Do people think you're arrogant, overpaid, grumpy, mean, annoying or weird?
You might just think you're just earning a living, but when you tell people about the job you do, they immediately judge you. Accountants are paid too much, while academics are rude, estate agents are arrogant, and engineers are weird. A study explored what we think of various professions, and there was bad news for bus drivers and bankers.
The study was carried out by workwear company Stormline. It used Google to identify the most common stereotypes about 131 jobs. They input each profession into Google, starting their query 'why are' and 'why do', and recorded the most common auto-complete answers.
Overall it found that the most common assumption about a profession is that they earn too much - which applied to 27% of all the professions in the study. Bankers did particularly badly: they were top of the list of those considered to earn too much and those who people felt were surprisingly rich.
Professions that are paid too much - according to auto complete
Actors
Accountants
Anaesthetists
Train drivers
Tube drivers
Professions which baffled people with their earning power
Bankers
Recruitment consultants
Refuse collectors
Train drivers
Tube drivers
The rudest professions
Academics
Bartenders
Baristas
Bouncers
Bus drivers
The most arrogant professions
Developers
Estate agents
Electricians
Lecturers
Paramedics
The most annoying professions
Bloggers
Journalists
Recruitment consultants
Salespeople
Youtubers
The best looking professions
Dental hygienists
Bartenders
Baristas
Fire fighters
Flight attendants
Less commonly, occupations were described variously as mean, weird, grumpy and hated. The meanest were considered to be chefs, landlords, managers and orthodontists. The weirdest were engineers, fashion designers, musicians and writers. Only two were called grumpy: bus drivers and developers. And two were described as being hated: social workers and bankers.
Regan McMillan, Director of Stormline, says: "The industries we work with all suffer from stereotyping and those stereotypes can put talented people off pursuing great careers in industries that need them."
"According to this study, engineers are boring and weird, farmers are poor and people in forestry have beards and wear check shirts. Some of the stereotypes were funny, but if people truly think you need to be female to be a receptionist, or that lumberjacks really all have beards, there's clearly an issue with inaccurate stereotyping and some of it is gender-driven.
"With this research, we wanted to show just how ridiculous some of these stereotypes are."
