Basic Trope: A character is never seen to engage in the job they claim to have.
- Straight:
- Bill introduces himself as a teacher, but he is never seen giving lectures, and all he does is goof off with his students.
- Bill's pirates, despite their apparent profession, are never seen raiding, stealing, or even fighting, and just spend all their time sailing.
- Exaggerated: Despite claiming to be a teacher, Bill had never set his foot in a school ground his whole life.
- Downplayed: Bill is the school's science teacher, in addition to being the homeroom teacher for Class 2A, but while he does seem to take care of his duties as homeroom teacher, he is never shown to teach any science.
- Justified:
- Bill is still on probation and hasn't been given any actual classes to teach yet, but sticks around the campus for his learning.
- Bill hates his job and deliberately fools around to do as little as he could.
- The work's setting focuses on the antics that goes on during the school's break times, during which the teachers are obviously not teaching.
- Privateer Bill isn't stupid enough to perform raids on the ally held town where the story takes place.
- Inverted:
- Bill comes everyday to give classes/lectures and extends disciplinary actions to misbehaving students, even though he doesn't have any teaching credentials, and is not even employed at the school he "teaches" in.
- Bill never seems to do anything except teaching, despite other characters claiming he has a life outside the school.
- Bill is almost always seen planning curricula, teaching classes, and marking assignments but insists he is not a teacher.
- Subverted:
- Bill tells his friend Alice that he's a teacher, but she doesn't believe him because she never sees him teach. When she asks about him in the school he works at, the staff confirms that he is a good teacher.
- Pirate Bill is never seen engaging in piracy — it is actually because he set up a protection racket a few years back that is still ongoing.
- Bill's pirates are introduced seemingly friendly, but they are pirates, and follow their introduction by brutally pillaging a town.
- Alice is a bounty hunter who never takes bounties and just kills monsters and bandits in self defense. There was a mistranslation - the original name meant professional hunter as opposed to hobbyist or subsistence hunter.
- Double Subverted: There's another Bill who works at the school, who does his job very well. The first Bill is still never seen in class.
- Parodied: Bill claims to be a rocket scientist despite living in a Medieval European Fantasy world where there is no such thing as rocket. There are no indication that Bill is a time traveler from a more modern era/universe, either, so everyone else just attributes his ramblings about rockets and his work as a part of his Cloud Cuckoo Lander persona.
- Zig Zagged: Bill is a teacher who is never seen to teach any classes, except his official position is a discipline master, and his duty is to oversee the students' behaviour rather than actual teaching — which he doesn't do either. Then again, his involvement is only needed when there is a very serious breach of the school's regulations, and since this rarely happens, Bill spends most of his time at school doing mostly nothing... But when a serious trouble did arise, Bill immediately delegates his task to the closest adult that he comes across (who happens to be the custodian) rather than handling it himself.
- Averted: Bill is a teacher, and is clearly depicted to conduct his teaching plans seriously.
- Enforced:
- The show's creator needs to give Bill a canonical job to make him not seem like a NEET, but since his work life is not relevant to the plot, it is never touched upon.
- The Protagonist is a pirate, but is not supposed to be an Anti-Hero. Therefore, he retains the title, but isn't shown engaging in acts of piracy in order to retain audience sympathy.
- Lampshaded:Alice: Bill, how can you actually be a teacher if you don't teach anything?
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Bill is actually unemployed, but claims to be a teacher to not be seen as a NEET, fully knowing that people won't bother to check if he actually does any teaching.
- Defied: The school comes up with a new regulation that disallows their employed teacher to not do actual teaching. Those who fail to do perform their specified tasks are fired immediately.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "This show's universe seem to have a very lax definition on what counts as a job."
- Deconstructed: Bill's extremely carefree method of "teaching" makes him very popular among his students, but parents hated him for limiting their children's learning and demanded the school to fire him.
- Reconstructed: This causes Bill to actually teach, but he still tends to slack off a lot.
Click here to be a part of the Troper's Guild. Not that we actually do any troping, mind.
