There’s a discussion going on on my friend Tahnan’s LJ that I thought would be fun to carry over here: when you tell someone a crucial fact about you (usually your job, but could be a hobby or a nationality or whatever), what is the inevitable response you dread?
There’s a long list of annoying responses people have to “I’m a librarian.” Topping the list of most-hated include:
a) “You don’t look like the librarians I remember!” [insert lecherous grin]
b) And of course, the one that makes me want to stomp through the floor like Rumpelstiltskin and then deliver an impassioned lecture from the basement about information professionals and navigating the internet: “Aren’t you worried about losing your job? ‘Cause, like, now we have Google.”
So what’s your dreaded inevitable response?
15 responses so far ↓
1 Fairdice // Oct 26, 2006 at 9:00 pm
But you don’t look like the librarians I remember!
As a mathematician, you learn early to repress the shudder when people say “Oh, I was never any good at math.” A friend from college was receiving a state mathematics award when the Governor of Michigan led off his award speech with that zinger, and you could hear everyone on stage groan.
2 Jaime // Oct 26, 2006 at 9:45 pm
oh! so, so many music teacher ones, but my faves are
-My choir teacher made me lip sync.
-I can’t sing.
-Sing something! Right now!
-that must be rough, since they’re cutting arts education everywhere. (that one was worse when I was looking for a job, but is still annoying)
3 anna // Oct 26, 2006 at 10:52 pm
1) did you grow up bilingual? why don’t they just have bilingual people do that?
2) wow, so you could, like, work for the un.
4 Mim // Oct 26, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Wow, when I was in junior high, I wanted to be a marine biologist!
5 redbeard // Oct 27, 2006 at 12:03 am
Mim is RIGHT on.
Also -
Oh! How are the whales doing?
or, if flakier
So, what ARE the dolphins really saying?
6 Laura H. // Oct 27, 2006 at 12:44 am
[comic book geek walks up to counter, where I am standing with a shirt that says STAFF in bright red]
CBG: Do you really work here?
L: Yes.
CBG: Haha, awesome. Don’t you know pretty girls shouldn’t be in comic book stores?
L: Are you telling me I don’t belong here?
CBG: I’m complimenting you! So… do you actually, like, READ comic books, or do you just work here?
L: …
Some variation of this happens no less than three times a week.
7 Arun // Oct 27, 2006 at 7:13 am
I’ll back up fairdice with the “I hated math.” quote.
Now, it’s more like, “So, what do you actually do?”
But then again, I don’t really know the answer to the second question.
One week until job! (Science Librarian for those of you that don’t know.)
8 Jeff // Oct 27, 2006 at 8:06 am
(Oh gods, flashbacks to high school when people would come up, ask me my SAT scores, and then walk away.)
I’ve got a more conventional job right now, so I get less of those questions. People who know I have a JD either ask me for legal advice, or why I’m not a practicing lawyer, or both.
Re my job, I get the “what do you actually do?” question a lot, which I used to dread because it was hard to make document preparation, legal research and filing sound exciting. Now I just say “Did you see that movie Secretary? It’s exactly like that.”
9 Martha // Oct 27, 2006 at 8:30 am
The worst were from tourists when I worked in Salem.
“Are you a witch?”
“Where’s your broom?”
“I’ve been there! There’s a pentagram in the floor and the Devil talks!” (no, that’s the Witch Museum.)
And I was totally the obnoxious-reaction person last week, when a coworker mentioned that she was allergic to dairy and I said, “Oh, that’s so sad! I love cheese!”
10 Martini-Corona // Oct 27, 2006 at 9:31 am
“So, you get to edit papers?”
Response: “No, I, um, track things that go out to peer review. And process things. I’m like the anti-Lloyd Dobler.”
Which is super depressing because by all rights I SHOULD be doing that, or at least helping or learning skills or somehing, except it’s a medical journal and only the docs get to do that. I need a new job (she says constantly).
Fairdice: My dad is a mathematician and he’s sometimes pretty flaky at arithmetic. “The goal is to understand the question… rather than to get the right answer.” — Tom Lehrer, New Math
11 Eric W // Oct 27, 2006 at 9:44 am
I don’t get anything annoying these days, but when Iw as a teacher in the NYC public schools I often got:
“So, do you bring a bullet proof vest to work?”
Aarg!
12 frog // Oct 27, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Wow, I’m having lame-comment-dread-envy. No, wait, I just realized why I can’t think offhand of anything annoying anyone has said about what I do or who I am — I’ve finally stayed in one place long enough that I don’t meet new people that frequently, and when I do it’s always in the context of some shared activity (AmeriCorps work things, contra dancing, pagan festivals, the usual…). I don’t have many of those getting-to-know-you conversations these days. Which is fine with me, since I had plenty of those from 1992-2002 to last me another few years.
Love, the hermit in Western Mass…
13 sam y // Oct 27, 2006 at 5:15 pm
it bugs me when i tell people i work for an acrobatic theatre company and they say, “cool! like cirque du soleiel?”
makes me want to say “yes, just like cirque. only without the limitless budget and pretention!”
nobody *ever* says they wanted to be a production manager when they grew up…
14 Fairdice // Oct 27, 2006 at 8:01 pm
M-C: “My dad is a mathematician and he’s sometimes pretty flaky at arithmetic.”
Oh, of course! But when we math people make jokes about being bad at arithmetic ourselves, it’s funny! :-)
15 Arun // Nov 8, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Fairdice: Ummmm…. No, actually, it isn’t. :)
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