“If you wanted to have all of the answers before you got there, you should have gone to medical school.”

This occupational joke, often told by lawyers, is disparaging of doctors. It’s funny because usually one would think that doctors have a more difficult job than lawyers because they are dealing with life and death situations, but the joke implies that doctors learn everything they need to know at school. Supposedly, all of the diseases and conditions doctors will encounter are in their medical textbooks. While this is not entirely true, it is clearly a belief held by many lawyers who tell this joke. Those lawyers believe that their jobs are more difficult because they can often deal with situations that have never happened before or have never been documented before. Even if their cases are really just a variation of previous cases, they seem to believe that each situation is unique, whereas, in their opinion, an illness is always the same.

The informant is fond of this joke because she is a lawyer. I have heard her tell this joke multiple times, usually when she is talking about a difficult work-related situation. She seems to tell this joke to remind herself that having a difficult job comes with the territory and that not everything is so cut-and-dry.