What's an innocent misconception about your hobby/profession that drives you up the wall?

I write electronic music. Misconception is that some assume people actually listen to my music.

i like linux

people think i'm a hacker because i use the terminal sometimes

i don't know shit bruh

Yes, women CAN work on cars, and be good at it.

No, not every mechanic is trying to screw you over.

Yes, all the work/the price I quoted IS accurate. There are other parts that interact with the part you broke. Having a race car isn’t cheap.

No, we can’t just put a new valve in the head, since you bent the old one, and fucked up the seat, guide, etc in the process.

Yes, I know A LOT about Mazda/Nissan, specifically, but I’m not an encyclopedia. Sometimes I do have to look shit up, as much as it annoys you.

No, I don’t know what’s wrong with your car from a 3 word description by you. I’m not psychic.

Yes, we have a scan too, but, no, it doesn’t tell you exactly what’s wrong. It points you in the right direction, sure, SOMETIMES.

No, I’m not being lazy, your car isn’t doing whatever intermittent issue you were complaining about.

Whenever people find out I have a math degree, they tell me how bad they are at math. They seem almost proud about it. Nobody ever brags about being bad at English. They also assume I’m really good at arithmetic or counting, a la Rain Man or something. I am not.

I have been a machinist/model maker for 10 years now.

No, I can't just take your .prt/.iges/.stl/.stp file and "load it into the machine and press the green button".

I use that quote because it was said to me by a particularly arrogant engineering intern. Machining is a complex trade that is made to seem simple because of software and modern automation. While that is fantastic for my profession, it brings with it this idea that I'm not really doing all that much work. Reality is that I'm constantly applying my knowledge of the trade and the things I do might be subtle to the onlookers, but there was a lesson learned before now that took me hours or days to overcome. I train a lot of our machining interns now who are mostly folks in the 20-25 years old range and every single on of them so far as had that humbling moment of "Oh I learned about this in the classroom and did it on the simulator, I know exactly what I'm doing" only to fail. Its a great line of work that is very satisfying for a lot of reasons but it does grind my gears when its portrayed as being unskilled or easy.

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."

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.

As a geologist, it is maddening when people assume I know about something archaeological.

Or when they assume I know where to find gemstones for free lying on the ground.

I'm an English professor, and I get a lot of "Oh, I'll have to make sure to use good grammar around you." First, I have better manners than to go around correcting other people.* Second, I know enough about the development of the language to realize how fluid and often artificial the "rules" are.

• Unless you're trying to mansplain something to me. Then all bets are off.

I am a Windows and Cloud administrator. As soon as people hear cloud and computers, they start thinking that I am personally involved with building the metaverse and could work for NASA. Meanwhile, all the people on the technical sites and subreddits inflame my imposter syndrome every day.

I'm at an advanced level of knitting and crochet. I wear a lot of the things I knit to work and I decorate my office with my crochet.

Almost every single person I met has uttered to me, "This is so good! You should sell these." They assume that 1) I would ever do this for a profit motive and 2) that anyone would even buy my work at the price point I establish.

I just recently finished a sweater vest (link in my profile) that used 8 yarns. The cost of just materials was close to $350. And then I also time my projects, which for torso pieces for me are never fewer than 100 hours. The sweater vest ended up being just shy of 184 hours. So once you consider the cost of labor and expertise, this sweater vest is worth over $2,700 at even minimum wage for the area I live in.

There's absolutely no way I would consider selling my work!

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.

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.

As a software developer, it's assumed that I'm up to date on all the newest tech trends, and I can accurately inform people on where these trends will be going.

No, AI won't replace you today.
AI is the worst it will ever be today.

It might replace you in the future, but I can't tell you how far from now that future is.

No I don't know when we'll be doing commercial space travel.

No I can't fix your printer.

I'm just here to make sure some numbers appear on a screen when someone asks for them.

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.

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 a linguistics enthusiast, which means people expect me to either know a lot of languages (which is, honestly, partly true) or be a grammar nazi (which is emphatically untrue).

Idk about drives me up the wall but I find it funny when people think the entire USPS shuts down on Sunday. There's ALWAYS mail that needs processing.

I'm a machine operator in mining. Usually seen as the drop kicks/ dumb dumbs on site by the "educated" geologists/management.

They pull extra hours unpaid, constantly in meetings, stressing over deadlines. I push dirt around.

They racked up large student debt, I got paid to learn on the job.

I love my job, I'm alone in an aircon cab playing in a "sandpit", I live my inner childs dream. But somehow I failed at life?

Recreational scuba instructor since 2008. People think it's extreme as fuck, and badass and all. It's honestly really Zen. You take long, slow, deep breaths; often wearing a wetsuit or drysuit which reduces the sensory input on the body; you can't talk to anyone else (unless you have a full face mask and comms system/are fluent in sign language); mechanics of sound through water mean that everything is muffled and sounds like it's above you; you're (ideally) neutrally buoyant, so you're drifting through your surroundings.

It made a hell of a lot of sense why this was my career choice when I got an autism diagnosis in 2019.

I know things are beginning to change a bit on this topic, but one of mine is that you can't just casually enjoy anime. Some people seem to think the moment you accidentally see a dragon ball episode that you suddenly turn into davido kun, or regularly glaze one of your 100 half naked figurines of characters that are obviously not meant to look like adults. There can definitely be weird stuff in some of them, but if you can accept the cultural differences in humor, some of the stories are genuinely great. I don't even watch it much anymore, but it's sad to me that so many people miss out on such great content just because they're a little closed minded.

I'm a Controls Engineer, from the day I started university in 2015, I've pretty constantly heard the phrase "You're an engineer, figure it out!" Even when it comes to something that is completely unrelated to my field, which is mostly everything.

I'm trained as a lawyer, which means a lot of people sharing detailed, sometimes deeply personal problems related to a field of law I last thought about seriously twenty years ago, and then at an introductory level and for one semester. The main things I learned in law school are (1) how to look things up, (2) some foundational things about how to interpret and contextualize what I find, and (3) how much tools, templates, boilerplate, and personal relationships are the bread and butter of the actual profession.

Hobbywise, no I cannot build you a credenza or desk for free; I still haven't got around to building my own damn desk.

Yes, you are probably related to royalty, but it is neither verifiable nor special (genealogy).

No, I don't know why I need 30 fountain pens instead of three.

There are tons of misconceptions about mathematics, but the biggest and most baffling one is: that no new mathematics is being created, that the field is "done".

The opposite is true: there are more open problems than ever, and research is frantic in mathematics with hundreds of thousands of serious new theorems being proven every year by professional mathematicians, and entirely new mathematical vistas being discovered every few years.

In fact, the pace of research is so fast that we are now creating the foundations for databases of mathematical theories and their proofs in order to better classify and preserve them.

I am a school psychologist with a master's in clinical psychology. The main misconception for my work is that (at least in my state) school psychologists rarely focus on counseling. Instead, we are writing reports and determining whether a student is eligible or maintains eligibility for special education. I give IQ, academic, and social-emotional tests and write a report. I work with a student for about 3 hours maximum and then I'm alone writing and scheduling meetings. Then, I'm onto the next one.

Most people, even staff in the school, think I am a counselor. I can technically do it, but there already is someone who was hired for that position... so, they should probably do that, and I'll make sure our special education documents are compliant.

I’m a lawyer. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard “oh you’re a lawyer? You must have been good at arguing when you were a kid”…or that I must be “good at public speaking”.

It’s funny cause I do commercial real estate contracts and business law…I don’t ever go to court. Most of my day is spent staring at a computer and trying to figure out the best way to change three or four words in an obscure contract provision to best protect my client’s monetary interests. I don’t really ever argue in a professional setting, but I have learned how to think differently, how to see things from various perspectives and anticipate all sides of a negotiation and how I’d best respond.

I also can’t stand all the constant “hey can I ask you a legal question” from friends and family. Or friends and family sending me random contracts and asking me to “look it over for them”. It’s like they assume that just because they know me, I can do that for free, when I spend 10-12 hours a day billing large commercial clients for that same type of work.

That leads me to my next pet peeve: people in my life assuming that my “office job” is a simple nine to five. No. I represent clients all over the world so sometimes I am up at 4:30am to get on an international call at 5:00an. Sometimes I’m working late into the night to finalize a big land purchase contract or commercial office lease; sometimes doing that after putting in a full 9 hours at the office. I don’t get paid time off; I can work at my own pace, sure, and take “days off” here and there, but the work and business and the need for legal advice is constant and I have to catch up somehow, sometime whenever I take “time off”.

I know I’m in a privileged position so I feel kind of shitty about complaining about this, but it gets pretty old. I also recognize that I definitely need to figure out a better way to improve my work/life balance…because this won’t be super sustainable for much longer.

I'm an amateur stand-up comedian, so people ask me to tell my jokes all the time.
These people ignore the fact that a comedy set is all about the context in which you tell the joke

I'm a nurse in cardiac critical care. I don't know why your kid has that rash.

People who play tabletop role-playing games have no social skills. Dude, we sit around and talk with real people for literally hours on end - that is literally what the game is!

Also that Dungeons And Dragons is the only role play game. There are hundreds if not thousands with different themes, focuses, setting, systems and whatever else. DnD is good for high action high fantasy, and if that's your bag that's cool, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you want a renaissance coutly intrigue it is really not!

Working IT: The entire family thinks I'll always be happy and eager to fix all of their computer problems for them.
Being an electrical engineer: People think I'm an electrician.

I cook burgers. A lot. I cook them at parties, graduations, weddings, etc. Won a contest to be on a cooking show; I'm not saying I'm the best, but I know my stuff.

When people assume you're meant to put ketchup on a burger I want to rip my tongue out.

For a while, I was a burlesque dancer as a fun little side gig. In my daytime life, I'm an accountant.

One day I was talking to someone on a non-work related Slack. I told them I'm an accountant and they asked me where they could find my OnlyFans page. That's the day I learned a lot of SWs tell people that they are accountants. This misconception happens all the time now. I've started saying "I'm an accountant. That's not code for anything. I really am just a regular accountant."

SWs wouldn't need to do this if we treated them better. I get why the community chose accountant as a faux title. It has made me talking about my work very awkward and creepy.