Badly explain your job
There is a special joy in asking smart people to describe their life’s work like they are explaining it to a goldfish. The results are equal parts brutal and beautiful. A surgeon calls themselves a very careful plumber. A lawyer says they argue for money with rules. A marketer admits they make you want things you did not want five minutes ago. The joke, of course, is that these one liners are often more honest than the corporate bios. We spend years mastering complicated tasks, then collapse them into sentences that sound like confessions. You will laugh, then you will rewrite your own job in a way that makes your boss nervous. Which is to say, this gallery is educational.
Here are 22 gloriously simple job explanations from people who know better and said it anyway. Expect a mix of deadpan accuracy and self roast artistry. The charm is in the honesty. When you strip out jargon, all that remains is the core function, and it is often funny. Use these as icebreakers, resume refreshers, or reminders that work is sillier than we admit. If you can describe your role in one clear sentence, you might actually understand it.
Career surveys regularly find that explaining your job to relatives ranks high on the holiday stress list. That tiny data point explains why these one liners feel medicinal. They reduce social small talk to a few honest words and a laugh. Better still, they puncture the balloon of workplace self importance. If your job is real, it can survive a joke. If it cannot, maybe the joke is doing you a favor. Consider this permission to reframe what you do in the simplest terms possible. It will make your next family dinner shorter, and funnier.
Liked these brutally simple job takes? Try more galleries: work memes, job humor, explain it like I am five, and corporate jargon detox. Clarity is underrated, and comedy is free.
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Roy R., Chief Meme Curator
Roy founded Thunder Dungeon in 2012 and has since guided its growth into a 2.5 million‑strong community of meme enthusiasts. With over a decade of digital‑media experience and a nose for viral humor, Roy oversees content strategy, ensuring every post is both hilarious and high‑quality
