What's an innocent misconception about your hobby/profession that drives you up the wall?
Like for example, how someone thinks because you work in IT you can fix their TV, or how if you're into music you must be able to play any random instrument.
I just like hearing pros rant about about their very niche problems.
I work in tech support for a credit card processor (it’s even more boring than it sounds). Yes I’ve got some general nerd knowledge and know some other random stuff, but I can only guarantee I can (probably) fix a credit card machine my employer makes.
Your Windows machine crashed? Better use google. That’s what I’d be doing if I tried to fix it.
I’m an oncologist. When online, it drives me mad and almost personally offended (at least to the extent a hardened former Twitter and Reddit user can be offended!) when I come across variants of the old ”cancer care does more harm than good” trope. If so, I’d have quit my job and chosen a way more lucrative specialty. Interestingly, I almost never encounter that type of argument in real life, only by random people on the internet.
Instead, people IRL seem rather convinced that we wade in pain, sorrow and grief all day. Sometimes, that results in me holding a speech about how much I get back from my patients, the joy of curing someone from metastatic melanoma, or how I somehow end up having a good laugh with someone almost every day at work. I usually can’t summon that kind of patience, though.
When I was an active in a band, "You should play our _________ (usually a very busy bar or restaurant), we can't pay you, but it'll be great exposure."
When I was an active in a band, "You should play our _________ (usually a very busy bar or restaurant), we can't pay you, but it'll be great exposure."
I'm an Air Traffic Controller and people always 'joke' (or really don't know) I wave the batons at planes to get them to the gate. No I don't and I'm not in the tower either (while that is a good guess).
People saying it must be so stressful. Well yes, it sometimes is. But so is every job. And we're trained to handle it.
People blaming us for not keeping an eye on cities or nature while controlling planes. We have procedures which take that into account and we are hired to be as efficient as possible. If the rules allowed it, we're doing it.
People saying pilots fly the plane and we do nothing. Yeah pilots fly the plane, but look at all the dumb idiots on the road when giving way or getting in one lane/queue. You really think the sky would go any better when they can't even see eachother?
Not infuriating but intriguing, when I worked in safety car crashes a lot of people asked me if I was inside the car during the crashes... Never thought that would be the first thing coming up to mind to people but it did happen a lot.
The idea that depressed people don't have enough serotonin, or that there's such a thing as a 'chemical imbalance' that needs to be corrected by--you guessed it--big pharma's stupid drugs.
The most obvious one I've come across is when people learn fountain pens still exist their first assumption is you use it for art, specifically calligraphy.
They are literally just pens. You can use them for anything you would normally do with a pen, and in fact most nibs are not really tuned for any kind of calligraphy at all (and in most cases that would be better done digitally, with brushes, or with special markers these days).
Also my handwriting is shit so I'm just salty lmao.
I swear to God, everyone over the age of 60 or below the age of 26 thinks that WiFi and the Internet are the same thing. These people have no concept of a local network, and seemingly have never heard of network cables. They're usually tech illiterate in other ways too, but this one always gets under my skin.
I had to explain to my dad last week why his phone wasn't loading emails even though his phone was connected to the Wi-Fi.
We were stating at an Airbnb house when a power outage hit the neighborhood. The house had a backup generator, so it still had electricity. But whatever upstream switch that the modem connected to seem to go down with the power outage. It took me a bit to explain to my dad, "Yes. We have power and Wi-Fi, but the modem isn't able to connect anything. Because of that, we have no internet. That's why you can't load your email. Just turn off Wi-Fi on your phone for now and you can load emails using your phone's data." For some reason, his phone didn't switch to using his phone's data when it detected that the Wi-Fi had no internet.
his phone didn't switch to using his phone's data when it detected that the Wi-Fi had no internet.
I wish I could get my phone to do this.
Recently, I was trying to set up a device that broadcasts it's own Wi-Fi network for the web UI, and my phone kept disconnecting because it didn't have internet. I had to break out my laptop just to log in and set the thing up on my Wi-Fi network, just so my phone could talk to it.
As somebody that's involved in Linux and Software Development, being constantly asked to "look at my computer"
Look, I probably can? But I'm not going to, and certainly not for free. I haven't used Windows in years, and honestly, I mostly go out of my way to avoid knowing anything about what's going on in Windows-land. I'm going to be sitting there websearching for random stuff just like you are. Take to the geek squad, or something. I don't wanna.
As somebody that works on his own stuff, and has worked as a Professional Mechanic in a past life?
No, I don't really want to look at your grocery getter. No, I don't get any special deal on parts pricing. No, I'm not actually going to be cheaper than taking it to a shop, in many cases. No, the mechanics at the shops probably aren't giving you an unlubed and unwilling anal probing. They're expensive for a reason.
Add comment