Don't quit your day job!

"Don't quit your day job" is used to criticize or joke about a person’s talent (especially musical, singing or acting), implying, for example, that if they quit their regular day job to pursue a career as a musician instead - they would not be successful enough to survive.

In the above comic strip the spider jokes about spending less time on the “web” and more time with his family. In this case, “web” is a pun (a play on words) because it could mean a spider’s web or the internet (World Wide Web). The prisoner is not impressed with the spider’s attempt at humor and tells him not to quit his day job (because he wouldn’t be able to make a successful career as a comedian).

1. If you go to a karaoke party and a friend of yours sings terribly, you could jokingly tell him, “Don’t quit your day job!”

2. If someone tells you that he wants to be a professional soccer player but is very clumsy (has bad coordination), you could tell him not to quit his day job.

3. If somebody is telling a joke, but he can’t remember the whole joke or gets the details mixed up and tells you the punch-line (conclusion of the joke) at the wrong time, like I sometimes do, you’d say to him “Don’t quit your day job!”