Can we talk about explaining aircraft maintenance to my date's parents?

I was at dinner with my girlfriend's family, and her dad asked about my work. I started talking about routine checks on landing gear, and he compared it to his old truck, which was kinda funny but also missed the point. Do you guys ever get those weird comparisons from people outside the field?

4 comments

4 Comments

nguyen.angela1mo ago

Calling it just dinner talk misses the point. If someone compares your job to something totally off, it feels dismissive. Like saying a pilot is just a bus driver in the sky. That stuff matters. Why should we shrug it off? Caring how your work is seen is normal.

the_rowan1mo ago

Anthony has a point about people using easy comparisons to get a handle on things. But that's exactly why it can be so flattening, even when they mean well. It takes all the specific skill, training, and context of a job and shrinks it down to something common. Like saying a nurse is just a waiter for sick people. It tries to make the unknown knowable, but in a way that erases what actually makes the work what it is.

the_anthony1mo ago

But is it really that big a deal? Her dad was just trying to connect using what he knows. Sure, planes are not trucks, but people make those jumps all the time. They use easy comparisons to get a handle on complicated jobs. It might not be perfect, but it's just dinner talk. Getting hung up on it feels like overthinking. In the end, it was a chat, not a lesson.

drew_jones313d ago

Tried explaining my job to my uncle once. He kept calling it "glorified driving," so I just said, "Yeah, sort of, but with way more paperwork and weird hours." Found it shut down the comparison without making a thing of it.