“Join the army, you’ll give your new wife and unborn son a future.”
When I was about to graduate highschool I was told to “Make sure I pick a university with a football team I was comfortable supporting the rest of my life”.
I mean, you don’t want your Alma Mater to have a team called “the Hitlers” or something like that.
My school cancelled the football program the year I arrived. Im supporting a really nice hockey program instead
The schools with the top football teams tend to be pretty good schools.
When I took my aggressive rescue dog to special training. “Does he know who pays the bills? Make sure he watches you pay bills then that’s how he knows that you are the alpha.”
I wish I could make this shit up. Needless to say, the dog didn’t care, the training sucked and nothing helped from that class. $500 down the drain.
That’s hilarious, but even if they’d used an example with something that the dog could actually understand, it’s still bunk, because all of that “alpha” stuff is based on junk science. Those people trying to “establish dominance” are just bullying their dogs for no good reason.
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That is entirely bunk. Sorry you had to go through that my friend.
Thanks. That “trainer” was an idiot.
Dating advice from older men in general. The shit they got away with was wild
The amount of “I just kept asking her and she finally relented!” With the wife giving a forced smile standing beside him is too damn high
For real! I work in the medical field and the amount of times I’ve heard some geriatric casually say he harassed a woman into marrying him is too damn high
You know what else is too damn high? Rent
I’d vote for that guy’s mustache
Suddenly those boomer memes about the wife and husband hating each other make a lot more sense.
“Family wants the best for you, listen to us.”
Reported like this, it sounds more like gaslighting than advice.
“Don’t worry about a thing, 'cos every little thing is gonna be alright”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NELO1PGRjJ4
“Evything’s gonna be just fine” -Spud
“If you find a job doing something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Utter bullshit. Turning something you love into something you have to do is the most sure way to turn it into something you hate to do.
No matter how much you love to do something, being forced to get up at a certain time 5 days a well to go do it for 8 hours a day makes it work.
“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.” - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
Brilliant. I’ve been meaning to read those again; I haven’t in many years.
I have to take a break from my hobbies on weekends, imagining doing it 5 times a week for that long is exhausting now being paid to leisurely do something I love at my own pace, sure but you bet your ass doing that I’m also gonna end up hating because it will make way less and I’ll be frustrated at my pay and savings.
So yeah, if you are rich, and want to be an artist where you paint 3 hours a week, I’m sure you’ll love it
Any of them that’s vague but of course it’s dependent on context.
The ‘be yourself’ one bothers me the most. There’s parts of myself that I don’t like, why would I want to get cozy with it?
Oh and especially “do what makes you happy”. I’m sorry but I deal with suicide on a semi-regular basis and what if one day I decide I want to go and I feel that is what will make me happy in that mindframe. Would that be okay? No it wouldn’t.
You can make “willing to change and improve” part of who you are. I think far too many people interpret “be yourself” as “never change, improve, or self-reflect”, when it should really mean something more like “don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t”. Any changes you make should be sincere. Being yourself doesn’t have to mean being stagnant.
Yeah, ‘be yourself’ is really more ‘accept yourself, be true to it, and strive to be better where you falter’
Know the parts of yourself to keep to yourself is pretty valuable advice. I think “Be Yourself” is better described as “Be yourself- except for that, and that, and that, oh and probably keep that shit to yourself bro- that’s fucked up.”
“Get pregnant. It will fix your endometriosis.” My boss, who was tired of me calling out due to pain.
Advice I did not take because that’s not how that works.
I read my favorite response to that “advice” a few years ago on Reddit.
Act like it’s good advice that you’ve never heard before … then ask how long you have to stay pregnant to “fix your endometriosis” before getting an abortion. “Is this a first trimester or a late term deal?”
“Join Lemmy”
“YOLO”
I mean, it’s kind of true. That’s why you should be careful, because of you get killed or badly injured, there no second try.
Um…what about respawning?
Be youself and everything will be fine.
“Just be yourself!”, if I hate myself, why would being myself make anyone else like me
Not that I hate myself, I’m just weird (like positive vibes weird, but still weird), so shit doesn’t always play out like I want it to… like the interviewer may have a nice rack, and her nipples may be showing cuz the AC in the room is set to “dante’s hell” temp, so… I just stare at them. I don’t want to, but I can’t bring myself not to do it… and then the questions go by and I space out and then I’m excised from the interview.
This totally never happend, just a theoretical example 👀.
…
Thank you for making me feel less autistic than I am.
I may be on the spectrum, who knows… that’s not a field that is that well developed where I live, so practically, short of dumping a lot of money and flying over to a western country to get myself checked, there’s very little anyone can tell me here. Hell, ADHD is news here, lol, people still don’t know how to diagnose it, so they go abroad 🤷.
Did you actually try though? Most people who think this is bad advice, are too afraid of what people will think to actually be themselves, and instead present how they want to be perceived. Which doesn’t work.
The advice “just be yourself” also doesn’t always guarantee success, but it does mean you’ll wind up surrounded (everyone’s definition will vary here, could be 1-2 people) by people you like, rather than those you just pretend to.
It depends on the environment. In school and professional environments it’s usually not good advice. Once you’re old enough to go into the world and find your people, then it’s good advice.
I am surrounded by people who like me, I am myself in front of them, they know how fucked up I can be. The problem is everyone else in my life that I have to put on a face to get by the day. Work is a perfect example. Like I really wanna murder (or at least hit really hard) that brainless little readhead from HR that still doesn’t understand how to open up a folder (explained 20 times over), so bugs me to do it, cuz it’s too much of an embarresment to tell her colleagues to do it… that sort of thing.
And you can’t yell at her, cuz she’s in HR 😒.
This advice isn’t meant for work settings, so it’s no surprise it doesn’t work there.
Except when you ask for advice for an interview and people tell you to just be yourself like that will actually help you get a job
Exactly… it won’t, chances are you’ll never ever get any job if you be yourself.
They should have pointed that out when they gave the advice.
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I’m not a crappy person, I’m just weird (pointed out by other fellow humans many times). Example, sometimes I make people uncomfortable by asking questions that they might not wanna give the answer to. The problem is, I actually don’t see anything wrong with that, but I have made an effort over the years not to do that. Still, that’s not me, that’s a mask I put on so I can be more socially acceptable.
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I’ve been in the wrong place my entire life. I was born in the wrong place. I don’t feel like I’ve ever belonged here. And then I see people in other more stable countries and see how they function on a day to day basis and I realize more and more that I’m just not cut out to live where I currently live. Here, you gotta have strings in every single government agency, ministry, whatever, in order to survive… cuz everyone tries to fuck you over a million different ways, so you gotta watch your back all the time. I’m just not designed like that. It’s like someone did a lobotomy on my brain when I was born an threw that EQ part of it in some dumpster. I’m socially friendly and I love hanging out with people, but when it comes to seing red flags or signs that something bad might happen, I’m just… a complete dummy. Years of hanging out with all sorts of people have corrected this side of me, up to a point, but it’s still not good enough. I really feel like I was just born without that gift, unfortunatelly, a gift that so many people rely on (at least around here, street smart is the way to go here, otherwise you’re fucked). And I’m just tired… just tired of endlessly lagging behind everyone esle around here. I’m not stupid, I know I’m not, but being smart has nothing to do with being street smart… unfortunatelly.
That being said, I beat myself over for years why sometimes so simple social concepts or warnings escape me, but are so blaintly obvious to everyone else. But, I stopped doing that. I just set different goals for myself. I am obviously born in the wrong place and my brain is just not wired to think like people do around here. I have tried, I really have, but I feel like I’m always miles away behind everyone else. I currently can’t leave this place, my wife doesn’t want to leave, and we have a son, so it’s not an option right now. But as soon as the kid is a bit grown, I am definitely out of here.
And the fucking heat… can’t fucking stand the heat 😭… every fucking summer, every god damn summer, it’s the same story, over and over, 45C on a good day 😭. We didn’t even have snow this winter, it barely went below 10C.
“Be yourself” is pretty good advice, be the best version of yourself so you don’t have to act all the time.
“and everything will be fine”, well that’s wishful thinking they can’t guarantee it but maybe they see something in you that makes them think you will succeed.
Maybe, who knows…
My mom gave me this advice. None of the advices she has ever given me have ever panned out right.
Just wait, the right person will come along.
Turns out that doesn’t work for guys.
Yeah, we have to put in extra effort.
Yep. Grew up in a house full of women, so I heard this a lot. Also, “the right person comes when you’re not looking,” so I never looked. Terrible advice.
Yeah I’m finding that piece of advice is worthless. I say, just look over your shoulder once in a while, but never not go looking at all. Some of the best people I’ve dated was because I just simply glanced over, but I can’t say any of them we’re ‘the right ones’ because they happened to be because I wasn’t looking.
Work hard, show up and you will get a pay raise, you will get promoted.
Yeah no didn’t work that way.
You want a pay raise, find a new job.
I count myself lucky to have received raises at my job (dispatching for a towing company)
I started at 13.25/hr in May 2018, and my most recent raise in May 2023 for my 5 year review I’m up to $20.00/hr
But I had to ASK every time. It will never be handed to you freely. You should always be looking for another job, and jump ship if you don’t get a raise you honestly believed you earned.
It can be monumentally difficult for one to know one’s own worth. I recommend checking the United States government’s bureau of labor statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook and try to find your job position in there to get a baseline.
It’s good to know what the stats are, both nationally and in your locality if the info is available, so you can reference it both in performance reviews and when job searching.
It’s all anecdotes but I’ve found that jumping has raised me incrementally, but I’ve never had a job I’ve truly mastered, nor have I had a job where they rewarded longevity.
So those two variables mean it’s continuously adapting and learning but not mastering anything yet (in order to grow and survive)
Yep, never gotten a raise that was more than a COL adjustment (and in most cases that was only because the employer was legally obliged to).
I’ve been promoted to take on more responsibility, but pay was never reflective of that. The new job title is basically what allows you to get the higher pay at the next job.
And your replacement probably got paid more than you so that could have just given you the raise and avoided the loss of institutional knowledge, but nah.
That’s likely more accurate than not. The road to better pay increases across the board is sadly often paved with bitter workers who left for greener pastures.
But that leverage is more worker-centric at higher compensation levels. If you have hard-to-find talent you gain leverage in your ability to advocate for what you want/need.
The trick is finding jobs that synergize to an broader overall industry. If you’re moving every 3yrs or so that’s plenty of time to learn many of the specifics of the job and markets you’re in. You treat each job as a training assignment for becoming an expert in the field.
For example
If you start out marketing for a pharmeceutical company You’re next move could be marketing for a bio-pharma company After that you move to marketing for phjarmaceutical ingredients After that you move to marketing for a drug delivery devices Then you can go to medical devices materials
NOW YOU ARE A MARKETING EXPERT IN HEALTHCARE
You look weak. I recommend that you drink 36% cream. It will give you energy and you won’t need that ‘exercise’ nonsense.
Hell yeah cream gains 💪
i shudder to imagine how that person looks
What moron told you that?
He wasn’t a moron, he was a time traveller from the '30s. Still the worst advice I’ve ever heard, tho. But I don’t get out much.
