession wouldn’t prefer that kind of “professional devotion”!

    Honestly, as unrealistic as so many bit of it were, for portrayal of the attitude, I recommend Space Cowboys.

    1. Dinwar*

      My father was a civil engineer before he retired. My mother to this day contends that “civil engineer” is a contradiction in terms. EXTREMELY passionate about his work, and absolutely dedicated to the safety of the people using what he built. If you were stupid enough to risk that safety, his level of concern for your safety rapidly dwindled. Oddly enough he was also a volunteer fire fighter, and took pride that as chief no building burned down in the town he protected. He loved building for people, he just didn’t like very many of them.

      I think it’s like Bert and Sheldon from “The Big Bang Theory”. Every geologist I’ve met knows a Bert, and every physicist I’ve met knows a Sheldon (note that the Sucker Rule applies here).

      1. OlympiasEpiriot*

        I introduce myself as an uncivil engineer…mostly because I am frequently working at the intersection of design and execution and my task is often to make sure the contractor builds what they bought.

        This is sometimes adversarial.

  348. Former midwife*

    Retired midwife here, every birth on TV and movies is bonkers. People RUN to the hospital after one contraction, the complication rate (someone once did a study of hundreds of TV and movie births and calculated it!) is something like triple the actual rate, and something about birth turns men into absolute buffoons, which is not my experience at all.
    The midwives themselves are exaggerated personalities, but they do make me laugh because for every ridiculous quirky midwife on TV, I’ve known one who had at least a smidge of that personality trait.

    1. Ally*

      Have you seen This is going to hurt, how did you find that?

      Also, sorry but I have to ask- what about Call the Midwife? Obviously it’s erm not current, but…

    2. AnotherSarah*

      When I gave birth, I thought I knew all the ways in which TV/movie birth wasn’t accurate, but man, I was not surprised for how looooong the part before pushing is, and how it’s mostly about getting through it (if you’re having an uncomplicated labor).

  349. Moose Law*

    Environmental lawyer here! I get so frustrated it’s a shorthand for “good person who went to law school.” Who do they think is on the other side? Also an environmental lawyer.

    When “How I Met Your Mother” was on, people expected me to be like Marshall. And there is that new show with the autistic Jewish environmental lawyer roommate…accurate to me at least, but still stings.

    Overall, my life is less “The Pelican Brief” and more “Parks and Rec.”

  350. Beboots*

    Interpreters – in the sense of tour guides at natural areas or historic parks – are almost invariably portrayed as boy scout type people that are either dropping exposition at the right moment, or some sort of guard type position for people to get around to sneak on site. We’re nerdy but we do so much more! There is really little awareness for my profession. Most people just ask what languages I speak when I say I’m an interpreter, but what I really do is make meaning out of the landscape or historic resource and make it relevant to you. Sometimes I teach folks outdoor skills or lead guided hikes, but really we’re educators in the public sphere. We have a lot of knowledge to share and skills to teach!

  351. California Dreamin'*

    I am a court reporter working in depositions, and this is something we laugh about amongst ourselves a lot. You often will see court reporters in either deposition or courtroom scenes portrayed with antiquated equipment set up in the wrong way (we don’t use machines with paper anymore, it’s all electronic! And back 20 years ago when we did, the paper wasn’t spilling all over the place!) Usually it’s just someone sitting there moving their hands around on the machine with no resemblance to how we actually move our hands when we work (it’s not like typing, it’s a little more like playing the piano!) And often you’ll see a deposition scene with no court reporter in the room at all… which is not a thing. The court reporter is the deposition officer and must be present, otherwise there is no deposition. And just generally I would like everyone to know that we are highly skilled, highly trained professionals working in the legal field… most people really have no idea about my field, and it’s a fascinating and really rewarding career!

    1. Manders*

      My friend is a court reporter, and she ended up being in a movie where she got to portray a court reporter, so I know that scene was accurate (except for her hair color, which weirdly they made her dye brown from her natural blonde? She didn’t even have a speaking role!).

      1. California Dreamin'*

        Yeah, every now and then word will go out that they’re looking for an actual court reporter to be in a scene (I live in LA.) But it seems like far more often they just stick an extra in front of an old steno machine and put her (always, always a her) in the corner of the room (also not accurate!)

        1. Manders*

          I moved to Kentucky from California and I was surprised when I did jury duty here that we don’t have court reporters for trials. I can’t speak for depositions though.

  352. Brian Baker*

    Medical Librarian here. While I have seen medical libraries in hospital shows, they are completely unstaffed, and the researchers tend to look in print journals. Only the old is in print. Everything newer is digital. In Medicine, generally, only the last 5 years matter.

    I used to be law school librarian – those folks are NEVER on TV or in the movies!

  353. Ally*

    Please, are there any Nuns here who work in Catholic girls’ high schools and can confirm if Derry Girls is accurate?!

    Sister Michael fan for life

    1. Irish Teacher*

      Not a nun, but I attended Catholic (not really many non-Catholic ones in (the Republic of) Ireland), girls’ schools run by nuns. I haven’t seen Derry girls and anyway, Northern Ireland would have a different school system than down here, but if you’ve specific questions, I could possibly give my experience. I think Derry Girls is also set in my era. Didn’t it end with the Good Friday Agreement, which was signed just as I was about to finish school? I was waiting for the agreement to be announced before I could go study as I had my final exams that June.

      Most of our teachers weren’t nuns, by the way, but our principal was and one or two teachers, including this really elderly nun who was past retirement age but still taught religion and who taught as if it were still the 1950s and therefore was not popular.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yes, Derry Girls ended with the Good Friday agreement. I went to a (non-religious) all-girls high school in England at around the time that the show is set. A few of the teachers had Sister George Michael vibes in spite of not being nuns – by that I mean that they had a general air of being equally amused and frustrated by teenage girls and our nonsense. And we also had a lot of petty and ridiculous uniform and appearance rules – though not as many as the girls at the Catholic school next door. They apparently had to keep their hair long and ask for advance permission if they wanted to get it cut. WTF?

        1. Irish Teacher*

          That last is bizarre. We also had a lot of uniform rules, as most schools in Ireland do (though they generally overlooked girls cutting up their skirts so they were about six inches long), but the only rules we had about hair was that some of our teachers in primary school insisted that long hair was kept off the face, by either a hairband or being tied back and…even that wasn’t an actual rule, just something specific teachers made a fuss about.

  355. Onward*

    I just watched the Julia Roberts/George Clooney rom-com Ticket to Paradise and, while I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, when the daughter said “I’m a lawyer… or, I will be anyway when I get home. I just graduated college.”

    WHAT?! NO. That’s not even remotely how it works. You haven’t even been to LAW SCHOOL yet. Are you kidding? You can’t call yourself a lawyer.

    My husband and I had to pause the movie to gripe about it for a couple minutes before resuming, and still continued to scoff at the “lawyer”.

    Thanks for the chance to rant about it ;-)

    1. Glomarization, Esq.*

      In one of my jurisdictions, lawyers use “Esq.” (In the other one, lawyers laugh at the pretentiousness of using “Esq.”) You’re not supposed to use it until you’ve passed the bar exam and character ‘n’ fitness and been admitted to the bar — that is, not until you’re an actual licensed, practicing lawyer. But there’s always a number of young people who post their graduation day photos on Facebook with captions like, “Whoo-hoo! Now you can call me Esquire!!!!!!”

    2. Warrior Princess Xena*

      Haha – this reminds me of how I felt when I’d passed all my CPA exams but didn’t have all the work hours I needed for the license. I was never sure if I should say “I’m a CPA… sort of” or “I will be a CPA in a few months”.

  356. Lynne*

    I’m a writer in higher ed. Being a writer is often (mostly) portrayed as being this process where everything just flows out of you in one piece and in the form of a finished draft. It makes it look so easy, never showing the hours that are spent researching, interviewing, outlining, drafting, and editing. And then, there is the time spent just staring at a screen waiting to be struck by the desire to write. Nobody ever seems to struggle or not enjoy the writing process. I LOVE writing, and I NEED to write, but I don’t always LIKE it.

    1. GammaGirl1908*

      Ha, I work in communications, and I often say that the scariest part of my job is staring at a blank Word document, knowing that in about 90 minutes, it needs to be filled. With words. By me.

  357. TheLibraLibrarian*

    There are a few shows to pick from for my field, (library, in case you couldn’t tell from the username), but I’m always truly astonished that there’s no show about it directly. Parks and Rec deals with the public aspect of their jobs, but a public library has so much more interaction!

    Speaking of Parks, that’s the show my coworkers and I quote the most often. There’s a scene where the librarian runs Leslie’s library card through a DVD unlock machine; that drove us crazy! However, we use the phrase “punk ass book jockeys” with pride.

  358. Dontsmashtheartifactsplease*

    I’m an archaeologist.
    Basically, we do the exact opposite of Indiana Jones. Archaeology involves lots careful mapping, walking through endless farmer fields, careful illustration, copious note taking and many many hours kneeling in dirt and mud. The work is much more likely to involve shoveling out large pits of mud than bending over carefully removing sand with a tiny brush. I’ve also never found ancient treasures with mysterious powers, solved riddles, been attacked by nazis or been paid a living wage.

    2. La Triviata*

      I’m always amazed at how the traps, etc., in centuries old tombs and such are still working perfectly. I mean, doors with old-fashioned locks often need fixing every few years.

    3. Dinwar*

      We used to lovingly call the archaeology teams Shovel Bums. Lots of them worked job-to-job with long periods between where they had to make spare income. I knew one who was a gold farmer in World of Warcraft, and another person was a semi-professional bagpipe player, to give two examples. They got paid a bit better than the laborers, had far more responsibility (the laborers couldn’t actually violate a treaty, while archaeologists could do so accidently), and worked longer hours. And they all seemed to exude what I call optimistic cynicism. “We’re gonna get screwed over, the work’s gonna suck, the water truck guy’s probably gonna try to run us over again, but look at this debitage!”

      I do feel bad for what I did to one. Some guy on a construction site decided that paleontology was archaeology and went off on a rant about Ancient Aliens. For hours. I was stuck there because I needed to monitor for fossils. Finally the archaeologist onsite walks up and I said “You know who you need to talk to? Him! I just deal with dead animals, he deals with humans!” The poor archaeologist’s face went from deer-in-headlights to pure murderous rage. The next day he told me that he forgave me, though–he had to do the same thing to shake this guy.

  359. LabRat*

    Radiological Control.

    If we appear in media at all we have two functions:

    1. Dress in the bunny suit and hold a meter that makes noise (accurate).

    2. Die horribly (not so much).

  360. MedicalAnthropologyIsAlsoImportant*

    There are no accurate portrayals of how Public Health works and why it should be funded.
    (you actually do not want your public health department busy, unless it’s busy upgrading and training for new technology, taking more courses to keep skills updated, working out worst case scenarios and how to deploy personnel, etc.)

  361. Pepperoni Pup*

    I’m a geologist for a small consulting company related to oil and gas. Almost all of my work is done on a computer, and much of that is data management, including a lot of transcribing scans of old paper files into something I can use digitally. Once that’s done I get to do the fun part of mapping and other related interpretative tasks. At least I get to use pretty colors for that part?? Ha!

    But the same as so many other posts here – watching someone work on a computer doing tedious, repetitive tasks is not interesting and definitely does not drive a plot forward.

  362. Headlunchlady*

    I’m a school district foodservice director. “Lunch ladies” are often portrayed as grumpy women who scoop slop on a lunch tray. Yes, sometimes they get grumpy because of wild students. I’d say districts are putting more of an emphasis on customer service these days. And the slop, nope. School lunches have come a long way!

  363. LadyoftheLab*

    I am a medical laboratory scientist. People often have never heard of this field, and we aren’t often featured on TV. If you’ve ever peed in a cup or had blood drawn in a doctor’s office- we are the ones who test it! 2 shows stand out to me for inaccurate portrayal-
    1. CSI- I did a long rotation in a crime lab, and basically nothing in this show is accurate. The people in the lab are not typically the people out there collecting evidence, and you may not actually get into the drama of the case yourself (though you might if your results are perplexing). We do occasionally testify in court!
    2. House- doctors? doing lab tests?! LOL.

  364. Art3mis*

    I’d say that Office Space is pretty accurate for working in an office. I never burned the building down though.

    1. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

      Hahah yes it is. Going to need to rewatch it again soon.

      I never even had a red stapler, or worked in a basement.

      1. Selina Luna*

        I bought my Dad a red Swingline stapler and a Melvin t-shirt one year for Christmas. He owned his own computer store and had literally never worked in an office. I’m not 100% sure he’s ever owned a tie. That movie is just universal.

    2. Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet!)*

      I never really understood Milton’s stapler obsession until I worked in an office that only had cheap AmazonBasics staplers instead of more heavy-duty ones like Swingline. I print and staple a lot, and the Amazon stapler jams every other day.

    3. Em*

      Yes!!! Office space always tops my list for accurate depiction of workplace dynamics, in corporate offices and in chain restaurants.

  365. Catwoman*

    Not me, but someone close to me was in training to be a Flight Controller for NASA for a time. In training, they were told that Apollo 13 got the closest to portraying the job how it actually is, especially in an emergency. The instructors actually recommended that trainees watch it if they haven’t already.

  366. Not A Doctor*

    Oh boy. I’m a medical researcher, specifically clinical research including drug and device trials.
    That’s what I do now, but I started off in public health before the industry got really gutted during the recession.

    My job could not possibly be LESS accurate in media! No one knows how literally any of it works. I could go on for days, but the biggest thing that aggravates me actually is that any time you see research discussed anywhere (fictional or not!) it’s always shown as if the doctors heading up the projects, usually the PIs, actually do the work. They do none of it on average lol there is a team of a bunch of other people, many of them non-doctors though some are MDs or PhDs, who handle almost everything and simply have regular meetings to tell the head doctor(s) what is going on with the research.

    Often the head doctors heading up a study don’t even know what the protocol is. They usually don’t actually know how to correctly create a study protocol that is valid or how any of the statistical analysis works, either, that’s all the support staff like me. Now, some individual doctors are not like this and really do a lot of the structure themselves, but they are the uncommon exception by far. A lot of the real structural stuff is done by people with undergrad or master’s level educations, and our names are usually not put on any of the resulting publications nor mentioned anywhere else.

    This has been really frustrating to me throughout the pandemic where I’ll see doctors being interviewed in the news and they’ll be either bolstering or discounting research in such a way that shows they have no idea how to interpret population-level research or statistics. They’re often extremely wrong! But reporters and the public assume they are the experts because they are the PI on a lot of research that was done almost entirely by other people. It’s a mess. A lot of completely accidental misinformation has resulted.

    1. Research Adjacent*

      Absolutely. I am fortunate to work with many physician PIs who do know the nuts and bolts and will tell you in detail why something will/will not work, but others… yeah.

      Also don’t get me started on the conflation of medicine with public health, in media and in real life.

      1. Not A Doctor*

        Oh my god this is what I’ve been screaming about for the last three years: An immunologist is not an epidemiologist! A pulmonologist is not an expert in studying adverse events in brand new pharmaceuticals! Doctors are licensed and qualified to speak on the specific exact patient population they see, in a clinical sense, and NOTHING ELSE. Please for the love of god stop putting anyone with an MD on TV to run their mouth about the pandemic, they do not know what they’re talking about! Most of them don’t ever touch research, and that’s before you get to the amount of research PIs that don’t actually know relevant research methodology…

  367. Accidental Itenerate Teacher*

    GIS- I think the only time its ever been mentioned is What We Do In the Shadows. The character (Stu) tries multiple times to explain what he does, but no one gets it and just assumes he does general IT stuff.
    Which is pretty accurate to be honest.

  368. Knitting Cat Lady*

    I’m a nuclear engineer.

    -The fuel from power plants can’t be turned into a nuke in a few easy steps
    -Going critical is not a problem. A reactor is critical when each generation of neutrons is as large as the previous one. The reactor runs at constant power. Sub critical means the power is going down, supra critical means the power is going up.
    -Radiation is at once way more and way less dangerous than people think. People will freak out over having to take a radioactive tracer for something (you get more radiation eating a banana) but won’t bat an eye at going through a full body CAT scan (that gives you as much radiation as you get from background radiation in a year)
    -Chernobyl was not the biggest release of radiation into the environment. That was Mayak.
    -Nuclear weapons tests have released a few orders of magnitude (iirc a factor of 1000) more radiation into the environment than all civilian accidents
    -Chernobyl shows us that radiation is far less dangerous for wildlife than humans
    -Incorporation of radioactive materials is the worst
    -Want a good plot for a thriller? Oops, local hospital lost one of their radiation therapy sources! Must find it quick before it ends up in a scrap yard! That’s the Goiana incident, btw.
    -Orphan sources absolutely terrify me
    -Radiation poisoning is the worst way to die

    2. LabRat*

      Were you getting links and questions from everyone you’d ever met during “Western Australia, what is you doin???” week too?

    3. IDon’tGlow*

      If you aren’t familiar with Plainly Difficult on YouTube you should check that channel out. There are SO MANY orphan source stories and they are all terrifying.

    4. Selina Luna*

      I’ve taken a radioactive tracer! It was a little pill, and it was way less scary than the followup event: I had to drink radioactive iodine through a straw in a special room while a nurse watched me through a digital video feed and pushed in water to make sure I got all the radiation.
      That was terrifying.

  369. Justin*

    So my first nonprofit job was accurately depicted in the early seasons of Insecure. Clueless people who didn’t realize they were exploitative.

    My current nonprofit job is very well paid and not depicted at all.

  370. shaw of dorset*

    Would like to shout out my two favorite molecular biology goofs (I’m a micro tech, but close enough):
    1. On DS9, when Doctor Bashir announces that the strange protein he’s been keeping an eye on has broken down into DNA. Literally impossible.
    2. On the X-Files, that time they just… do PCR on newly discovered alien DNA which they explicitly say has a novel base pair. Like… how.

    I will say though, that I mostly don’t care and get a good laugh out of science mistakes in media. People who will point out every mistake and get made about them are my least favorite people to watch things with.

  371. WritingIsHard*

    As a former journalist, whenever I watch Criminal Minds I think that one of the writers must’ve had their heart broken by a reporter because their portrayals are never kind LOL.

    I now work in municipal government and Parks and Recreation is disturbingly accurate, especially the public meetings.

  372. Rinn*

    LAUGHS hysterically.
    All nurses everywhere.

    I cannot even watch anything Medical. we are so grossly misrepresented and unfortunately it contributes to the general public not understanding what nurses really do.

    1. JustMe*

      What about Carla from Scrubs? The fact that she is the only one who knows what she’s doing always made me think of the nurses I know, who similarly seem to be the only ones at work who know what they’re doing.

  373. squirreltooth*

    I’m an editor and can only laugh when I see a fictional editor on screen with a pristine white office and no computer of their desk.

    Also, having an author come in so I can tell them their book sucks to their face would be my worst nightmare.

  374. SingingInTheRain*

    I’m an EA and while I am sexy, I’ve never slept with a colleague, much less a boss. My job is usually much more mundane than that.

    I work in Venture Capital, and that’s an industry I haven’t really seen portrayed in a fictionalized tv series. If we expand it out to general finance, then you’ve got Wolf of Wall Street and other movies of that ilk, but those were more brokers and hedgefunds. You could throw in Silicon Valley since VC usually occupies a similar world but from a different angle. I think people are drawn to the greedy capitalist motif, so they look for the seedier side of finance.

    But – and obviously I’m biased here – I actually think a show about VC would be interesting. At a high level, I don’t think the overarching concept is that difficult to understand (investment in start-ups and emerging companies with high growth potential), and we get exposed early to a lot of innovative ideas. I could see a similar Mad Men style show but for the 90s/early 2000s, when tech was really taking off for the first time.

  375. Oof and Soup*

    I work in physical therapy and the short answer is No, my field is not portrayed correctly in media. The number of times nurses, doctors, and surgeons (!!!) have been shown doing “physical therapy” is astounding. Physical therapy takes specialized degrees – a Doctorate for the PTs and an Associate’s for the PT Assistants. A surgeon at most prints out old rehab protocols with activity goals over a timeline and the PTs and PTAs are the ones who decide how to go about accomplishing all of that.

    1. Em*

      I had several surgeries after a nasty broken leg, and my orthopedic surgeon could not have cared less about my soft tissue… he sent me to PT but any time I mentioned pain or mobility/ROM issues during my checkups, he was like “well, your bones are healing well so you should be fine.”

    1. knitcrazybooknut*

      I work as a department manager in a state funded university, and the 1970s called me to say they would like their huge metal desks back. Unfortunately, we can’t spare them.

    2. Wendy Darling*

      I owe much of the dismal state of my back to the shitty 1970s furniture my department was still using when I was in graduate school in the 2010s. I used to sneak into the business school study rooms just to sit in their aeron chairs.

  377. Person from the Resume*

    Not quite my exact field, but I always find NCIS (when I watch it) ridiculous for a particular thing. A military investigative service and the legal system/JAG has a very limited jurisdiction – basically on base crimes.

    No “an off duty Navy reservist was killed off base” and NCIS takes the lead. That’s for the local police to deal with. Even an active duty military member involved in a crime off base gets investigated by the local police.

  378. Happy Retiree*

    I spent 3 decades in TV production before retiring. I’ve never seen a portrayal of the incredibly good looking cast and crew coming in from a location shoot but not allowed into the studio until they all pick the wood ticks off each other.

  379. Mrs. Hawiggins*

    Well, my screen name Mrs. Hawiggins is from the Carol Burnett skit with Mrs. Wiggins and Mr. Tudball. Probably one of the best skits that show had.

    Now being one of the most highly recognized office managers in my area, no, I can’t claim Mrs. Hawiggins was accurate, but as for me being the loveable blonde office ditz that I am, maybe life imitated art in that sense…

  380. Grumpy_old_it_guy*

    As a Database Administrator, there is absolutely no portrayal in any medium. Nobody would want to watch hours of index tuning or crafting delicate maintenance plans…

  381. AmazonandDog*

    I thought Pentagon Wars did an excellent job of depicting the ridiculousness of my former job in military acquisitions. Space Force does too from an overall military perspective. Oh, Coast Guard. ;)

  382. Aaron Read*

    Having worked in radio broadcasting for over twenty years, it’s not that shows/movies like “Airheads”, “WKRP” and “NewsRadio” were completely inaccurate. People like those characters DID exist in real life, especially during the eras those shows existed. But they were exceedingly rare, and often only demonstrated that extreme level of wackiness on a very infrequent basis. But that’s what comedy *is*: you take the mundane, and you twist it until it’s just surreal enough to be ridiculous, but still recognizable at the same time.

    The exception, of course, is the engineers and the technology. Often there is correct technology present in the scene, but it’s almost always used wildly incorrectly by the actors. And the actors portraying the engineers are rarely like real engineers. Joe Rogan (NewsRadio) was arguably the most egregious violation of this, although completely unrealistic, it did lead to this amusing exchange:

    Joe: All I know is I’m not going to get fired.
    Catherine: Why not?
    Joe: Because of this. [Joe holds up a small electrical component]
    Beth: What’s it do?
    Joe: I don’t know. But I took it out of the radio transmitter, and only I know where to put it back.
    Dave: Are we still on the air?
    Joe: Not in Jersey.
    Dave: (shrugs and walks away)

    Also, there is a special place in hell for Aaron Sorkin and the damage he’s done to Americans’ expectations of what “good government” is “supposed” to be thanks to drivel like “The West Wing.” There’s a reason why virtually every elected official, and their staffers, all say “Veep” is the most accurate portrayal of politics in DC, and that’s rather not at all like West Wing.

    1. Aaron Read*

      Actually, one thing every show about radio gets wrong is how long those people stay in their jobs. Longevity is possible only for talent at the very, very top of the ratings game. Everyone else gets laid off every two or three years at most. Often tenure at a radio gig is measured in months.

  383. Ciara*

    I’m used to be an archaeologist. We don’t dig up dinosaurs, carry whips or magically know exactly where the gold is buried. We do spend hours drafting reports, researching in libraries and obscure journals, do months of mind numbing back breaking removal by hundreds of tonnes of top soil.

  384. ED123*

    I used to be a physiotherapist in past life. I’ve never had multiple surgeons (especially the heads of departments) mobilising one patient after surgery like they do in Grey’s anatomy.

  385. BlushingCrow*

    I generally feel like there should be more Excel (or the equivalent) representation just in general. The amount of things that my work uses it for is incredible.
    Also, I work for a very large engineering and manufacturing company, and the way things often get magically designed, built and/or tested to readiness within a day in media is truly amazing. There was an episode of DCs Legends of Tomorrow where they were ‘building one plane a day’. They took that to mean that one whole plane was built from beginning to end in a day, not that one planes worth of work gets done in one day, and made it real hard to pay attention to the rest of the episode.

  386. Penny*

    If you crossed Abbott Elementary with the parody twitter account Los Feliz Daycare, it would pretty accurately represent the southern California school where I work! (Said entirely with love, i promise!)

  387. Txag18*

    I work in commercial construction and while HGTV-esque shows are technically residential construction, my coworkers and I are always horrified at the lack of PPE and safety protocols seen on tv. Sure home construction isn’t required to follow OSHA standards, but maybe they should be….

  388. Nodramalama*

    Maybe the U.S legal system is different, but there really arent gotchas or surprises in the Australian court system. Everything has to be submitted to the court and to the otherside ahead of time, if you disagree with a witness you have to put it to them, and you can’t present exciting new evidence in the 11th hour.

  389. Moonlight*

    I have a Masters degree, where I initially worked as a psychologist/psychotherapist. I noticed that therapists are rarely if ever portrayed, accurately on television. Most the therapists do things that are wildly unethical all the time like sleeping with patients or associating with patients outside of sessions or befriending patients. Plus a lot of the time to make someone into a psychiatrist, such as Linda from Lucifer, who does a lot of unethical things, including being friends with Lucifer, maze and Amenadiel, but another detail is just that her being a medical doctor/psychiatrist but exclusively doing talk therapy isn’t realistic. It’s rarely out, how and gregious that stuff is. Sometimes shows tried to mitigate it. For example in how I Met your mother Robin has a therapist for a bit who she ends up falling for and dealing and the therapist is initially like oh I can’t date you because I’m your therapist and her solution is “Oh how about you just tell me all of these really personal things about yourself and that will fix the problem”. Like no. That’s simply not how it works. Pretty much every licensing body has rules where you can’t EVER EVER EVER date or sleep with a client. Like that honestly disgusts me because there’s such a power dynamic between client and therapist that it’s basically impossible to rectify that just by making the therapist tell you their personal stuff too and you can’t just end sessions, problem solved. You can’t have ANY dual relationships (can’t have your clients be you friends or family, can’t have a client who’s also your accountant, etc). There’s conditions that’ll overrule that (like if you’re one of a small number of therapists in a small rural town, most licensing bodies have conditions for how to handle it if you eventually have to see a friend, your kids teacher etc but only if there’s legit no other choice; you’re obligated to refer to someone else wherever possible). So basically a lot of TV therapists just do SO MANY unethical things.

    I can still watch it though because it’s just to (I love lucifer and HIMYM) but it always makes me happy when I see a therapist who isn’t flagrantly unethical (eg I like the therapist I’m Never Have I Ever)

    1. Raida*

      ever watched the Cinema Therapy channel on youtube?
      the couple on movie therapists I really really enjoyed!

  390. TacoBelljobfair*

    I used to work for a pizza resturant. I think The Parent Hood episode Pizza Man represented it well. We had a more sophicated ordering system and oven but it was pretty much the same.

  391. WhoKnows*

    I worked in entertainment PR for over a decade. The way we’re portrayed on TV is absurd – which is especially funny, given how we’d then have to promote those shows! Every PR person is portrayed as a vapid, rich, shallow monster–but I met so few of those people over time. For sure some of them were awful, but that’s about the people, not the profession. Most people I worked with were so smart, understood people, and genuinely cared about the work they were doing (and very much understood that it was not changing the world). Also, unless you were 20+ years into your career, you weren’t wearing designer and living solo in 1-bedroom apartments in Manhattan. Just like everyone else, we struggled to make ends meet.

    1. Raida*

      I’ve seen a few people mention clothing and housing with their jobs, especially for younger people.

      the podcast Romancing The Pod has a breakdown each episode on ‘Could they afford that house?’ which is great – sometimes actually yes it is realistic but most of the time? Without explicitly stating it’s all paid for by wealthy family it’s entirely fantasy. For all the characters, for all their jobs, for all the places they live even before getting to their lifestyles hahaaa

  392. Cookie*

    I’m an admin. I’m not vapid, low intellect, a gossip, young, or sexy. I’ve never had an affair with a boss. The work is challenging and the icky office politics are draining. One movie stereotype is pretty true, though – other staff do treat admins like they’re “less than.”

    1. Manders*

      Um, I would be utterly lost without our admin. I do not associate any of those words with that job at all! I would be horrible in that role for sure! So on behalf of many of us out here, thank you!

  393. NotThatAlison*

    Statisticians are never shown doing hours of data cleansing – just with the whizzy graph at the end.

  394. Casey*

    Rocket scientist! (Aka engineer at a rocket company.) We do have a Mission Control room where everyone sits in front of big screens and says “go for launch”, though a lot of that has been streamlined/automated relative to what you see on TV. Honestly, they get the jargon wrong but the general idea isn’t too off. It’s just more mundane and more meetings — but I think that’s pretty much any job. The design process probably lasts longer and is more structured than you see in media, but I HAVE made my own little breakthroughs in front of a whiteboard at 10pm.

  395. Odditor*

    If anyone’s read through 1,493 comments and has seen or heard of a portrayal of a performance auditor, let me know! Like many people, I didn’t even know this job existed for many years. I say “auditor” and people’s eyes glaze over before I can add “but not the financial kind.”

    2. Roscoe da Cat*

      There was the mention on West Wing of asking GAO to do a performance audit. Then they corrected themselves a couple of episodes later when GAO sent them a letter stating that GAO is part of the legislative branch and does not take requests from the White House.

  396. Kerry Dowling*

    I mentor families who are raising their deaf and/or hard-of-hearing children how to communication through speech and oral language. There’s a lot of negative discourse between the ASL community and families who choose the oral approach (I’ve been in this for 20+ years). The vast majority of books, tv shows, and movies portray children and adults with hearing loss as signing and predominantly non-speaking. This presents a sense to the average person that a child who is diagnosed with a hearing loss will learn ASL and possibly communicate mostly with sign (now that newborn hearing screen is mandated in the majority of US states, those numbers are on the rise). Not a week goes by that a person doesn’t challenge my work to promote strong listening and oral speech in our children. It astounds me that people can be so connected to technology with the powerful little computer they always have in their hand (in case my sarcasm does not translate: smartphone), yet challenge the use of technology in today’s advanced hearing aids and cochlear implants. I applaud the few shows out there that show an oral deaf character and just wish there were more.

  397. onyxzinnia*

    I’m an in-house marketer at a tech company, which doesn’t seem to be a role that exists on TV or film. For some reason they only show glamorous marketing folks who work at advertising agencies or who manage social media while software companies are only comprised of nerdy developers.

    Any semi-realistic show would be a hybrid of Office Space and Silicon Valley with the marketers trying to pull off semi-interesting campaigns of non-glamorous tech products while everyone tells them how to do their jobs via multiple revisions by committee. Throw in a couple of wacky unrelated CEO pet projects and it turns into a documentary.

    1. Miette*

      LMAO I am suddenly triggered. I have worked at tech startups most of my career and Silicon Valley got so many things right, especially in the first season.

      Let’s not forget a CEO who insists “We’re the Intel of [insert niche component tech here] – let’s get our clients to put our sticker on their hardware! [US] Inside!” Meanwhile the tech is the equivalent of the baking powder in a cake–vital to its success but nothing the bakery/clients that OEM it for much larger projects are willing to say they use much less endorse.

      Or the Sales VP who’s offended by the use of the word “Gosh” in ad copy since it’s a replacement for “God” and therefore still an offense against the third commandment (a real thing that happened to me).

      Or the co-worker with zero experience applying for the marketing manager position because “How hard can it be–all you guys do is think up slogans all day, right?” (another real thing that happened to me).

      1. onyxzinnia*

        Yes, yes, that sounds so familiar! The fastest way to get projects greenlit was to say something like “Salesforce/AWS did it this way last year”.

        Joined a new company, got invited to my first meeting. Meeting topic? Discuss draft 24 of a recruiting brochure. [true story]

        One day, graphic designer is nowhere to be found. Where was he? CEO sent him to sketch his yacht so it could be screen-printed on t-shirts he wanted to give his buddies. On the company dime of course. [true story]

        Executives: “We want big brand names to speak at our niche conference!”. Get FAANG researcher to speak. Proceed to wring hands at the possibility of speaker talking about said brand name.

  398. TOD*

    I’m a teacher of the deaf (and parent of deaf child) who works with families who have babies who have hearing loss. 85% of children with hearing loss LISTEN AND TALK! Being Deaf without spoken language skills (so using ASL exclusively) is exceedingly rare. I don’t use ASL on a daily basis because most kids use hearing technology to acquire the language of their home.

    Also, less than 20% of spoken language is visible so no, they can’t lipread like that. (Quiet Place and Walking Dead made me CRAZY! If you are saying this person needs ASL, they can’t just suddenly lipread perfectly because someone doesn’t know sign language. They don’t know English, it is a different language. Pluse lipreading strangers is exceedingly difficult.)

    1. Raida*

      Bad Lip Reading is a fun way to see just how broad the range of possible interpretations of lip movement can be :]

      I know there’s a few times in film and tv where someone basically can only confirm the anticipated words are possible but it’s not a guarantee, I like those moments

    2. Katherine*

      Only Murders in the Building is the most accurate TV portrayal I have seen, and I think the actor had a lot of influence in how the role was written.

  399. Bookie*

    I was a photo editor in the early 2000’s for publishing giants Condé Nast, Time, Inc. and Amex Publishing. My days were spent combing thru dusty archives with my unmanicured nails, and I had way less sex than Carrie Bradshaw.

  400. TomatoSoup*

    Former lawyer and I’ve never seen much in the way of accuracy around trials. Firstly, the vast majority of civil trials will settle before trial. Something in the neighborhood of 95%. Secondly, only the West Wing has ever gotten the tediousness (or even existence) of depositions right. Also, no-pretrial motions or calendering or just the slowness with which everything moves.

    Instead you get huge surprises in the midst of a trial, which just isn’t a thing because of all the aforementioned paperwork.

    1. Searching*

      Having had the unfortunate experience of giving a deposition one time, I can attest to the tediousness of it. I think we spent 25 minutes just on the meaning of one comma.

  401. Z*

    I loved Younger, but having worked in the publishing industry, I laughed out loud at all the wrong things. Publishing schedules with two week turnarounds (8 months), last minute trips to the Frankfurt Book Fair (booked out months in advance), random editors being given their own imprint … that’s all ignoring the TV magic of early-mid career editors wearing designer clothes and being able to afford to live in expensive apartments. The show was fun, but probably contributed to the number of author complaints we got about how long the publishing process takes.

  402. Michelle Smith*

    I literally cannot watch legal or police procedural shows anymore because they are so inaccurate and my lawyer brain can’t shut off and just enjoy the fiction. I’m constantly poking holes in everything and where’s the fun in that? Sorry Law and Order.

  403. Management Consultant (Big 3)*

    I am a management consultant at one of the big 3 (Bain, BCG, McKinsey) in the US. I joined after getting my MBA at a top 10 school. House of Lies was crazy – the idea that this group of people would go around and advise on radically different companies, markets, etc. all together was just strange. Clients hire us for our expertise. I know the perception is that we show up, know nothing, and make it all up…but we really don’t. I have almost 10 years of experience in my industry. Also, I have never had sex with a client. If they spent less time doing that then the would have time to build financial models and make slide decks with actual insights and you know…work behind them. The whole series is just funny. I’m also definitely not “the Bobs” from Office Space although sometimes I do want to ask client employees “what is it that you do here?” because part of the reason I love my job is because I want to understand how companies work and it is fascinating what people do! I am intrigued by this new show “The Consultant” though…I promise I’m not evil but an evil renegade consultant sounds fun.

  404. Carrie Bradshaw*

    LOL. On TV someone in my field (journalism) can write one column a week for an alt-weekly paper and afford a big-city apartment, designer wardrobe, and frequent nights out.

    In reality, all the alt-weeklies are either dead or owned by a single company, magazine rates are a fraction of what they once were (if they still exist at all), and most of the working journalists have transitioned to corporate comms or social media.

  405. Executive Assistant*

    I am an executive assistant. Most media portrays the role as a glorified coffee grabber or coat rack. In reality, we are the administrative brain for our executive, managing their calendar and tasks, and keeping on top of deadlines. The organization doesn’t run without us!

    1. Raida*

      I’ve specified to a few friends that there’s an Executive Assistant/Admin/Coordinator or there’s a Personal Assistant.

      One manages calls, meetings, emails, calendar, streamlines, filing, signing, prep, processes as a larger part of the Executive’s overall role.
      One does all those little errands for a person.

      If someone was doing both – that’s a crappy boss either wasting a work resource for personal use or an Executive wasting work resources that could be better utilised since they have so much free time to run errands!
      Or, of course, a crappy boss that’s bullied a subordinate who doesn’t even need to be an assistant.

  406. judyjudyjudy*

    I’m a scientist. I trained as a chemist, but now work more in biotech. All the portrayals of a bench scientist are really, really weird. All the set ups are nonsense. I think the rub is they want to provide a lot of visual interest so there is always totally incorrect glassware setups with dyed water + dry ice (most chemicals you will encounter are colorless or faintly yellow), or being a scientist is just….centrifuging stuff all the time? The centrifuge is an important tool in my work, but it’s the LEAST interesting part of the experiment. However, I think depicting the real work would be pretty boring for non-experts.
    One more thing: I think there should be a moratorium on using the “butterfly effect”/chaos theory, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and the third law of thermodynamics in TV and movies. They are usually used incorrectly (even as a metaphor) and it’s really tired. Just…stop.

  407. Becky*

    As a social worker the portrayals of over worked and underpaid with no foster homes for kids is accurate. There are some bad social workers but the Netflix movie that shows us as in suits and sunglasses feeding kids gruel is not very accurate lol.

  408. bookmark*

    I mean, you could argue GIS gets well (TERRIBLY) represented in procedurals where it takes them like 20 seconds to run a complex network analysis or overlay 15 different layers to identify the perfect combination of elevation, soil types, and tree species to pinpoint where a teammate has been buried alive…

  409. Elizabeth Naismith*

    I work in maternal/fetal medicine. Nothing about that is portrayed well on TV. Or even in the news.
    Labor is long. 12 hours is average, but more than 24 hours is fairly common.
    Don’t wait for your water to break before you come in. Sometimes it won’t break at all on its own, and we have to do so manually. Go by how far apart the contractions are.
    Also, just because contractions have started doesn’t mean you need to rush to the hospital. Nor freak out. Take a deep breath. Time a few contractions. If they’re more than 5 minutes apart, and you live relatively close to the hospital, it might be best to wait at home for a bit. Get your stuff ready, eat, and stay where it’s cozy until things progress a bit more.
    Also… labor is boring. It lasts for hours, and less than 1/8th of the time is actually spent in contractions. Plus, contractions are most effective in early labor if you’re not paying attention to them. So bring along things to keep yourself entertained. Books, movies, games, whatever. I had one mother bring in a gaming console and play Call of Duty during labor. She found it quite cathartic.
    We don’t “choose which to save, the mother or the child.” These days, we can usually save both. If it’s early in the pregnancy, we try to stabilize both mother and baby until the pregnancy is far enough along that baby has a good chance of survival. We also administer medications that speed up baby’s development. We’ve managed to save babies as young as 21 weeks gestation. 26 weeks is pretty common for survival these days. We still prefer to keep the bun in the oven longer if possible, but we can work with early delivery, too.

  410. HomerJaySimpson*

    I was a nuclear reactor operator in the Navy for a decade. I’m not allowed to watch NCIS with my mother anymore because the one time I did, I spent the entire time calling the entire uniformed cast names and insulting the writers who thought that a murderer might accidentally drop a challenge coin in the bag with a murder victim (it would be like accidentally dropping a copy of a congratulatory email from your boss in).
    And I can’t stand most anything with a nuclear reactor in it because of the token “Oh no! The reactor is GOING CRITICAL!” sequence. I should certainly hope it’s going critical- that’s how it produces electricity.

  411. wmsm*

    My family has owned a flower shop my entire life. In media, when it is portrayed, it is so incredibly romanticized. The characters get to work with beautiful flowers, deliver flowers that brighten someone’s day, and everything is clean if not tidy. It is actually a very dirty, hard on your hands job to run a flower shop. Holidays (esp Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day) lead to tunnel vision- doing hundreds of the same thing until you have blisters. You have to be very emotionally resilient to work with wedding parties and grieving families in quick succession. Some people receive flowers from people with whom they really don’t want contact, so not every delivery is welcome. Rarely, some people have requested insulting things on the cards, and we’re left with the struggle of what to pass on versus denying an order.

    Now, on the plus side, these shops can be home to a lot of community connections. A lot of us in the family grew up there, and we have memories both heart warming and utterly boring. Also, my wedding flowers were simply amazing.

  412. John Hyland*

    I work in software, especially networking and security. Most things in TV and movies (and also, uh, the news) are so wildly inaccurate that you can really only laugh. Occasionally you see signs that somebody knowledgeable was involved in the production, so you feel more like you’re in on the joke, like the Hackers movie from the 90s. That said, there is one, and maybe only time I have ever seen an actual realistic representation of hacking (unless you count all the times where there’s somebody at a computer, and they say “I’m in!”, and that’s all the detail you get). But the one real proper hacking scene I’ve ever come across is right at the beginning of Matrix Reloaded where Trinity runs nmap against a remote server at a power station, and then uses a real exploit to gain access. I can’t speak to how realistic the _rest_ of that movie was, but I think my jaw literally dropped when I saw that.

  413. rocksandtreesandyarn*

    I’m a teacher! High school in Canada. I can’t watch any TV show that has high schoolers in it because inevitably, it’s just embarrassing. Glee was horrific. Riverdale was unbearable. Euphoria and Sex Education were just permanent-cringing. One of the reasons I wanted to be a teacher was because of Mr Holland’s Opus – he was a real guy with a rela life who gets wrapped up in teaching and sucked in to doing more than he thought he would or could, but he loved it in the end. That’s the most realistic (romanticized and rose-coloured-glasses) teaching gets for me. Not a current reflection, but there’s nuggets of truth. Sadly, most of us won’t get a “Robin Williams/Dead Poets Society” moment because we see these kids for 75 mins a day. And when they’re distracted for 45 of those mins? Not a chance!

  414. Cookie Lady*

    I work for the Girl Scouts. No media ever gets us quite right, even when they consult with GSUSA. ( Most recent example I can think of is when Randall & Beth’s daughters on This is Us were portrayed as Girl Scouts. And that storyline itself came about because the actress who played young Kate is an active Girl Scout with the LA council.)

    That being said, Troop Beverly Hills is one of my all time favorite movies and my co-workers and I quote it all the time. And really, that troop is honestly a great example of girl-led programming.

  415. PsychDoc*

    Psychiatry isn’t really accurately portrayed most of the time. We’re either sadistic and evil or Freudian psychoanalysts…or having sex with patients. Most of us are/do none of those things! I think it’s related to the fact that mental illness is rarely well-portrayed on TV. People with mental illness are often portrayed as bad people or manic pixie dream girls. It’s obviously more unfair to the patients than it is to us!

    Psychiatry is ethically–and legally–complex and has a terrible history, and we also do lifesaving work with people with illnesses ranging from mild to life-threatening. It’s a really rewarding and interesting job…but you wouldn’t know it from TV.

    1. Irish Teacher*

      And I think a lot of shows want to simplify what you do for the sake of the plot. They have a plotline where somebody struggles with mental illness and then want to move on to another storyline, so they need the person “cured”. Cue miracle worker psychiatrist and a patient going from non-functional to the whole illness being forgotten in the space of a couple of weeks.

  416. Not my usual name*

    re: GIS (geographic information systems)

    There was a show around 2000 called The District that used GIS software to help solve cases. A colleague (we work for the company that makes the software) was on site as a consultant. I watched a few episodes and it was laughably simple. Basically mapping the crime locations and then generating some buffers or other proximity/hot spot, or “look! all the cases are in a ring. I bet the killer lives near the center!” type of deduction.

    Similarly, as others have pointed out, the terrible zoom in/run a filter on a low resolution image and magically get an identifiable face, license plate, etc.

    Vonda McIntyre’s Starfarers series had a geographer/cartographer as one of the main characters but she didn’t get into details. What little was shown was mainly data collection via remote sensing (imagery).

    And tangentially, (land) surveyors. I follow a forum website for them and they’ve had several threads over the years about the wildly incorrect depiction of surveying, including what equipment is used, how boundaries are recovered, deeds, and so on.

  417. Allie*

    I’m a school counsellor. Half the time I don’t exist. My husband wanted me to start a podcast called “Where Was the Counsellor?” about how teen drama shows wouldn’t exist if they had school counsellors.

    If a show does have school counsellors we’re shown as pretty much useless, just telling students to “feel better” or that we’re “here for you” without actually doing anything. In reality, I help students deal with relationships, manage their stress levels, and learn how to communicate better. I also teach classroom lessons on all of those topics and more! I run lunch time drop in sessions (just did one this week where students sorted fictional couples into health and unhealthy relationships) and I go into the feeder schools to prep those students to come to high school. Plus I meet with teachers to help them in supporting students, teach professional learning sessions for all school staff, and meet with other school supports like occupational therapists, family school liasions, etc. The job is so much more than just offering emotional support.

  418. Kuododi*

    I cringe each time I see a mental health therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist portrayed in a movie or television show. At best they are benign idiots stumbling on the periphery of the story. At worst is a character who never met a professional boundary they weren’t happy to violate. (“Lance Sweets” from “Bones” and “Dr Linda” from the Netflix “Lucifer” are the 2 worst offenders IMHO.)

    I end up screaming at the TV on many occasions yelling “THAT’S NOT HOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK!!!AAAAUUUGGHH!!!)

    Best regards

    Kuododi

  419. Patent*

    The TV show “Ed” was about a lawyer working in a bowling alley. In one episode someone came to him wanting to file a patent on his invention. Ed called the patent office, told them about the invention, and was told the inventor can have a patent. That is not the way it works.
    In real life, a patent lawyer or agent, who have passed a special patent bar and have taken a requisite number of science courses, write an application describing the invention. This application is filed at the patent office where it may sit for up to two years before it is looked at by a patent examiner, who then writes up a rejection. The attorney responds, the examiner writes another rejection, then after several rounds of this and much money (paid the the attorney and to the patent office) and time, the inventor either gets a patent or gives up.

  420. Teapot, Groomer of Llamas*

    I’m a community organizer. The few examples I can think of on tv are nothing like what I actually do. They tend to be older men with authority issues leading massive marches and screaming at public figures. Now to be fair, that is a particular style of organizing and is probably based on one famous figure in particular, but 90% of organizing is nothing like that. It’s a ton of meetings in coffee shops getting to know people and what drives them, and then a lot of meetings figuring out what the community desires and yet more meetings planning strategies on how to get things done. As a famous organizer once put it, organizers do their most important work in meetings.

    Yet that’s not what you see in media. I will also say though, labor organizing is a different field, though related, to what i do so I can’t speak about how accurate that is.

    1. OlympiasEpiriot*

      I was a child in the 1960s/70s often sitting on the side watching union organizers at work for a union that until very recently was very heavily male. More testosterone perhaps, but, yeah, even for unions it’s a lot of that, sometimes (unfortunately) with physical danger from goons. Also, votes to strike are almost never as they are portrayed on screen.

  421. Working Hypothesis*

    I’m a licensed massage therapist. Most media portrays us as “masseuses,” with no reference to the mandatory license and training we go through. It’s presented as if the only work we ever do is sensual relaxation massage, instead of the complex medical treatment work that many of us do as our primary field. And there are a *zillion* instances in fiction and media of romance between a massage therapist and their client, even in reality that’s ABSOLUTELY against professional ethics and would get out license yanked so fast it would make your head spin.

    Yeah, not impressed with the way they paint massage therapists.

  422. Lady Kelvin*

    I’m late to the game, but I’m a marine biologist. We do not spend all of our time diving/snorkeling in warm tropical locations with large charismatic marine megafauna (whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles). Or even spend that much time in the water at all. I never do field work, all my work is modeling/statistical analysis. And my few colleagues who do field work only do at most a few weeks a year. Most of the time we are analyzing data or writing reports. Oh and the jobs that allow you to do any field work? Plan on a PhD, several years on unpaid internships and low paid post-docs, and very very low applicant to hire ratios….all for about $60K a year in super high COL areas. I live in Hawaii and made $65K when I started. I work in an “in demand” area where there tends to be more demand.

    1. MarineBiologist*

      I’m also a marine biologist! A post-doc researcher at an academic institution.

      I don’t even have a diving license, I live in a very cold country (not US) and work on microscopic organisms, which greatly outnumber the visible organisms in the ocean. I do field work very rarely, and its mostly standing on a boat watching the wench go down and moving buckets of mud when it comes back up. I spend more time in the lab, and even more time at my computer.

      Very true about the salary. I make the equivalent of 35 000 USD per year (but live in a lower cost of living area, so its livable). And I have a PhD.

      Academic institutions (often your grant) must pay a lot of money to publish our results in journals, a process that takes between several months and many years to complete. And behavioural observations of one individual of one species will not be in any way publishable. Journalists almost never want to talk to us, and certainly don’t seek us out.

  423. Not My Real Name*

    You almost never see a speech-language pathologist. Excepting in The King’s Speech, which won how many Oscars and reinforced how many outdated ideas about stuttering.

    1. Not teaching little llamas to talk anymore*

      And the whole subplot about the king being shocked to find out he wasn’t a medical doctor. That was completely made up, no one thought he was a medical doctor at the time it happened or ever, there was no reason to do so.

      1. Not my real name*

        I’d forgotten that part. The movie was well-done, but I hate how it reinforced the false and harmful idea that stuttering is a psychological problem caused by trauma or judgmental parents and that our work somehow involves getting at the root of that relationship. I also hate that the only depictions of SLP anywhere seem to focus on pronunciation or stuttering when we do so much more!

  424. A person*

    Lab stuff on tv is always wrong. You can’t just run around throwing whatever you want in a GC (or whatever other instrument). There are different columns and parameters and gases and you’d have to have standards and method development and all of that takes soooo much time, but they just have results in minutes on super complex things.

    I do enjoy that they typically have actual lab equipment on a lot of shows. They rarely use it correctly but it’s pretty fun to see like the brands of pipets and stuff that I use at work.

    On Bones, I enjoyed the use of the rotavap to distill alcohol that they then drank… yeah… don’t… don’t do that. I’m one of the first ones in our lab to want to “lick the science”, but it’s still not something that would be generally allowed in a workplace like that.

  425. Our Lady of the Cats*

    This is only peripherally related, but it suddenly jolted a hilarious memory ….
    Years ago, when we were first married, my husband and I lived in an apartment opposite the most boring man in the world. He couldn’t have been more boring. My husband and I shared terrible tales of being trapped by him in the stairwell (it was a fourplex, so we were the only two apartments on the second floor). He worked in the archeology department at UCLA.
    OH HE WAS SO BORING!
    Well around that time, the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark” came out (I did say this was years ago!) and Boring Man trapped me in the stairwell to tell me that the production department from the movie had at some point reached out to UCLA for some background information about archeology professors, and he had contributed to that information, and so, he told me IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, the character of Indiana Jones was based on him.

    1. Chirpy*

      So was he responsible for that movie using a Dumpy level upside down then?

      (It’s the surveying tool Indy uses to find the Well of Souls. Someone put it on the tripod wrong, haha)

  426. Chirpy*

    My field is retail. It’s largely played on tv/film as a joke, or for teenagers, or for stupid people. It’s a huge problem, because it feeds the real-world devaluation of retail workers. We’re mainly adults, many of us have college degrees, many have families to support, and this is our “real” job that needs to be able to pay our bills. We just want to be treated as human and paid fairly for our (actually very skilled!) work.

    That said, Superstore is one of the most realistic, uncomfortably so for me. It’s played for laughs, but an awful lot of the plots are straight up things that can happen (or, in the case of the episode where they get auto-locked in the store all night, while that’s against safety codes and probably wouldn’t literally happen, it’s fully indicative of the disregard corporate has for store associates.) Granted, you’re not usually having Superstore-like drama every single day, but it definitely feels like the writers know what they’re talking about. Only it’s a lot more stressful than funny in real life.

    1. Layaway Girl*

      I worked at Walmart for 15 years and Superstore was amazingly accurate. I’d say all the time, someone in that writers room has worked big box retail!

  427. Shiny*

    I work in international development. It’s true there is some glamour–I live a pretty bougie life overseas at the moment! But it is way more regular-office-like than ever portrayed.

  428. Vendelle*

    I’m an SLP (speech therapist) and the only movie I know that has “one of us” in it is The King’s Speech. I do like the movie abd would not be surprised if a lot of the therapy shown used to be done that way, but nowadays we definitely do not tell people to take up smoking to relax, or get them to speak with a bunch of marlies in the mouth (so dangerous!). I did like to see the therapy that Logue gave Bertie, but as stuttering isn’t something I specialize in it’s difficult to know how accurate the depiction of the therapy is in the movie.

  429. Dipper the Diplomat*

    Diplomacy (specifically consular work): Embassies are US (or their respective countries’) soil: incorrect. Members of Congress can get you a visa: incorrect. Embassies can get you out of jail: incorrect.

    1. SamIam*

      I’m also diplomacy-adjacent. Diplomats loudly discuss national security issues at charming outdoor cafes: incorrect. Though apparently everyone and their brother is taking home classified documents these days!

    2. annoyed diplomat*

      Consular officers need a general nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for not killing their American clients. Hats off.

  430. Not yo Momma Just the Boss*

    Pharmacist here. I hardly see my career represented at all let alone accurately. The pharmacist they had on that Cloud 9 show did make me laugh because it was definitely “What some people think we do”. There was a sad attempt at a show based on pharmacists on Amazon (“Vials”) but it died after the pilot and was not good.

  431. JustAnotherMD*

    I’m a pathologist and my field is portrayed terribly. TV shows autopsies only, while that is only 1-2% of my actual workload. On the rare occasions where they actually do show a doctor looking through a microscope (98-99% of my work) that doctor will instantly declare complex diagnoses that can definitely not be made in <5 seconds. It's hilarious/terrible.

  432. Enki*

    Archaeologist here! So far I have yet to unleash any ancient curses or find the Holy Grail, but if they ever make Indiana Jones and the Colour-Coded Spreadsheet I’ll be first in line to watch it.

  433. annoyed diplomat*

    I’m a U.S. diplomat, and holy bajeezus. I know our work isn’t the most enthralling or exciting, but can you please stop portraying us in movies as complete pansies or bureaucratic dweebs? Or worse, shows like Madame Secretary where we solve major crises every thirty minutes.

    Small sample of things I have done in my career so far:

    1. Rescued an American citizen spouse and child from an abusive family overseas and sheltered them in my Embassy until we could get them travel documents to head back home.
    2. Worked as a go-between for senior U.S. officials and key foreign partners who were negotiating on our behalf with the Castro regime for the release of U.S. hostages.
    3. Had multiple friends and colleagues killed by terrorist attacks on our missions. (The makers of 13 Hours should be ashamed of themselves.)
    4. Built a coalition of likeminded embassies to support LGBT+ rights with advocacy and funding in places that are generally hostile to them.
    5. Been tear gassed. So many times.
    6. Held an American citizen’s hand in a foreign hospital after she was in a bad accident and told her that no one else in her family survived the accident. I then organized transporting their bodies back to the States for a funeral because she was not able to process it mentally.
    7. Coordinated the delivery of weapons and ammunition to a fragile state’s army facing an ISIS takeover of part of its territory. The donation, and the army’s actions, were so successful and popular that another terrorist group in the country was forced to issue public thanks for U.S. support.
    8. Staffed more than 150 members of Congress as they visit places overseas. Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you those stories in person, 150m away from any electronic devices and with an NDA in place.

    It’s not all fun and games, of course. We have the most inefficient, petty process for drafting briefing papers and talking points – I cannot tell you how many times I have been screamed at over phrasing of a single sentence in a paper that no principal will ever actually read. Every move from one country to another is like no one has ever done this before. God help you if you have to change your name; it’ll take months for our HR systems to accept that anyone could conceive of such a silly thing, and you might end up with duplicate profiles. Also our payroll system is more than 40 years old, and in the process of updating it, many of us went months without getting paid correctly or at all.

    But you know what? I do my part, small though it may be, every day to keep Americans a bit safer and to make the world a bit less nasty and cruel. I’ll take it.

    2. ClosingTime*

      Just wanted to say that I’ve spent days reading all of these posts and felt compelled to acknowledge you, diplomat, for the amazing things you do.

  434. Miyon Im*

    Although somewhat exaggerated, Silicon Valley made me feel seen. My husband and I had a Kansan board to plan our wedding.

  435. Sandgroper*

    Not a profession, but a neuro diversity.

    Recently there’s been a bunch of shows produced (k drama such as The Good Doctor (copied then by America), or Attorney Woo) where the key protagonist is Autisitc.
    I struggle with these because they take a person who is significantly autistic – requires substantial support in most areas of their day – and celebrates their single minded focus that allows them to become a technical expert at something – but doesn’t really portray the struggle of acceptance. In all of these shows there’s a glow up, a significant development of social skills that changes things, and a saviour who rescues the person with ASD and champions them through all the transitions and all the discrimination.

    The real world ain’t ANYTHING like that, and people who function this distinctly differently are virtually NEVER celebrated. Temple Grandin functions at a higher level than the people on these shows, and it reminds me of Rain Man.

  436. purpleprose*

    I work in publishing and recently watched a (current) TV series in which an editor cosies up in her favourite armchair to read a novel submission – in the form of a thick sheaf of papers. I don’t know of any publishers that accept hard copy submissions any more.

  437. Bridgeovertroubles*

    I’m a chiropractor, 2 and a half Men wasn’t even close!
    We’re usually the butt of a joke if mentioned at all.

  438. zaracat*

    Ex-Air Force dr: fighter pilots do not fly around with their oxygen masks dangling off. I’m looking at you, Maverick. I know that in movies it’s so you can actually see and hear the actor, because otherwise it would be super boring. But reality is that (a) at high altitude you’ll pass out very quickly from hypoxia and fly your plane into the ground and (b) the microphone you use for communicating is in that mask. The ego is pretty accurate though (how do you know there’s a fighter pilot in the room? They’ll tell you)

  439. Mrs. Smith*

    I’m a librarian (in America). We do not EVER, and I mean EVER, reveal what patrons have been reading, watching, checking out, or looking at on library computers unless we are shown a warrant. We take whole classes in library school expressly to help us navigate these scenarios. For public librarians, that’s cops or Feds. I’m a school librarian and the protocol has always been not to reveal what students are reading to parents, teachers, friends (current politics are making this very complicated). I don’t let volunteer parents or student workers do circulation tasks in order to keep everyone’s library history private and known only to me, in order to avoid gossip or other invasions of intellectual freedom. I absolutely fucking hate it when tv or movies show a librarian in a cardigan absolutely roll over and give up all circulation histories if a cop so much as points at her with a sharp pencil. I’d spend a night in jail before I’d give up that information. I realize there are emergencies, but to date so far I have yet to hear of someone’s circ history preventing an abduction, murder or bombing.

  440. Llama Analyst*

    I am 30+ years as an analyst: research, operations, business, statistician, RMA, IT, operation excellence/6sigma/lean, quality, process engineering, MIS, … (love my jobs at every co, I learn from colleagues and have job security because everyone needs things like statistics or deep research but no one wants to do it themselves).
    One time in a group of OAs, a guy brought up the episode of That 70s Show where Ashton Kutcher interviews his dad for a school report on careers. We all saw ourselves in many of the things the dad described. By the end Ashton is so frustrated by his dad’s description he exclaims “I’m just going to say you’re a farmer.” The OAs all started calling ourselves farmers. I think that same farmer label has applied throughout my career. So yea, I’m the dad on That 70’s Show.

  441. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

    As a watcher of those Terrible Christmas Movies(TM), can we hear from bakers? Because you all use rubber-seal mason jars to store your flour and keep eggs in decorative baskets, right?

  442. Hairy HR Guy*

    Oh man… Human Resources. We’re either evil, or dorks, or both… it just make me embarrassed to say what I do sometimes.

  443. MAW*

    There aren’t a lot of “industry” films or TV about the fundraising/foundation/nonprofit world, but Loot (on Apple TV) stars Maya Rudolph as a Mackenzie Scott/Melinda Gates-type (divorced wife of Tech Entrepreneur Billionaire who is now herself a Billionaire) and MJ Rodriguez (from Pose) as the executive director of Rudolph’s character’s grant-making foundation. And it is hilarious and has lots of elements that ring true through the comedy…..

  444. WingedRocks*

    I was career military. Most portrayals of military service are almost entirely of the officer corps, despite enlisted ranks making up the majority of military personnel. Beyond that, the way the media portrays the military as a workplace is laughably inaccurate on almost every level.

  446. Ann O'Nemity*

    “Wardrobe malfunction” had worked well for me. In my office jobs, I’ve never had to go into detail.

  447. Tsalmoth*

    Person of Interest is one of my all-time favorite shows, but the sequence in Season 4 (I think?) where Harold works as a college professor was so clearly written by folks who knew NOTHING about any administrative element of colleges.

    (And in general, almost any scene on any show set at a college or university is going to have NO CLUE about staff, and only a little bit about faculty.)

  448. Not a Philologist*

    Not actually a philologist but I have studied several ancient languages & worked with quite a few specialists: nobody can sight-translate off an inscribed stone slab like you see in the movies. Even people with PhDs in Latin, Greek, Sumerian, whatever would grab a dictionary and spend an entire afternoon on a few lines before claiming to have “translated” it. There are times when you’d immediately get the gist of a standard boilerplate inscription on a Roman arch but you cannot just unroll a random papyrus scroll, run a finger over a line or two, and shout out the spell to awaken the mummy or whatever – it would take days. And really good lighting.

  449. dorothy zbornak*

    I work in advertising but on the publisher side. However, when I think of a movie that portrays the industry in the most ridiculous and inaccurate way they are as follows:
    1) Picture Perfect (Aniston’s character is a creative director mentioning she needs to also secure the media buy. A large agency would have a separate team for media buying).
    2) How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days – haven’t seen it in a while but remember it being blatantly awful.
    3) What Women Want – see #2

  450. A Little Bit Alexis*

    I work in social media/communications. It’s not at all like Emily in Paris or The Bold Type. It’s about 2% coming up with a fun idea on the fly and 98% getting approvals, checking for typos and planning content around what the higher-ups want. It’s 0% “going viral.”

    But I do enjoy it!

  451. ComplianceIsFun*

    I am a compliance officer in health care and have only seen that role portrayed once as a brief character appearance (I wish I could remember which show). I was truly excited and even mentioned it at work the next day! It was also fairly accurate for the piece he was there for.

  452. NotHilarySwank*

    High school teacher here.

    You ever notice how the heroic teachers in movies like Mr Holland’s Opus, Freedom Writers, and Dangerous Minds have completely dysfunctional home lives because they are 1000% committed to their jobs? And how high school teachers only ever seem to have one class a day with maybe 10-15 students?

    Those movies undersell how challenging it is to be a teacher and oversell the belief that teachers should sacrifice their personal lives for students

    “I teach for the outcome, not the income” is cute but in reality, impoverishing and burning out good teachers has contributed to our current nationwide teacher shortage. Teachers are humans too.

  453. Tracey*

    I’m a therapist, and portrayal of my profession is mixed. I would say one of the most unusual things is that on TV, it’s VERY common to have your talk therapy provided by the same person who prescribes your medication. Psychiatrists CAN do talk therapy, and it used to be more common, but nowadays, in America, most therapists are not medical doctors and most psychiatrists strictly manage the medication side and do not do anything resembling therapy.

  454. Mary*

    This made me think of watching City Slickers once with my brothers, three of whom are farmers. The scene where Billy Crystal helps deliver a calf brought scoffing — “That calf is at least 2 weeks old!” This has come up at other times — it’s clear that pop culture has no idea what farming looks like these days.

  456. ChemGuy*

    I’m an analytical chemist, and the answer to the question is a firm NO. I don’t work in criminal forensics, but I kinda doubt their chemistry labs are equipped with dramatic, colored lighting and wide-open spaces between instruments a la CSI. I often want to yell at TV characters that they need to have safety glasses on if they are in a lab, and watching them handling chemicals without gloves makes me physically uncomfortable.

    My favorite example of this was when, way back in the dark ages of the late 1990s, I was watching “The X-Files” with a regular group of other analytical chem grad students. Mulder and Scully have a material analyzed at a (surprisingly realistic) looking laboratory, and the scientist declares that it is completely unknown to science and beyond all ability to analyze. This is while looking at a screen displaying a ball-and-stick model of dicholorethane (a not-at-all-unusual chemical) and an NMR spectrum that we in the room all immediately recognized was, indeed, that of dicholorethane. So much mockery followed that we missed a good bit of the episode that followed, and for the rest of the semester that we watched the show together, whenever someone would find an unknown substance, someone would shout, “Maybe it’s dichloroethane!”

  457. NetNrrd*

    I have been in IT for a few decades and was a tech nerd before that. I made my peace with, well, pretty much *everything* that has computers generating information with the realization that “the computer” or “the tech person” is simply an update of the Greek chorus, or the messengers who pop in and out of classic plays. Then it’s a question of how a story is using the “exposition-making machine” – entirely too often it’s used for lazy storytelling.

  458. Oh no, it's HR!*

    In my prior life, I worked on set for film and TV shows, including a very popular medical drama that’s still on the air. There was a former nurse who was employed as an advisor. She was on set every day, and sometimes played a nurse on screen. Despite getting the script ahead of time and working with the director, she’s still regularly sit just off camera and yell “That’s not how that works! It would never happen that way!”
    Good times.

  459. Dennis Feinstein*

    There’s an Aussie show called Utopia about a public service department where the staff struggle to get anything done because the government’s always interfering. It’s a good show but, as an ex public servant I find its accuracy excruciating!

  460. Sarah*

    I work in TV as an art director. Even TV shows about TV shows (think “30 Rock”) don’t understand the art department.
    The writers of TV shows often have no idea how their shows get made and who does what. Generally, reality is sacrificed for story.
    Currently, I work on a show set at a college. At least this is an environment that most of the people who work here have first-hand knowledge about. And Still! There are so many story lines that would never happen, or would never happen this fast.

  461. London, but with drugs*

    I meet a lot of people who confuse ‘fundraiser’ with ‘someone who organizes a fundraiser’, or, more obliquely, ‘runs a foundation’.

    According to TV, I should be wearing a $3,000 suit and having a business meeting with the deceased that started at a fancy lunch that I expensed, and ended in the bedroom of his hotel suite.

    According to most people to whom I disclose my profession, I spend my days zipping around mid-town in a Mercedes stuffed with flowers and wine, then getting my hair and nails frosted, before barreling to the Hamptons because Ina’s place has a kitchen big enough for the caterers.

    I can assure you, I spend my days careening between irate donors, demanding directors, obdurate spreadsheets, and oblivious program staff, like a plate spinner in the circus except with finger traps, held up by pajamas stiff with coffee stains.

  462. 9-5 nanny*

    Not my current profession, but I worked as a nanny for about 10 years and it used to drive me crazy that (with 1 or 2 exceptions) the only nannies in books and movies seemed to either end up with one of the parents or were literally magic. It basically reinforced this idea that in order to be a good nanny, you either have to love the kids in a parental way or have supernatural powers. Which 1) is a wild standard for a job and 2) meant that there weren’t any models for what a healthy nanny-client relationship looks like.

  463. SDK*

    I worked for years in arts venues / concert halls, and The Muppet Show is the only accurate portrayal of that work I’ve seen!

    1. London, but with drugs*

      And the brain surgeons and heart surgeons doing emergency medicine in the ER and performing abdominal surgeries?

  465. Skytext*

    The horse industry. That there is one big race or horse show that will make or break a trainer’s career. In reality trainers have strings of horses and multiple clients. They are racing everyday or going to horseshows every weekend. It’s just another day at work for them. Even the really big events the same trainers usually have entrants year after year, so after the first year it’s still just another day at work. Also, head trainers usually focus on strategy and also spend most of their time on the phone with clients. Most of the actual hands on training is done by assistant trainers and grooms.

  466. Jessica_Jay*

    Not a medical examiner myself, but here’s something reassuring I learned during the course of admin work in the field:

    if you’re ever in the unfortunate position to be asked to identify the remains of a loved one (in the Us at least), rest assured you will most likely not be lead into a cold morgue to a covered body on a steel table to have the sheet ripped away while an ME waits for your anguished cries to confirm the identity of the remains.

    Most likely you’ll be asked into an office and there will be several photographs facedown on the desk. The ME (or morgue attendant, or pathologist, or whoever is tasked with it) will explain to you what’s on those photographs to prepare you for what you’re about to see. The first photographs will be of identifying marks if there are any (like a tattoo or an unusual birthmark). That’s to assure that if this is your loved one, you’ll be prepared a bit better. If it isn’t, you’re not subjected to the sight of a dead body when it’s not necessary. Only the last photograph will be of a face, and might not be shown at all. Great care will be taken not to show you any wounds if at all possible. Psychological aftercare is formally or informally recommended and provided. Crisis counselors are usually available. It’s all about minimizing trauma.

    This is the ideal situation of course, and nothing is ever done perfectly, but that’s how it’s supposed to go.

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