things hollywood gets wrong with your line of work (English, Indiana)

[sailordave]

I spent 8 years in the Navy and now work in building maintenance.

Not all Navy working uniforms are always cleaned and pressed proper. Not all sailors speak so formally unless we're in trouble.

When a building sprinkler goes off, they don't all go off and the water isn't crystal clear. It's dark and stinks to high hell. And when the fire goes out, the sprinkler doesn't shut off. It only stops when one of us shuts the valve.

[Mooseketeer]

I am an Archaeologist so where do I begin ?!? "Indiana Jones", "Lara Croft", "the Mummy" etc... about as close to Archaeology as I am to winning the lottery ( I never play it).

[pinetreelover]

I am a nurse and could go on and on as well, but here are a few that come quickly to mind:

When a patient is on a ventilator the tube goes into their mouth and is taped to the face. Not pretty and they CANT TALK!

When a nurse comes into the room and injects something into an IV, the port must be cleaned first.

Nurses wash their hands a lot!!! You never see movie nurses wash their hands.

When babies are born they are squishy and gunky - this doesn't have anything to do with nurses, I just thought of it!

Fun thread!

[RjRobb2]

I'm not a lawyer but I love how cases get to the docket, heard, tried, and decided in like a days time. yeah, right.

[Widowmaker2k]

I'm a part time computer geek/graphics engineer. I always laugh in movies when they take a digital image that his horribly low resolution (grainy) and 'enhance' it to crystal clear quality. You can't 'enhance' information that doesn't exist.

Also, having been raised by a geologist, the physical and earth science in movies can be laughingly bad. At some point you have to say "it's just a movie" or you won't be able to enjoy the flick.

[annika08]

I work at a hotel. In the movies, they always portray hotels as having numerous workers behind the front desk. Unless you're at a fancy resort in Vegas, most hotels only have ONE person behind the desk doing everything. In the movies, I've noticed that housekeeping/maintenance is around whenever they're needed-that's a laugh. They're usually gone by 5 (but you can't ask them to help with anything anyway because none of them speak English).

[bs13690]

I can forgive a lot of things for the sake of entertainment but ones that really irritate me:

1. When computers do things that are absolutely impossible. For instance, when they connected to computer that was being used as a bomb timer to the Internet to give it a virus.
2. When soliders/police run around with their finger on the trigger. You are trained to keep your trigger finger straight until you are ready to fire. I do notice a lot of movies/shows do keep to this rule but a lot don't.

[BigSwede]

I don´t know of any movies about railroad workers.

[Bluesbabe]

I'm a receptionist for local government. And most receptionists in movies portray their switchboard operations a lot smoother than any reception job I've ever had. They answer the line, transfer it immediately, pick up the next call, transfer it immediately. . . and it's amazing how all those calls filter in one right after another.

At my job few calls can move that fast. When they ask for someone in particular, I can transfer it immediately. When they state quickly what they want, sometimes I can transfer those immediately, too. But most callers either stammer over the wording, or they don't know who to contact for their concerns.

And when my switchboard gets busy calls ring in all at once, not conveniently one right after another. Thus, the necessity to place calls on hold a lot.

[quiet walker]

Originally Posted by sailordave

I spent 8 years in the Navy and now work in building maintenance ... And when the fire goes out, the sprinkler doesn't shut off. It only stops when one of us shuts the valve.

Hey sailordave, I enjoy this thread. I worked for the Navy as a civilian beginning as a pipefitter at a research lab. YES to the sprinkler comments The one all us "insiders' refer to is The Hunt for Red October which has a number of undersea shots of the two submarines, but the shots are of several classes, frequently not the sub it's supposed to be.

A plus is the old movie Ice Station Zebra which uses actual Navy footage of either Nautilus SSN 571 or its sister Seawolf SSN 575 most identifiable by the boats' twin propellers.

Cheers, qw