What do movies always get wrong about your job/hobby?

They think programmers are super smart and great at maths.

Programming.
It's long and actually even longer.

I work in IT so basically everything
- So two people typing in one keyboard doesn't make the hack faster?
  
  I loved that entire scene for all the wrong reasons

Hobby: Video gaming.
Try to determine what kind of video game a movie character is playing by what they're doing to the controller.

Click click clickety-click... I'm in! Click click click... okay, I've hacked the corporate security system and unlocked all the doors, click click... here's the floor plan.
Can you disable the cameras?
Hang on... click click... okay you're good.
- To be fair there are a few Unify router setups in even big corporate settings that use the default passwords, and if you can get into the control panel, you pretty much could disable basically anything in a few keystrokes
  I have changed annoying PA music in public venues from my phone, for example
  But yeah, movies almost never get IT or secops correct
  
  Of you don't mind explaining, how? I can only code for maths purposes, but this sounds cool
- Is your job/hobby bank robbing?

there's a scene in "Silo" where a character needs to repair a massive steam-powered turbine that is off-balance, scraping at the housing, and heading towards collapse. all fine and we'll, it's sci-fi, so whatever, they can make magic quick fixes to move the plot along.
what really bugged me, for some reason, is how characters started touching the internal components immediately after it powers down - I have to wait for significantly smaller motors to cool off before handling them, especially if they're rotating poorly with a bad bearing, and burning from friction.
- Silo also has several falls that should absolutely kill people. One that's like dozens of feet into the pile that they throw all sorts of sharp metal objects on? Dead.
  Free falling off a bridge with just a rope tied around your waist that stops you? At the very least your back is fully broken, but that fall looked long enough that you should just be dead. Full Gwen Stacy.
- You act that way because you work in a career that can dismember you if you are careless, so you've trained yourself in ways that almost no actor could ever capture, and certainly no screenwriter would ever consider
- I said it loud too while watching it: “that shit’s over 100°C… and they’re going right in?”
  
  If there is a god to bless people, then people like you deserve it the most.

If you broaden it a little from job/hobby to living in the real setting of a movie, you'll notice characters going places that make no sense at all. Like if it's Seattle they might start a boating scene on Lake Union and ends up at Mercer Island, swinging by Alki beach on the way.
- As a kid watching Miami Vice, except for a few external shots I was like "Umm... that's not miami..."
  And the few shots that were kind of just had Sonny and Rico walk-talking past buildings that were like eight blocks apart from each other in the same conversation

I have not unlocked a single chasity belt, it doesnt even come up as a service they might need.

About anything to do with computers. Anything.
- Even worse the Hollywood Effect makes the stuff that I do that's ACTUALLY impressive look like routine.
  Fuckers will literally clap if I unjam their printer but manually recalculate a CRC header for a mission critical live database without a second of downtime and they're like 'Ok but isn't that your job?'
  BITCH LESS THAN 5 PEOPLE IN THE STATE CAN DO THIS
  But you just typed in some numbers
  BITCH I CANNOT EXPLAIN IN UNDER FOUR HOURS HOW TO FIGURE OUT THE RIGHT NUMBERS TO USE
  
  import crc
- Nods and waves arms widely - the computers.
  Which ones? All of them.

Retail workers spending the day doing shenanigans while barely doing any work, I'd kill for time to do some stupid time wasting shit.
Sorry I can't join your impromptu wedding for two workers whose name I forgot.
- LOL or for that matter fictional characters doing ANY job. It's like they just screw around all day having wacky misadventures and somehow the company stays in business.
- Right? I dunno how it was back in the old days but Clerks is maybe the worst representation of modern service workers I've ever seen. I've got a "hard labor" job and work about 1/4th as hard doing that than I ever did in service when I was younger
  
  Superstore is the worst representation of retail work, I think they did about a week's worth of work max during the entire series.
  One of the better ones is a British show called Trolled, they at least show them doing some form of actual retail work, still shenanigans, but they never leave the store to do them besides one or 2 episodes, plus it's a damn good comedy.

If any of the detectives from Law and Order come in to my bar I absolutely will not remember that random patron from five days ago.

I don't think I've ever seen my job in a movie. The only place I could imagine industrial embroidery ever showing up on screen would be as the setting for a chase scene or something.
- Now you're making me want to write a story about a high stakes embroidery counterfeiting ring
- I wanna see the flight scene in one of those shops now where someone gets embroidered during the fight.
  I also work with industrial embroidery machines (not directly, we just have them at work) so I know the like 10 seconds under a needle wouldn't be enough time to do anything really, but I'm imagining a room full of machines making military name strips, hero blocks a goons punch and shoves his hand under a needle while the goon yells in agony. Camera focuses on how horrified face as he lifts his hand to reveal "Maj. Payne" embroidered across his hand. The goon then faints.

I almost never see accurate sword fights. If they last more than two or three swings, they’re likely wrong. And Achilles jumping at the beginning of Troy was just comical. Footwork is so vital to sword play that leaving the ground is insane. But realistic sword play would be boring as fuck. It would be over in half a second and you would barely see any movement.
- Obigatory "The Deluge" Duel Link
- The 'but I am not left handed' duel in The Princess Bride is about as close as can be expected
  And Achilles jumping at the beginning of Troy was just comical.
  FUCKING THANK YOU I HAVE BEEN THINKING THAT FOR DECADES
- It never occurred to me that cinematic/theatrical sword fights are to swordsmanship what gun-fu is to marksmanship lol
  
  that really is a great way to sum it up.
  Funny to think a John Woo film could make both marksmen and sword practitioners wince for different parts while cheering for the other

3d printing - it prints flawlessly and the first time.
- Every finicky technology always works the first time unless it's plot-relevant
  No paper jams ever unless it is funny or plot relevant.
  
  No paper jams ever unless it is funny or plot relevant.
  "PC load letter!? Agh!"
  "Damn it feels good to be a gangsta..."
- It floats up from the print bed in 5 seconds and it's rotating.
- And sticks without blue tape and glue stick

TL:DR: Everything? Like, literally everything.
If it's about driving? They're looking everywhere except the road in front of them
Computers? It's cringe, all I will say
Flying? Not even close
Brushing teeth? Put some tooth paste FFS!
Sex, perhaps? As bad as porn videos are at showing realistic sex situations, movies and especially TV shows are typically way worse with all the requirements to not accidentally show a nipple, omg!
Martial arts and fighting? The worst offenders. After twenty punches to the chest that will have broken half of the ribs, the protagonists now suddenly finds the strength in thinking about keeping his little girl safe and now he beats up 20 guys with those broken ribs
Being punched unconscious or getting some chloroform and they wake up the next day? Lolololollll. Humans are notoriously hard to keep them "out" without killing them, it's why anesthetists are paid so well, it's a very complicated job. When you're out from an impact to the head, you need medical attention, you likely have a minor amount of brain damage. If you're out for more than ten seconds, it's brain damage for sure. If you're out for over a minute, you're likely not waking up with full abilities, you're likely going to be a vegetable at best
Okay, doctors then? Saving a patient's life with the buzzer? Yeah no. When the heart stops, that defibrillator won't make it "go" again, the defib actually stops it in case of heart rithm problems. Also, CPR outside a hospital will result in death for about 90% of the cases, give or take, and Har % goes up by another 2 after 3 weeks later. The tiny % that does survive likely will have issues ranging from benign to being a benign vegetable.
- Hollywood is a facsimile of reality that now we are being punished for not conforming to, despite it being illusion
  Modern western culture worships image over substance, and Hollywood is 100% image
- All of physics. Especially anything involving characters falling, lasers, explosions, firearms, and any physics in space (sound, motion, temperature, black holes).
  Not that it's known physics, but time travel falls into this category too. Not the time travel itself, that's just suspension of disbelief, but having time travel mechanics be internally consistent. It's difficult to do well.
  
  It took me getting obsessed with Kerbal Space Program to figure out my understanding of orbital physics was absolutely ridiculously bad
  "What do you mean you have to go sideways to go up?!"
  
  Have you watched The Expanse? I've seen some physicists talk it up for realism. At least as real as a show like that can be.
- I think you really nailed it to the wall for all to see!

Call centers: that there is time between calls. That people have time off the phone to form friendships with coworkers.
Handyman: we have sex with clients.
IT: that we can just code anything we want regardless of standards, policies and best practices.
- Isn't that second one just porn?
  Edit: actually, nevermind. I've seen this in weekly detective shows, but now they make the handymen gay so it's different somehow.
  
  But porn is a popular media format fitting the structure of a movie.

Gaming.
There is no way that this obvious secret wasn’t discovered until now. If there are as many gamers as you show, it would’ve been found within 2 weeks maximum. Looking at you, ready player one. Cringy McCringeCringe can’t be the only one who found these obvious secrets after literal years.
- THIS. And the trope is always about some ultra popular game that the entire world is obsessed with, too.
  I mean yeah it might even be like that if knowing the game was the only method of discovery but, pah! Hardcore fans? They do RAM dumps and decompiles and all kinds of wacky analysis to find obscure stuff, and then they post it in the "trivia" section on a wiki and the thing hasn't even been out a year! Lol
- I hate to say it but the pilot to Stargate Atlantis almost had me not even watch the series
  so okay, this game somehow accurately maps an alien reactor technology down to each individual particle and instead of running several billion iterations of procedural testing they make it into an MMO that paradoxically only ever has 1 player and they solve the equation by walking into the correct room...
- In the book the clues were different and more obscure.
- "Drive backwards on the track"
  That's literally the first thing people do in racing videogames. That would have been SECONDS
  Yes it was way better than watching him play Atari Joust for 30 minutes but still!

MRIs
Far too many movies and TV shows use the magnet to cover for their lazy writing by treating it like something that can be turned on and off like a light.
The magnet in an MRI is one of the coolest things in medicine, and writers get it wrong all the time. In the vast majority of cases, it's always on.
In simple terms, an electromagnet works by running a current in a circle and creating a magnetic field. In an MRI, the current is flowing in what is essentially a closed loop of wire. However, in this case the wire is cooled with liquid helium so it becomes a superconductor.
They induce a current in the wire which creates the magnetic field ("ramp up" the magnet). Because it is superconducting, the current doesn't stop. Once it's ramped up, it no longer requires any external power. As long as the current is flowing the magnetic field remains.
There are only two ways to "turn off" the magnet.
One way is to "ramp down". Essentially the opposite process that is used to get it running in the first place. That's what they do if they need to stop it for service.
The other way is to quench the magnet. You hit the emergency stop and vent off the liquid helium. Without the helium, the wire warms and resists the current and the flow stops.
Quenching a magnet is a magnificently dramatic process. Someone hits the panic button, and there is a loud roar as the helium escapes. Clouds of condensation form around the exterior of the building as the cold gas escapes. In the event some construction crew screwed up and accidentally sealed the vents, there could be an explosion from the rapidly expanding gas.
If writers want to use an MRI as a plot device, have an accident and require someone to quench the magnet to save a life. You'd have the immediate drama from the accident and the quench, and then you'd have the long term drama of the hospital trying to figure out where the money to fix the MRI would come from.
https://youtu.be/9SOUJP5dFEg
- I used to install and maintain MRIs (as well as some other medical imaging modalities) and this seems to be wrong any time I've ever seen it in media.
  people will be shown in the magnet room with steel wheelchairs/patient tables/chairs/etc. or even their phones. None of that should be entering the room at all.
  the images shown on the diagnostics will be like a radiogram or PET or something that would not show from an MRI.
  the scan only takes a minute for a "picture", when in reality having an MRI scan can easily take an hour. You may have some people taking only 15 minutes or so, but those are the quick ones. Clinicians will order a whole list of scans and each one takes several minutes.
  
  Years ago where I work a resident decided to be helpful and move a patient into the room with the MRI.
  Of course, the patient was supposed to be transferred off the ferrous metal gurney before coming into the room. The resident didn't know that.
  The MRI pulled the gurney into the room and it slammed into the scanner. Luckily it didn't actually flip up and crush the patient.
  They told the patient to stay where he was and they loaded the gurney down with a bunch of full five gallon water bottles. Once they had enough weight on it, they transferred the patient off the gurney. A bunch of guys pulled the gurney out of the room, amazingly without any damage to the scanner.
- I had no idea that once the current was in the magnet, no more power was required to keep it going.
- It wouldn't be nearly as fast, but why would you not just stop the condenser pump so the helium stops cycling through, causing the freezing, instead of venting it off? Sure, venting it off would be faster, but in the lack of an actual emergency, you'd think you could wait like 5 minutes.
  
  If it's not an emergency, then you let the vendor follow the procedure they have in place for shutting down the magnet.
  Edit:
  For example: We had a flood in an MRI room. The vendor was called out to ramp the magnet down so that they could deal with the flood.
- That is insanely interesting never knew that

I'm actually pleasantly surprised by how much movies get right with rowing and sailing in movies.
The one that does make me roll my eyes is the scenes where characters are chilling in the galley or bed and then suddenly run up because they hear/see a problem through a porthole. I always get pretty grumpy with the idea of folks being actively under sail and simply 'tying' the wheel or tiller and going under the deck. Only the incredibly expensive sailboats can truly get away with that. A small, affordable to a middle class type, yacht will have that with a motor, but sails are not so forgiving. If the wind changes you could have a pretty bad day, and even a perfectly 'straight' tiller will likely have you turning circles ere long. That's not even considering how poor of a decision that would be unless you were a military ship in the middle of the ocean and others would get out of your way. Just because collisions are super de duper unlikely doesn't mean they're impossible.
- Rowing and sailing they get right because they are upper middle class activities, form which screenwriters are almost exclusively picked
  I constantly get surprised looks from the people I deal with when they learn I don't know anything about sailing.

(IT, sort of sys-admin/remote help)
No, I'm not a programmer even though I sit by the PC. Also I can't magically fix any and all your computer related problems in a second I look at your PC.
- Sure you can! Just turn it off then on again.
  
  I worked in support for a company that had 20.000 employees back in 2013. We were 150 people handling calls and tickets, and there was an average of 30-40k calls/tickets a month.
  10% was resolved by restarting. How many man hours is not wasted because they haven't restarted? It baffled me when I saw the actual numbers.

using a red-tailed hawk call whenever a bald eagle is shown
also I like to try and figure out where they filmed based on the birds I hear in the background
- It's actually very rare that Hollywood makes non-nature movies that use correct animal sounds(and it's often not correct in animal focused ones either). For birds they especially tend to use sounds that are exclusive to North America, even if the setting is in on another continent.
  There's the classic of kids asking why they've never heard the "ribbit ribbit" sound in nature: The pacific tree frog only lives on the west coast of North America.
  And let's not forget almost every single time you see a bear "roaring", it's almost always mixed in with lion roars and such. In real life a black bear "roar" sounds more like a cow going "moo".
  
  laughing kookaburras as background “monkey” sounds in the Amazon jungle also get me
  
  And loon calls in totally the wrong biomes, even continents!

Pretty much everything. See "Bee Movie".
Fiction: Daddy bee goes to work in the honey factory every day.
Fact: Daddy bee has glorious sex once and immediately dies. Bachelor bee is booted out of the hive by his sisters in the autumn and dies.
- Not gonna lie I wouldn't be surprised if there's an Eastern European knockoff version where that's the exact plot. Lol

You don't need a huge wrench when working with the p-trap under the sink and water wont start spraying everywhere either as drains aren't pressurized.
Sprinklers react to heat, not smoke.
Not all spriklers go off at the same time in most systems. Only the sprinkler heads affected by heat.
The water coming out of sprinklers initially isn't clear but dark, rusty sludge. Sometimes even black as ink.
- This is so informative.

I am so used to seeing movies or shows depicting someone playing a video game on the screen that is for one system, but the controller in their hand is for a totally different system.
You ain't fooling anyone when the dude is playing Super Mario with a Genesis controller. 😬
- Bonus points if two characters are playing together, frantically mashing buttons, and the game on screen is single player.

One thing that bothers me, and what everyone should know, is proper placement for defibrillator pads if you're using an AED.
It's not 2 pads on the chest, it's one pad on the upper chest (almost shoulder) on one side, and the other pad goes lower on their side. You're trying to have the current go through their heart (not skip over the top of their skin).
The AEDs found in public locations are all very easy to use and all have pictures for the proper placement. Just open it up and it will tell you everything you need to do. Have someone nearby look for one at the same time you're asking someone else to call emergency services.
They should all have razors if you need to get a little hair off (in case the person is especially hairy for one of the pad placements).
- If they have a second set of pads with it; put the first ones on and rip 'em off quick, taking the hair off like a wax job. Then place the next set of pads

I don't think I've ever seen blacksmithing done correctly in a movie, show or game.

I was led to believe that shipping crates open up easily with one quick pry of a crowbar. In reality, those things are built with so many nails and screws that it takes more work to tear it down than to build it.

The number of people who are "knitting" in a movie or on TV...maybe 40% of them are actually doing it, and that's a high estimate (shout out to Miss Marple!). The rest appear to be wrapping yarn around one of the needles and then moving it vigorously, lol.
- They also like to just smack the needles together! Smack smack smack!
- I've never noticed that! I can guarantee I won't be able to unsee it

I work in IT so appearently i can just type override to get into any computer system. Cool..
- init=/bin/bash
- types three characters on a keyboard I'm in.
  
  Guys... "sudo." Four characters.
- I like the implication that it is possible, we know how to do it, but we're chivalrous enough to only do it when the plot absolutely requires it

Having served in the U.S. military, I cannot unsee the fact that movies and TV shows ALWAYS fuck something up with the character uniforms-- Army rank on Air Force cadets, upside-down rank, badges pinned on the wrong side, the character is a Sergeant Major but they're wearing Major rank, the character is wearing ribbons for wars they weren't even alive to have served in, and so on.
- I almost wonder if they intentionally screw that sort of thing up so they're not "ripping off" real soldiers' customs.
  ... But I'm being way too optimistic I think LOL.
  There's so much like this in media where I'm like "You could have just asked? Like so many people could have happily walked you through making this authentic!!"

- I miss when Reddit ads were stupid things like a picture of a seagull or a fun game

Before Mr Robit, hacking was always portrayed as some action packed race against the clock with fast typing and a lot of meaningless, magic words.
- This. Real hacking is actually quite boring, slow, and extremely time-consuming.
  Also, I’ve never met a hacker that was nearly as hot as Remi Malik. Although I did get to meet him once while they were shooting a scene for Mr. robot outside of my friends apartment, and he was super Duper nice.

Basically all science but particularly biology. I'm not sure I've ever seen accuracy regarding well anything outside parts of gattica.
Assays that can't be sped up, sped up. Machines doing 5 things other than what they're actually built for. Gloves, no gloves at wrong times. Terrible technique, etc.

As the flipside to the question, pretty much any customer facing job like retail, sales, or food service have been spot on, especially if they are specifically calling those industries out. Superstore, Waiting, Office Space etc. are so damn accurate to the pain of working them.
To the original question, I think it was mentioned earlier, but anything with a gun is typically wrong. The struggling artist who can afford immense loft apartments in downtown cities. Ghost hunting/supernatural expeditions are so glamorized. They NEVER tell you how much time it takes to review everything.

Gaming is apparently hitting all the buttons on the controller all the time
- Also you can just pick up a controller cold and start playing without any load times.
  All video games sound like Super Mario Bros or Call of Duty. Alternatively (if video is shown), all video games are violent zombie shooters with terrible animation.
  Only children use handhelds and they are all GameBoy.
  
  And handheld gaming is a full-body experience.
- Especially gaming in porn...
- Fighting games aren’t far off.

Not really a hobby but I do hunt, so I find myself rolling my eyes when I hear 18 or more shots out of a pistol, 9 or more shots out of a shotgun and 31 ot more shots out of a semi-auto rifle with a pistol grips. The other eye roll is the unnecessary cocking and re-cocking of the shotgun without ever firing a round. If everything in the show Archer is true, then I may be on the spectrum lol. Except there's no fucking way I could dual focus counting rounds while shooting any gun even itmf its at the range and noone is shooting at me. Movie/tv tho im counting every one.
- I got 57 more rounds in this 4 round magazine.
- I hate hearing over 18 shots out of a glock 19. With the 19 round extended magazine in it.

(Engineering)
According to movies:
We spend our entire workdays in the lab.
Whenever anything is turned on, there's a loud whirring and a big shower of sparks. Computer screens with big flashing "WARNING!" signs are optional.
Something is inevitably spinning on the lab bench. It's unclear if it does anything.
Fixing a major problem is solved when someone has an "Ah-hah!" brainstorm moment, wires up something on the spot, and it magically works perfectly.
Assembling a new thingymajig involves lots of power tools and pieces which fit together seamlessly. If they don't fit, they can be made to fit with some elbow grease and definitely won't fail horribly the first time you turn them on.
Labs are festooned in such random pieces of hazardous equipment as high-voltage power lines, random chemicals, blowtorches, and radioactive materials.
In reality, we spend a lot of our days at our desks, the equipment is surprisingly quiet (and that which isn't, you stay well away from while it is operating), and spinny stuff largely went away in the 1980s. Assembling a new thing is 30 minutes of grumbling, 3 hours of pulling your hair out, and day(s) of waiting for a new part because someone screwed up tolerances or signal polarity. The most dangerous thing in the lab is stuff sloppily left laying on the floor, which I have tripped over and nearly cracked my skull before.
In fairness, #4 happens sometimes. It's extremely rare, but occasionally you do get those moments where you figure out what the bug in the system is and can rectify it in an hour or two. Most of the time, a fast fix for one problem causes another.

Waiting and Party Down were both great about depicting the experience of food service, but gay men and Latinos were criminally underrepresented in both.
- What about the guy who kept trying to show his nuts to everyone? I assumed he was both Latino and gay.

Oxygen tanks are not bombs. They won't explode or shoot fire. The reason they're painted green is because oxygen is non-flammable. (those red acetylene tanks however, are scary)
Now obviously any existing fire can be made much worse with oxygen, but it's not enough on it's own.

Not sure if it fits or is still a thing, but it used to be that 4 stroke dirt bikes made a 2 stroke sound. Also, all propeller airplanes had the sound of a piston engine, even if it was a turbine.