When you apparently work for Evil Inc.

[hobish]

You work for a bank, right.

I do, in mortgage financing, and have had "a pox" wished on me for it   I, too, really love my job.It's nothing i ever expected to do with my life; but i like it, and i am good at it. Usually i tell people that; but if i know it is someone likely to give me guff about it i head it right off at the pass and tell people i make the rich richer  then if pushed explain why i love reading financial statements.

Well, clearly you're selling tobacco to minors in a casino while wrapped around a pole ,....

Anywho, mental magpie is right. You may be proud of your work (as you should be) but you don't need to go into detail with folks.

"So, Devix, what do you do?
Oh, it's dull - tell me about your work!
No - really - what is it that you do?"

At this point you lean in and say "if I told you, I'd have to kill you. What do you think of this hummus?"

In my younger fitter days (holy moly 20 years ago! ahh, to have that body again ) i was also an exotic dancer. It is a perfectly legal and quite lucrative job. I had a lot of fun at it. Can you (general you) do a hand stand, grip a pole with your ankles and pull yourself up by the strength of your awesome stomach muscles, then spin around and land gracefully? LOL, i can't anymore; but once upon a time. It paid so well that i could work 20-30 hours a week and make enough to pay my rent and go to school full time, plus the flexible schedule gave me time to be an active member of the National Guard and tutor ESL math classes in my spare time. Not to mention it kept me in great shape.

There are good people and bad people in any profession. Heck, there are a few jobs mentioned here that make me involuntarily twitch, just because of what they are and my personal experience with them, and there is virtually nothing that would help that. Sometimes that is just going to be the case and the only thing you can do is move on.

[pierrotlunaire0]

Hobish's is a great example.  She wasn't hurting anyone.  She wasn't hurting herself.  She was true to her standards.

You could have a career in a religious field and have people react poorly to you.

[amylouky]

I work for the utility company. So pretty much everyone I meet is a customer, and has a gripe about service outages, rates they think are too high, or the fact that their service got cut off after they "only missed two months". Yeah, I actually got that one.
I generally just shrug and say, "I'm just in <my dept>, I have no control over that. Bean dip?"

[Devix]

I'm actually kind of relieved to know that there are a lot of people from all sorts of fields that face this same thing.  It's kind of nice knowing that people have to deal with crazies no matter where they work.   

There is a lot of good advice here and I'd love to thank the other posters for their insight.  I guess the thing that gets to me is that I am put on the defensive because I feel like they're attracting me personally.  They use words like "People like you" which gets me riled up even though I should be more level headed and try not to engage.  I think from now on I'll try to be as vague as possible or shift the subject to what they do for a living.  After all, most people like talking about themselves.  The humor tip is good advice and I have a few stories that could make even the most opposed crack a smile. 

You work for a bank, right.

Nope.  I actually work as a photographer / photo-retoucher mostly in the fashion and beauty industry and after hearing some of the other posters here I realize I don't have it so bad.  What I don't like is that as soon as I mention this I'll have people go off about how we are the reason young girls are starving themselves and how we are destroying society by creating an unreachable standard of beauty.  I'm just kind of left there wondering what they're getting on about since I thought all I was doing was taking pretty pictures and making them prettier.   

Well, clearly you're selling tobacco to minors in a casino while wrapped around a pole ,....

Anywho, mental magpie is right. You may be proud of your work (as you should be) but you don't need to go into detail with folks.

"So, Devix, what do you do?
Oh, it's dull - tell me about your work!
No - really - what is it that you do?"

At this point you lean in and say "if I told you, I'd have to kill you. What do you think of this hummus?"

I love this so much!

In my younger fitter days (holy moly 20 years ago! ahh, to have that body again ) i was also an exotic dancer. It is a perfectly legal and quite lucrative job.

I have a friend that works as an exotic dancer and she loves it.  People around her act as if she should be embarrassed about it but she doesn't even bat an eyelash when telling people what she does for work.  It's always funny when people take offense at your job for you.  Her favorite is when other women would tell her she was being oppressed and exploited and all she could do was crack up and tell them that her bank account said different. 

[lilfox]

Well, if someone (as a previous poster mentioned) can catch flak for taking a job as an inner city middle school teacher ( ), I defy anyone to come up with a job that is completely free from criticism!  After all, everyone knows, or says they know, or saw a TV show once where a nun was stealing money, or a nurse was playing 'angel of mercy,' or a teacher was the bad influence.

"People like you" is a a really obnoxious, dismissive thing to say, I would get pretty annoyed by that too.  I'd want to say something back like "Well, we all did graduate from Evil Photographer School."     It sounds like from people's experience, a diverting anecdote or a vague response (depending on the asker) are your best bets.

[Firecat]

I think it is worth considering and discussing the impact of the fashion industry on standards of beauty, the self-esteem of girls and women, etc. But that can be done without personally attacking anyone, and is out of the scope of this thread.

I do know how you feel to an extent, OP. I work in online education. And some of the comments I've heard about diploma mills and the like are hurtful and, frankly, ignorant. I like my job and I'm good at it. Mostly I've been able to sidestep or ignore, but it does sting at times.

[exitzero]

I was a debt collector. To some people this is on par with saying i kick cute animals for a living.

"Well, someone has to do it, they might as well pay me" With a smile followed by a heap of beandip usually worked in my social circle.

I did debt collection for many years, too. I used to tell people it was the world's second oldest profession.

[TootsNYC]

Hobish's is a great example.  She wasn't hurting anyone.  She wasn't hurting herself.  She was true to her standards.

You could have a career in a religious field and have people react poorly to you.

This Sunday my pastor said he sometimes doesn't know what to say on plane trips (he travels a lot) when people ask what he does. "When I say, 'I'm a pastor,' the conversation stops right there." And I can imagine that he might be verbally attacked, given what some people assume about Christians.

When you get "people like you," I think you are entitled to be offended. And repeat, in an offended tone, "People like ME?! What exactly do you mean, 'people like me'? People who have ethics and are friendly? People you meet socially and don't know well? Excuse me, I need to freshen my drink." And then walk immediately away.

[BarensMom]

DH and I both worked for Evil Oil Companies.  We finally decided our stock answer would be, "...and how did you get here today?"  When the challenger would sputter about BART, AC Transit, or carpooling, we'd reply, "...so our point is made" and walk away.  In all this time, only one person challenging us actually rode a bicycle to the party.

[Sharnita]

Well, if someone (as a previous poster mentioned) can catch flak for taking a job as an inner city middle school teacher ( ), I defy anyone to come up with a job that is completely free from criticism!  After all, everyone knows, or says they know, or saw a TV show once where a nun was stealing money, or a nurse was playing 'angel of mercy,' or a teacher was the bad influence.

"People like you" is a a really obnoxious, dismissive thing to say, I would get pretty annoyed by that too.  I'd want to say something back like "Well, we all did graduate from Evil Photographer School."     It sounds like from people's experience, a diverting anecdote or a vague response (depending on the asker) are your best bets.

Inner city teahcers get tons of heat!  especially Secondary.  They get it from people in "nicer" communities who don't know why the inner city kid don't perform as well as their kids - must be the teachers.  They get it from the people within the community who expect them to fill the gaps.  They get it from politicians, from kids, from parents, from people who have seen one too many inspirational movies.

[JeanFromBNA]

I remembered hearing an interview with Sister Helen Prejean, a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.  She described how she was waiting in an airport when she saw Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia (best described for the purposes of this story as not an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty) a few rows away.  She hurried up to him, and asked, "Are you Scalia?"

He replied, "Somebody has to be."

[Mediancat]

I work for a healthcare insurance company, and lots of people seem to think all I do is sit around stamping "denied" on claims all day. 

Semi off-topic: I work for the same kind of company, and jokingly claim I do that all day, with an evil grin on my face, while rubbing my hands together. I tend not to get a lot of people "calling me out" after that.

Rob

[Mediancat]

By the way, if you want to see people who literally work for Evil, Inc (work-safe):

http://www.evil-comic.com/

Rob

[mmswm]

Well, if someone (as a previous poster mentioned) can catch flak for taking a job as an inner city middle school teacher ( ), I defy anyone to come up with a job that is completely free from criticism!  After all, everyone knows, or says they know, or saw a TV show once where a nun was stealing money, or a nurse was playing 'angel of mercy,' or a teacher was the bad influence.

"People like you" is a a really obnoxious, dismissive thing to say, I would get pretty annoyed by that too.  I'd want to say something back like "Well, we all did graduate from Evil Photographer School."     It sounds like from people's experience, a diverting anecdote or a vague response (depending on the asker) are your best bets.

Inner city teachers get tons of heat!  especially Secondary.  They get it from people in "nicer" communities who don't know why the inner city kid don't perform as well as their kids - must be the teachers.  They get it from the people within the community who expect them to fill the gaps.  They get it from politicians, from kids, from parents, from people who have seen one too many inspirational movies.

This.  Exactly.  It's why I got out of education.  My ulcers couldn't take the stress anymore.  I loved my kids.  My students did reasonably well compared to their (real) peers.  They fought poverty, drugs, violence, absent parents.  Some came to me having immigrated from 3rd world countries, speaking no English and completely illiterate in their native languages.   Some came to me 4 or 5 grade levels behind. Yet somehow, I was supposed to get them performing on grade level in a matter of months.  I considered myself a success if I could get them 2-3 grade levels ahead of where they started. We worked hard.  We had fun. I've had a number of students tell me that I was the reason why they didn't join a gang or do drugs and a few told me that I was the first teacher that ever believed in them, and the reason why they fought to stay in school and go to college.  Yet, according to the politicians and the public, I'm a bad teacher. I couldn't live with that anymore.  I have found other ways of making a difference in kids' lives, but unless something dramatic changes, I will never go back to public education.

Okay, sorry for the hijack.  Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

[Slartibartfast]

I think the right response differs depending on whether people are saying something because 1) they're ignorant of what your job/company does, 2) they hear your industry/company name and assume you must do [unpleasant job] when your job actually has nothing to do with that, or 3) they really and truly believe what you do is immoral or unethical.

In the first case, I think you can include a statement about what your job/company actually does and that might head off a lot of the speculation.  "I work as a product spokeswoman at conventions - some people call it "booth babes" but the job is really more about knowing our product and being able to answer questions than it is about looking pretty."

In the second case, you can either defend your company/industry or you can clarify what your job is right off the bat.  "I'm an IT specialist for BigInsuranceCompany - I don't deal with claims, but I do keep their computers going."

In the third case, I think you just have to accept that what you do is controversial and some people are going to take issue with it.  If nothing else, it gives you a quick litmus test for which people aren't worth putting energy toward being friends with 

(I'll admit, I can kind of see this from both sides.  My best friend from college now does graphic and web design for a national group with a lot of political clout, which I'll say is PETA for the sake of example even though it isn't.  She believes very strongly in her cause, as does everyone else she works with, but obviously there are a lot of people out there who think the whole organization is wrong and should not exist.  I happen to think her organization is a good thing and does a good job raising awareness about their issue, so it doesn't bother me when she gets a bit political in her Tweets/Facebook status updates.  On the other side of the coin, I know a lady at church who has a fairly distasteful job for a large oil company.  I like her fine as a person, but I just can't get past the fact that she's built a career out of doing something I consider unethical and sleazy.)