ask the readers: weird job advice your parents gave you

by Alison Green on January 4, 2018

Over the years, we’ve heard about some really weird job advice and other actions from parents. Some examples:

* “My mom once tried to go into a job interview with me, when I was 23. I told her ABSOLUTELY NOT. (She did a lot of crazy things when I was that age, but I eventually trained her out of the helicoptering.)”

* “My father accused a recruiter that had called me of working for a “fake” company. Apparently she misspelled the name of the company she worked at, and when he googled he was redirected to a porn website. The company was legit, but the recruiter was so offended that never called me again or returned my emails.”

* “My dad told me to wear jeans to a job interview when I was a teenager. Everyone else was in smart trousers, I didn’t get the job, and have never been able to figure out if he genuinely thought this was a good idea or if he didn’t think the job was suitable and didn’t want me to get it…”

* “My dad once insisted on accompanying me to a job interview that turned out to be for Cutco knives. He embarrassed the hell out of me by hovering over me while I filled out the application, loudly yelling about the “inappropriate rap music” that they were playing in reception, and snorting conspicuously throughout the presentation. I practically had to fight him not to come into the one-on-one with me. Of course, they offered me the opportunity, because anyone who needs her dad to go to interviews with her must be a rube. I didn’t take it, of course.” (Okay, this one is pretty awesome.)

So: Did your parents give you weird job advice or otherwise try to interfere in your career in bizarre ways? Or have you heard an outrageous story of that happening to someone else? We want to hear about it in the comments.

You may also like:
{ 1,118 comments }

{ 1,118 comments… read them below }

  1. I'm A Little TeaPot*

    Some of the clothing my mom has thought was work appropriate… luckily, she also had a policy of not buying me clothing since she couldn’t figure out what size I am. But she’s sent me links to things. One was actually a full length evening dress.

      1. I'm A Little TeaPot*

        She hasn’t worked in an office since I was a baby, and then she worked for the state government. In a totally normal office. Granted, it was the 80s.

    2. lyonite*

      When I was interviewing for a summer intern position in college my mom loaned me one of her old “power suits” (this was in the late 90s). Shoulder pads, gold buttons and everything. I got the job, but I still cringe when I think of what I looked like showing up in an ultra-casual scientific lab like that.

      1. AKchic*

        *shudder*
        I have so many stories I could tell of the clothing power struggles my mom has tried to foist on me.

        Some of those clothes still haunt my nightmares.

      2. The New Wanderer*

        Oh, the late 90s, it had its own issues. My mom’s contributions to my work outfits were sheer white blouses. With no camisoles. She either didn’t know they existed or that they needed to be worn under sheer blouses for modesty’s sake. To be fair I didn’t know that either, but I used to argue that I wouldn’t wear the shirts because my bra could be seen and she would try to tell me that that was the style. No, no it wasn’t. Weirdly, I did occasionally see other (usually older) women wear sheer-ish blouses where their bras were visible, and every time it was pretty clearly a fashion faux pas.

        1. another Liz*

          There was a time, 1992 I think, where it WAS in fashion to wear a boldly colored bra under a sheer blouse. Thankfully the trend didn’t last.

          1. Alli525*

            Don’t worry, it’s 2018 – that trend is either already back, or coming soon to a theater near you.

            1. Optimistic Prime*

              It’s back already. You can especially find it in the spring months, under “festival fashion” – brightly colored bralettes that are specifically designed to be worn and seen under sheer/eyelet/lace blouses.

            2. YoungTeach*

              I’m 25 and I saw this fashion throughout high school and college. This “trend” never went away…

            3. Stranger than fiction*

              Oh terrific, something to wear on top to match the sheer “leggings” that show everything underneath. Brilliant

              1. Ego Chamber*

                Do you want to know the secret of how to make leggings die forever?

                Whenever you see a woman wearing leggings, tap her on the shoulder and say “Ohmigod! I love your stretch-pants!” Do this consistently enough, and I swear the trend will die (there is a reason leggings didn’t survive the 80’s and I firmly believe that reason was the name we gave them back then).

                2. Bea*

                  Nah. I used to roast my mom for her stretch pants and now I have started buying them for her when I find ones I like too. I also used to pick at her coloring in her eyebrows too, low and behold I have introduced her to much better makeup for the job.

                  Unless you’re targeting teens, late 20s and 30 somethings dont give a fffff what you call them.

          2. Not Rebee*

            In my opinion, if your bra is going to show you should always make sure it’s a fantastic looking one. Essentially, if you can’t fix it, feature it.

        2. Elizabeth H.*

          A few jobs ago I had a supervisor who wore this style (and I think she still does) – sheer blouse and visible bra. She was at the director level and continues to be active at that level in our organization, after being my boss she left for a 2 year federal appointment! It doesn’t seem to have held her back. But it’s definitely not everyone who can pull off that style.

      3. Optimistic Prime*

        I used to interview undergraduate RAs and trust me, lab managers and professors are used to undergrads coming in in all sorts of things. Few of them have good quality professional clothes at that age, so many of them are borrowing from friends and relatives.

        1. Wintermute*

          nothing says “I’m ready to tackle any project!” like shoulder pads like a linebacker.

    3. AvonLady Barksdale*

      My mom doesn’t understand business casual, nor does she understand that my industry tends to be pretty casual, nor does she comprehend that dressing in a completely counter way to an office’s culture can be detrimental. She’s a physician and has never worked in a corporate setting. By the time she worked in a non-clinical office, she was very senior and basically set her own rules. Every time I start a new job, she goes on about buying me a new wardrobe. I have a perfectly fine wardrobe of nice jeans and tops, with a collection of fantastic dresses that I never get to wear anymore because I don’t see clients as often (I have vowed to start wearing them again, non-client-facing be damned). “Mom, I wear jeans to work.” “WHY??? If you don’t dress well, they won’t take you seriously!” “Mom, my boss wears shorts and hockey jerseys to work and sometimes he thinks I look too buttoned up.” She’s horrified by these things– especially the boss in shorts.

      1. peggy*

        I worked with a guy who very occasionally wore a really nice suit because it made him feel happy and organized and powerful. Our office is super casual – jeans, sneakers, sometimes people keep their workout clothes on after a morning workout break, hoodies, etc. Anytime he did it, people were like “did someone die or are you going to a job interview today?”

        2. essEss*

          I used to start dressing in suit jackets and more ‘grown up’ clothes at one of my jobs whenever the supervisors were overloading me with too much work and not listening when I told them it was becoming unmanageable. I knew that they had a lot of respect for my work and would not want me to leave so I just did it to make them a little nervous since they would never come right out and ask if I had an interview that day.

          2. Jesmlet*

            Totally stealing this. I usually bring food and eat at my desk but from now on, whenever they’re dumping too much on my plate, I’ll dress real nice and take my full hour for lunch out.

          5. Alli525*

            At my last job, people in my role did not need to dress more formally than “non-jeans and a nice top” even though we were technically business/biz-casual. When I interviewed at my current job, I “had a first-thing doctor’s appointment” and changed out of my interview clothes and into work clothes before hopping in a cab back to my old job. I do hate that I had to do it at the place where I interviewed, but I was friendly with the receptionist and I don’t think she told anyone (and I wasn’t about to change clothes in the actual cab!).

            I still got questioned about why I was wearing mascara.

          6. peggy*

            Ha! One of my tricks when I was feeling overworked and unappreciated was to clean out my desk and bring everything personal home, and ask people if they needed things like, “Hey I have a ton of post-its over here, anyone need any?”. It immediately made people think I’d been interviewing and was prepping to leave. It accomplished nothing other than making me feel better. Must be used very, very sparingly.

          8. CQ*

            I worked in a pretty casual office as well. I only wore suits when I had a client meeting with any of our bank clients (my colleagues always knew the day I had a meeting with the bankers!). One day just for fun we all decided to do a “power suit” day. It was so much fun. We all showed up wearing power suits, and, admittedly, felt more powerful that day. We took photos in power poses and shared them on our social media. I would like to do this again maybe for a team morale boost, or perhaps as a fundraiser for a local organization.

        3. Wannabe Disney Princess*

          I do something similar. I’ll do my hair and makeup if I’ve been feeling off for whatever reason (recovering from being sick, bad day, anxiety, etc). That way when I look in the mirror my brain goes “Oh! You aren’t feeling so bad, you look great!”

          2. Sleepy Librarian*

            and me! One of the easiest pick-me-ups. :) And I think it really makes me more productive.

        4. TC*

          My boss does something similar — we’re super casual, but he likes wearing suits. You’ll see him in seersucker in the summer and tweed in the winter. Occasionally I’ll ask him how his court appearance went or whatever, but overall it’s just accepted that’s how he dresses. We’re all for it.

          1. CoveredInBees*

            Is your boss a criminal defense attorney in Brooklyn? If so, that collection of seersucker suits was amazing when I was at the Brooklyn DA’s office. If not, then there’s at least two of them!

        5. Autumnheart*

          I had a coworker who did that as well. He said, “I have these nice dressy work clothes and I never wear them, so I am making a point to wear them sometimes because I deserve to be fancy.” It was cute. He got a few of the other guys into it too. And really, I see his point. What good is it to have nice things if they just sit around gathering dust?

            1. OhNo*

              My new resolution for 2018 is Friday Tie Day – dressing up with one of my fancy ties I never wear every Friday. Gotta wear them some time!

              2. Parenthetically*

                My male students did Friday Tie Day one year! They lobbied for, and got, an exception to the uniform policy to dress UP, because they are certifiably insane, and I love them for it.

            2. JoAnna*

              The ladies at my office actually did “Professional Wear Tuesday” one time as we all had cute, classy professional business wear from former jobs but now worked at a super casual workplace (jeans and yoga pants, t-shirts, etc). We invited men to participate as well but I don’t think any of them did.

            3. curly sue*

              My partner works in an incredibly informal segment of his industry, to the point where someone could probably work a full day in the office in a unicorn onesie and barely get a comment. They did Formal Fridays for a while – waistcoats and ties and power suits and all – and had an absolute blast with it.

      2. seejay*

        I’ve been in casual work environments for 20 years. I’m a software engineer at this point and I live in San Francisco. People *really* don’t care what engineers look like for the most part, unless you’re working at a bank or something really more conservative. I wind up working in startups or other really casual laid-back work environments. As such, I’ve had my hair coloured the entire hue of the rainbow over the past 20 years and I have multiple tattoos and have had visible piercings all over since my late teens (not many on my face because I just don’t want them, but I have at least 14+ in my ears). I tame it all down when I’m looking for work, just to make sure I don’t trip someone off, but once I’m settled in, I’m back to my normal everyday look.

        My mom still insists on bringing up now and then that I won’t get a serious job / be taken seriously / whatever else “adults” are expected to dress conservatively, with normal hair and proper jewelery… this is despite the fact that I’m regularly employed, have lived on my own for 20 years, and am in my early 40s. :|

        1. SusanIvanova*

          Way back in the early 90s, my Silicon Valley job had a customer at a financial group in Iowa.
          Monday: they report a bug. Sales panics, schedules me for a redeye that night! My manager pushes back – nobody is going to do good work after a redeye with a 5 hour layover! – and gets them to schedule a normal direct flight on Tues. Also Monday: I fix the bug.

          Tues: I fly out anyway. Sales had insisted I wear a dress. It’s Iowa! It’s finance! I take a look at my closet and find a jacket that had belonged to my brother – think Miami Vice, but light gray instead of pastel. Put that on over a nice top and slacks, I’m good.

          Weds: Sitting in the lobby of the place, it feels like something straight out of Mad Men. All the men in suits. All the women in dresses. The software guys I’m there to meet tell me they looked around the lobby and said “aha, she’s got to be the engineer!”

          1. NacSacJack*

            Having worked at a financial group in Iowa in the early 90s, I’m glad you did this and got that reaction. :)

        2. Geoffrey B*

          My mother, bless her, was convinced that my ponytail would prevent me from ever getting a research/engineering job, even when I was in one. She told me that “engineers pay a lot of attention to how you dress” and was quite distressed by my clothing choices (which were considerably more formal than my boss’s).

          1. The Other Katie*

            “She told me that “engineers pay a lot of attention to how you dress””

            All my whats to this. Most of my friends are engineers of some sort, and as far as I can tell, they only care that you _are_ dressed, at least enough to avoid the effects of climate exposure.

              1. whingedrinking*

                My first boyfriend was a physicist. He routinely wore tie-dye and had the kind of hairstyle you only get with natural curls, a strong resistance to haircuts, and no idea what conditioner was for. (What can I say – he made me laugh.) Admittedly, this was as an undergrad; the last time I ran into him, during his PhD., he’d cut off the hair but grown a truly horrible beard, and I think he only stopped wearing the tie-dye shirts when they actually fell apart, so he was just on regular t-shirts and jeans.
                A subsequent gentleman caller was also a physicist and had dreadlocks. However, in his case he was black and his dreads were well groomed and maintained. He also left science to become a diplomat, so he was kind of in a different camp altogether.

            2. starsaphire*

              Sure, engineers will compliment you on your superhero T-shirt that matches theirs, if they look up long enough to notice it.

              Thaaaat’s about it for engineers paying attention to your clothes. *looks around my cubefarm at the endless sea of engineers in T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers*

            1. Geoffrey B*

              You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But in fact she knew quite a few IT-type engineers including her husband, my father. He’s never had a ponytail AFAIK, but his wardrobe is… about what you’d expect from a professor of engineering.

              No, it was just a peculiarity of my mother’s. She was a very bright and kind woman but I think she worried about me being judged and excluded by others (I’m autistic, so I was always a bit of an outsider) and sometimes she took things a bit out of proportion.

              1. Paula, with Two Kids*

                Be fair, at one point, every engineer in America wore slacks, button downs, and ties (the male ones anyways). Until about 2000…

      3. Annabelle*

        Omg your mom sounds like my mom. My boss also wear shorts, and lots of other people do the athlesirue thing. She nearly had a stroke when i explained this to her.

      4. 2 Cents*

        Yes! Wear your fantastic dresses, even if there isn’t a “reason”! My New Year’s resolution a few years ago was to just say “yes” more often — and that included wearing the stuff in my closet I’m forever “saving” for special occasions (client meetings, etc.). Except I usually end up saving stuff till it’s no longer quite in style, then I get rid of it, practically unworn.

        1. AvonLady Barksdale*

          I got sidelined by a knee injury (limited my shoe choices) and this cold snap! But now my knee is better, so the dresses and boots will come out of the closet. Oddly enough, I had plans for drinks this evening, so I put on tights, an amazing wrap skirt, cashmere sweater, ankle boots… then my boss told me to stay home because of the weather (our roads will get progressively icier this afternoon). Harrumph.

          1. 2 Cents*

            Oh no! That outfit sounds really cute! But yeah, I’m in the middle of the storm hitting the Northeast, so better to stay in that go out :P

      5. Bigglesworth*

        I used to work in a fairly casual office at a university. Jean Friday’s every week and all during summer break. Monday through Thursday was usually business-casual leaning heavily on the casual front (slacks and polo shirts or stretchy business slacks, dressy tank top, and cardigan. I think I started off worrying everyone because I would wear my business dresses and more professional wardrobe frequently. Everyone eventually got used to it and it made hiding that I was interviewing elsewhere a lot easier when the time came to move on.

      6. Mary (in PA)*

        One of my previous jobs was in an office with a super-casual dress code, so one department did “Formal Friday” instead of Casual Friday.

        2. techandwine*

          Hah did we work at the same job? One of the teams at one of my previous jobs did that. People would get super dressed up and it was awesome.

      7. Katie C.*

        I actually got talked to by a manager for dressing too nice. I was a tech support, but my mother insisted that I needed to dress in office clothes, complete with pumps and blazers. I wasn’t told directly to dress down, but that left the impression that I was trying to be management.

        1. Yvaine*

          My first day at my current job I was flat out told that I was overdressed and should show up in jeans the next day. It’s not like I was all that dressed up, just black pants, a sweater, and flats.

    4. LawLady*

      I feel this so hard. About 4 times a year my mom sends me something “for work”. It’s always something appropriate for HER work (as a school counselor), but would be very out of place in my business formal, suits every day law office.

      The last one was a floral A-line skirt with big red flowers on it. She insisted it was work appropriate because it would go past my knees. (But actually I do love it and wear it on weekends. Just not at work!)

        1. LawLady*

          It really is. She is wonderful and loving and supportive. Just doesn’t understand why I can’t wear her “fun” clothes.

    5. Annabelle*

      My mom fully believes the whole “you can never be overdressed” thing. I work in an extremely casual office. Like, some people wear literal sweatpants level casual. She’s been trying to buy me suits for the past year. I appreciate the gesture, but I would look wildly out of sync in a suit.

    6. Cake Wad*

      I seem to have the opposite mom problem. My mom doesn’t try to get me to dress more formally for work… she thinks I should be wearing short mini skirts and short dresses, or long tees with designs on them with leggings. I’m 42 years old and work in a slightly more formal than business casual environment.

      1. Alienor*

        When I was in high school (mid-80s) my mom was forever accusing me of dressing like an old lady because I wore the baggy sweaters and big shirts that were in style at the time. She thought I should wear miniskirts and tight, low-cut tops so I could attract a boyfriend…actually she probably still thinks so now that I’m in my 40s and widowed, she’s just learned not to say so out loud.

    7. Ramona Flowers*

      When I got my first proper full-time job my now-estranged mother gave me a desk set: pen pot, in-tray and something else I forget. It was pale lilac suede. In 2006. I worked for a videogames magazine and was the only woman in the office. Lilac suede. Lilac.

      (NB this is not why we’re estranged.)

      1. Louise*

        Oh my gosh that sounds SPECTACULAR. Happy to take it off your hands if it’s still lying around.

        2. Ramona Flowers*

          I’m so confused. I don’t remember Dead Poets Society well enough to get what this means.

          1. Arjay*

            https://youtu.be/T3xDI_NXHKQ

            Ethan Hawke’s character gets a desk set for Christmas. It seems like an ok gift until he reveals that his remote and formal father gave him the exact same desk set the year before for Christmas. They decide to send it flying like a frisbee off into the snow.

    8. The OG Anonsie*

      My mom grew up in a very conservative environment and has historically had a lot of Ideas about where the line is for something to be too sexy. Namely, if it fits you, it’s too tight and you look like a tramp. I remember absolutely swimming in oversized, frumpy clothing when I was younger.

      Once I was trying on slacks and said they were too big because the legs bagged out into loose folds around the crotch and seat, and I pinched in the sides to get rid of the bagging and show how much extra fabric there was. She hissed at me “your clothes aren’t supposed to be painted on like that.”

    9. Sleepy Librarian*

      My mom once told me not to dress too nicely for a job interview because then “they’ll think you don’t need the money.” I hope she was joking…?

      1. Plague of frogs*

        My mom expressed surprise that I was wearing glasses to a job interview, and pulling my hair back. She said, “Don’t you want to look pretty?” I had to explain that as a young female engineer, the last thing I wanted to look was pretty.

        Then when I got a forearm tattoo, she was worried that it would keep from getting future jobs…in high tech…

        She also can’t get over the fact that we drink at work.

          1. Plague of frogs*

            Once she grasped that I had entered a culture with which she wasn’t familiar, she started asking open-minded questions and expressing amazement without judgement, just like she does in a foreign country. She also grabbed one of my industry-specific magazines, read an article about our market, and told me that my company needed to improve our market share.

            In other words, she’s awesome and I’m lucky to have her :)

      2. CoveredInBees*

        I’ve heard that before…from my grandfather who spent his entire life at the same engineering job he got straight out of school.

      3. Deb B.*

        I wore a silk blouse to an office job I had years ago and one partner commented to the other that they must be paying me too much ( they weren’t).

    10. Tech Comm Geek*

      My mother used to be terrible at this. When I worked for a software company in the 90’s (t-shirt and jeans), she bought me hot pink silk capris with a matching gingham checked satin tank! With a matching screaming aqua set!

      I ended up giving them to a friend who’s a drag queen. He loved them. :D

    11. Leela*

      My parents still push me hardcore to job search by walking around to buildings with an armload of cookie-cutter resumes that list every job I’ve ever had (even my high school laundromat job from over ten years ago. I’m a VFX artist now), shove it at the receptionist, ask to speak to the hiring manager right then and there and if they tell me s/he’s busy, say “no problem, I’ll wait” and then just awkwardly loiter in their lobby until I am presented with the hiring manager — or much more likely if I ever tried this, forcibly removed.

      Also, they want me to not even have the resumes in a folder because they want the hiring manager to see that I have them and they might “lose” me to someone else. Like anyone wants such a clueless, pushy employee!

      2. Miss Pantalones en Fuego*

        My Dad still suggests this. Most of the temp agencies around here, even, have locked doors and you can’t just barge in and ask to talk to someone. You need an interview appointment.

    12. Nana*

      And for those who remember “Dallas” and/or “Dynasty,” all the women in all the offices wore cocktail dresses. Lots of cleavage, lots of spike heels…I never walked into a ‘real-life’ office that looked like that.

    13. Miss Pantalones en Fuego*

      I never felt so out of place as the time I walked into an interview for an archaeology job in a suit and heels at my mother’s behest. The office was, of course, dirty and full of dusty artifacts, tools, etc. and my interviewer was dressed in field clothes (jeans, scruffy sweatshirt, hiking boots). I did not get the job.

      1. Had Matter's Pea Tarty*

        I dressed up pretty nice for mine but they had literally seen me five minutes before dressed in a thick fleece turtleneck and covered in mud, so the effect was diluted somewhat.

    14. esto perpetua*

      Thank God. I thought issues with my mother and my professional wardrobe was just me. Happy to see I have some friends in the comments. Our office culture is a little mixed. Located in the PNW and the manager of our office says we have the “cowboy exception.” Meaning it’s perfectly acceptable to wear jeans and cowboy boots to the office. My mother about fainted when she saw my outfit when she dropped in unexpectedly for lunch. I still haven’t heard the end of it.

  2. ZSD*

    This isn’t exactly bad advice, but my mom (who hasn’t had a full-time job since 1971) just doesn’t understand how I’m able to find job listings on the internet. Like, where do you go? Is it like a newspaper, where there’s a classifieds section? And can I just send my resume to employers and ask if they have any positions available?
    She’s not really trying to advise me, though. She seems to understand that she doesn’t know how modern job searches work, and she wants me to de-baffle her.

    1. Rosamond*

      Yeah, my mom often asks how I find jobs. I tell her all the jobs in my industry are posted on about 3 different websites, so you just check them all. She doesn’t fathom it.

    2. Sparkles*

      My mom is the same way! She doesn’t understand that you don’t just go in and hand them a resume. She insists that you need a face to face contact (and she is not wrong) but you do that today, and everyone will just direct you to apply online.

      1. Wendy Darling*

        I went to two job fairs and then stopped going because every time I tried to talk to someone at a booth they told me to apply online and weren’t able to answer any questions except where to apply online. I had to leave the second one after about 20 minutes because I was about to shriek “WHY ARE YOU HERE???” at someone.

        1. eplawyer*

          Okay shrieking aside, that is a very good question. The whole point of job fairs is to meet candidates for jobs, answer questions about the jobs you have and accept resumes/applications. If all you can do is stand in a booth with some handouts for your company and robotically repeat apply online there is little point having a booth.

          1. Wendy Darling*

            It seems like a lot of effort and expense to just stand around and tell people to apply online. I asked people what types of openings they had, whether they were looking for people with X or Y skills, etc and they just told me to look online! But asking someone “What’s the point of you?” at a job fair isn’t very polite… :P

          2. Rachel in NYC*

            I’ve gone to some pretty good job fairs. Not recently but back when I was looking for work, so its unnfortunate that you had this experience. Though I admit the ones I went to were organized by universities for their alumni so maybe that had something to do with it.

        2. tink*

          Job fairs like that feel like the most colossal waste of my time, especially when it’s a mixed careers fair and they can’t even give me information about the types of positions that are currently open for their company specifically. I don’t want to take their time or mine if they’re only hiring for something I’m completely unqualified for or uninterested in.

          1. Elizabeth West*

            I’ve never found a job at a job fair, even when people can tell me about the company. However, I do tend to walk away with a ton of swag. Those little branded Digiclean things that wipe your phone screen are the shit.

            1. Kimberly*

              I was hired from a job fair – but I’m a public school teacher. There were 2 follow up interviews one with the district and one with the grade level team and background check also.

          2. Starbuck*

            I’ve had good luck at college job fairs getting useful information. I went to several environmental career fairs and still recall the conversation I had at a booth about what the application and training process is to be a fisheries observer in Alaska. I still think about doing that sometimes when I’m between gigs… the thing that I found frustrating about those career fairs was that most of the positions being promoted were unpaid internships, which wasn’t practical for me.

        3. Jadelyn*

          …wow. What’s the point then? When we do job fairs, we take a list of our current openings, copies of job descriptions for all the open positions and some of the more common positions that we don’t currently have openings in but inevitably will soon, marketing materials of the “about us” and “our story” variety, and like…pens and stuff, little swag items. I honestly hate doing job fairs solely because by the end of a 2-hour event my throat hurts and my voice is hoarse because I’ve been doing so much talking. We explain our company, our mission and culture, and our jobs to people, I ask them about their experience and do short mini-screenings basically, take their resumes, and then give them info on how to formally apply if they want to follow up or want to apply for a position that’s not open right now, once it comes open in the future.

          Job fairs are supposed to be a relationship-building, community outreach event. Give candidates a look at your company, make a good impression as a place they want to work, and just build some name recognition for your organization while you’re at it. If you’re not going to do that, then why would you bother paying money to register and sending humans to staff the table?

          1. CoveredInBees*

            Because someone said they should have a table at a job fair and never explained why or how.

      1. ZSD*

        Yes, although when she opens IE, she thinks she’s opening Google, since that’s her homepage. But she knows how to search the web to find information she wants. I guess it’s just that she’s never tried job searching via the internet.

        1. Cringing 24/7*

          Ugh. If I had a nickel for every time someone thought that their homepage was the gateway to all of the internet, I could finally buy my house made of avocado toast.

        2. 2 Cents*

          At least she understands how to use Google! My dad didn’t understand what Google was — he thought it was just another website — and that people memorized the URLs they wanted to visit … because that’s what he does.

          1. Specialk9*

            Aww poor guy! He’s spending 10,000 times the effort of everybody else on the internet. Memorising URLs…

    4. LadyL*

      My mom is the same way, she think anything on the internet is inherently sketchy. Like if we’re arguing a fact and I google it she will dismiss my findings no matter the source.

      Mom: Oh, what, just because *the internet* says it you think it’s true?
      Me: Mom, it’s NPR.org. You trust NPR!
      Mom: Well that’s the radio. Those are real journalists. Find a real source and we’ll talk.
      Me: *muffled screaming*

        1. LadyL*

          Maybe! Would your mom say anything to win an argument, up to and including that the entire internet is unacceptable to use for research? ;)

      2. essEss*

        I had a coworker that would constantly send out scam warnings and ‘sign this petition and get money back after it reaches x signatures’ and junk like that that she found on the internet to the entire office distribution list, including external clients. Every time, I’d find it on Snopes.com and show her that it is a scam and I would demand she stop sending them out when she was doing it as a representative of our company. She actually told me that I can’t prove that snopes is a valid site and if it was telling the truth so she was going to continue to send them. I had to go to her supervisor to get her to stop.

        1. LadyL*

          It’s not just the older folks, apparently during the 2016 election some of the conservative media did a good job of painting Snopes as some kind of liberal conspiracy site (I think they claim George Soros owns it or something?). It’s pretty genius, when even the most basic verification sites are FAKE NEWS you can say anything with absolute impunity.

          2. Alienor*

            Ugh, that drives me crazy. Snopes has been around for literal decades–I remember going there to check potential scams back in the late 90s/early 2000s–but now that it suits people’s purposes to believe whatever they want, it’s suddenly a liberal conspiracy.

              1. CubicleShroom#1004*

                Barbara is a national treasure, and I’m a dinosaur. I remember alt.folklore.urban.

      3. Artemesia*

        Being distrustful of the internet when old is a lot smarter than swallowing everything you read on the internet as a whole lot of older people in the thrall of the propaganda forces on the internet and at Fox News do. So your mom is one step ahead on that. Helping people properly evaluate internet sources is really difficult; skepticism is a good stance to take.

        1. LadyL*

          Sure, but if you trust BBC News the TV station, then you can probably trust the BBC News official website. With NPR sometimes the articles are literally just a transcript or summary of what they read on the air. Nothing about it being online makes the info somehow less valid then when it was read on air.

        2. YuliaC*

          Yes to this! My mom spends untold hours every day reading conspiracy theorists websites, and will frequently cite such places as proper sources in our discussions. I would love it if she acquired a modicum of mistrust for the internet.

          2. CoveredInBees*

            Reminds me of some people in my FB parents’ group. Multiple published medical studies are a “conspiracy” whereas a random blog citing “mom intuition” is to be taken as gospel. (sigh)

    5. Wendy Darling*

      My dad worked until pretty recently but was at the same company for 30 years. That job and the one before that both headhunted him from his previous jobs and he didn’t job search at all. So my dad has not actually job searched since the early 70s.

      This has never stopped him from giving me ALL KINDS of job search advice of the usual gumption, pound-the-pavement, call-them-every-day, show-up-and-ask-for-an-interview type.

    6. seejay*

      I’m looking for work right now and my mom said to me “what happened to walking into places and dropping off resumes??” I told her that it wasn’t done that way anymore and the conversation was over, I wasn’t talking about my job search with her anymore.

      The last job she had, she got through a friend and this was… 25 years ago? She stayed there for 15 years and changed jobs internally through different departments, but she hasn’t had to look for a job in a quarter of a decade and is of the mindset that you get a job at a company and stay there until you retire or die.

      1. CoveredInBees*

        There’s a certain infamous job hunt book that recommends you not only do that, but demand to speak to “the hiring manager” on the spot as if they had nothing else to do but wait for you to show up.

      2. Ugh*

        My parents are attached to the “stay there until you retire or die” thing (though my dad would probably add “or get laid off” since he’s in an industry where that happens more frequently). I don’t think they fully understand why I’m planning to move on from my current job in the next few years, but changing jobs like that is exceedingly common among my peers.

    7. Elizabeth West*

      My mum is like this too–but at least she understands I need internet for this. We were on the phone a couple of weeks ago and she said, “I heard about this one place you can look for jobs online….it’s called Indeed.” Yes Mum, I look at it EVERY day!

      It took her a while to grasp how internet chatting worked, too. I think she thought the folks in my chat room were either imaginary or dangerous. FWIW, I have been in this group for fourteen years and some of us have met each other offline. She’s come a long way, though–I invited two of my European friends (whom I met IRL previously) to watch the eclipse with us and she not only hosted them but can’t stop talking about how awesome they are. :)

      If she and my auntie in London weren’t so put off by computer stuff, I could teach them how to use Skype and they could talk more than once a week. I think it would blow her mind to find out I could have an interview that way.

    8. whingedrinking*

      Are we secretly sisters? I think my mother intellectually understands that one can use the Internet for stuff, but she still thinks it’s a sort of bleeding-edge, out-there thing. Like – she did her master’s degree online a few years ago, but that’s okay because universities are into strange experiments like that. Meanwhile, she got frustrated at me recently for “not looking for housing” (I’m being renovicted), and when I told her I’d looked online, she told me, more or less, that that was silly.

    9. Joanne*

      This is late, but my mom, who left the workforce in ~2000 after giving birth to my youngest brother and hasn’t had a full-time job since then, doesn’t understand how Indeed or ZipRecruiter works, or what updates to computers do.

      She hasn’t updated her resume since the 80s/90s, and doesn’t understand that you can apply through Indeed or company websites, or that resumes need to be customized for each position, or how to write a cover letter.

      My brothers and I have all tried explaining to her that her resume needs to be updated and customized to each position, keep a copy on her own computer and that computers do need to be updated. The last time she updated her computer it slowed down significantly and freezes up every time it gets turned on.

      She believes that once a computer freezes up all the time it’s time for a new computer (She’s not wrong, but do some diagnosing before spending hundreds of dollars on a new one), and that everyone should apply for positions through word-of-mouth, not applying online.

  3. PB*

    I love this thread idea! I’m sure I’ll think of more, but to start, my father and stepmother can’t understand why I don’t “just get a PhD.” You know, because it’s that easy. It’s also totally not necessary in my field. It might be helpful if I wanted to become an administrator some day, but even then, it’s not required. Pursuing a PhD would eat up all of my free time for years, and even with my employee tuition benefit, it would be expensive. There’s even a section in our employee handbook that says, basically, “You can get one if you want, but you don’t need it, and you’d probably be better off writing for publication, instead.”

    I’ve explained this, multiple times, to no avail.

    1. EddieSherbert*

      Oh my gosh, this is my dad too. He’s very “science-minded” (the man can do crazy calculus like it’s nothing but misspells his grocery list) and is just baffled that I have no intention of continuing onto Masters and eventually PhD level (I’m in Marketing).

      1. Specialk9*

        I know several Harvard PhDs who make less than I did at my first (poorly paid) business job, entry level. I’m starting to think that science is simultaneously incredibly important, and a giant scam that eats people alive. If everyone you know is dirt poor, overworked, and without basic labor rights, that can seem normal.

    2. Snarkus Aurelius*

      My dad wants me to go to law school. He refuses to believe that my current salary is more than the starting salary for recent law grads. He also said the over abundance of law school grads was a myth.

      He also wants me to get an MA. I look at the course listing, and I’m like, “I could teach that class” or “How to conduct a public relations campaign? You know I’ve already done that a zillion times, right? And I get paid to do it as opposed to me paying?”

      1. PB*

        Along those lines, my father also told me once that he thought I’d be a better doctor than a lawyer. This means nothing, anyway, as I’m not in either field and don’t want to be, but I would be a terrible doctor. I panic at the sight of blood, I’m afraid of needles, and very squeamish about anything that happens under the skin. Biology is one of the only classes in high school I struggled with, and my hands would shake during dissections. Why he thought I’d be a good doctor, I can’t begin to imagine.

        2. attornaut*

          Maybe he was just being really insulting about your abilities as a lawyer (which you also don’t do and don’t want to do)? ;)

        3. Specialk9*

          To be fair, my sister is an incredible doctor and surgeon, who also fainted at the sight of blood. For her, it had to be coupled with purpose and action before she could handle blood and such.

    3. AMT*

      My mom’s the same. Why don’t I apply for some Ph.D. program abroad? Maybe because I have a wife, apartment, master’s degree in a specialized field, well-paid job I like in a great city, and the opportunity to teach and write in my field without a Ph.D.? Maybe because my friends with Ph.D.s are working for half my salary? Maybe because a Ph.D. is not the ticket to riches so many Boomers seem to think it is?

      1. Another person*

        I once had an advising job where the Ph.D’s coming out of the department had fewer job opportunities at lower salaries than I did with a master’s degree. Didn’t stop my boomer parents from needling me constantly about when I was going to finally go for that Ph.D.

        1. Sam*

          Yeah, I left a PhD program mid-dissertation and switched over to student affairs. One of the (many) reasons I decided to do so was learning how little early tenure-track faculty made in my discipline. It was very much not worth continuing to put myself through that. And that’s tenure track! So many of them end up adjuncting long-term!

        2. Artemesia*

          So smart. A PhD is required for some fields and most of those fields are overstocked with PhDs so it isn’t only a PhD you need but one from a top school in your field and the active help of top scholars in your field to get a job. Get one from Podunk U and you go nowhere good. And a PhD can be an anchor around your neck when looking for jobs for which it is not a requirement; you seem likely to be disappointed to be in a job that doesn’t require it because you ‘failed to get a job for which it is required.’ Might not be true but that is what it looks like to employers.

          No one should get a PhD who is not driven by the desire to do research in a particular field; you have to love the field and the research for it to make any sense. And then you have to weight the potential opportunities for the program you enroll in. A PhD from a correspondence school or part time is likely to hurt you more than help you.

          1. Emma the Strange*

            Yeah, my mom helped run her university’s PhD program for years, and this was always her advice. If you’re getting a PhD for economic reasons (or really any reason other than a deep and profound love of the subject), you need to be doing something else.

            What really confused my mom was the occasional student who would *pay* full tuition for their PhD (or more likely, have their rich parents pay). If you can’t convince a good university to give you a full ride, you probably won’t be able to convince any to hire you when you’re done.

          2. Tau*

            +1, from another person with a PhD who started off wanting to go into academia and finished really, really not wanting to. It was an exhausting, demanding and stressful experience and sometimes I look at how far I could be in my career if I hadn’t done one and want to cry. And it’s definitely something I have to explain in interviews etc., even though the field I switched into is actually decently welcoming for it (I have a pure maths PhD and went into software engineering.)

            Anyone who doesn’t *both* want to go into a career which requires one *and* love research should really, really think hard if they want to do a PhD.

            1. Dr Wizard, PhD*

              Yup. I did mine because I loved my subject *and* had a free ride, and it was still exhausting, stressful to the point of burnout, and didn’t lead to an academic position.

              It’s been useful in job interviews as an example of focused project planning, research work and commitment, and it seems to impress some people, which is useful, but friends who went into technical fields out of their bachelor’s degree are out-earning me.

            2. whingedrinking*

              I’m a teacher, and when applying to grad school I applied to (and was rejected from) a nearby university that’s considered extremely prestigious. In retrospect, it was really better for me; I ended up in a master’s of education program that was oriented towards people who were, and wanted to be, teachers, not educational researchers. That in and of itself wasn’t a big deal – we need both, right? However, I get the sense that various people at Prestigious U. have lost some contact with reality. Once a job search revealed that they had some openings in my field, so I had a glance. They wanted ten people with PhD.s, for a one-year contract, with the possibility of renewal. To teach the kind of course that I myself had been doing with a bachelor’s and a specialist teaching certificate, and had five years experience in. That at their sister school, I have since learned from another member of my cohort, is being taught by people with master’s or who are just in a master’s program. That maybe, if you decided to change over to research, wasn’t what you were really interested in and passionate about anyway. But nope, they are Prestigious U. and all their faculty must have doctorates, so here we are.

        4. Ugh*

          One of the best decisions I ever made was not going after a Ph.D. Instead, I have a masters, still work in academia, make decent money, and am probably a lot less stressed. Plus, I wouldn’t even be done with my Ph.D. yet if I had gone in that direction…

    4. Another person*

      You too? My parents have been after me to “just get a Ph.D” for 15 years even though I don’t want to put that kind of time and effort into something that wouldn’t advance my career. Dad dropped out of college and mom never started; they just think it would be neat to have a Ph.D in the family.

      1. PB*

        Yes, it gets very frustrating. When I was job searching a couple years ago, I’d describe a position I applied for, and my father would be like, “And you don’t need a Ph.D for that?” No, I don’t. After I got, in their words, “a lot of rejections” (it was three), they said the reason must be that I don’t have a Ph.D. I’m in a small field and know the people who got those jobs. None of them have Ph.D’s, either. I told them that. It did not matter.

      1. MBA fan*

        Unlike a a PhD, however, an MBA from a decent school is an extremely versatile degree that in most circumstances will boost your earning power.

    6. Olive Hornby*

      Ha, this is my parents, too–they work in a field where it’s necessary to have a specific advanced degree, and so they can’t fathom that I’ll be able to continue moving up in my company with just my undergraduate liberal arts degree. I think they now finally trust that my job is secure, but for a long time, my dad was telling me that I could “still go to medical school.” (Sure, Dad, except that I’m 30 and didn’t take any of the requisite undergrad classes…)

      1. EddieSherbert*

        Haha, I think we have the same parents. They are still not convinced I can have a legitimate career with any kind of “Bachelor of Arts” degree! Also despite the fact that I’ve been doing that for quite a while now… *eye roll*

    7. Xay*

      My mom is on this too – especially now that my employer offers free college credits through its partner university. She doesn’t seem to understand that the demands of a PhD, the university doesn’t offer a PhD in any discipline I am interested in and that a PhD wouldn’t really help my career anyway.

    8. Peter the Bubblehead*

      Obviously your parents simply want to introduce their son or daughter as “The Doctor.”

      1. The New Wanderer*

        Pretty sure that was the motivation when, after I dropped my engineering major for the social sciences, my mom begged me to go pre-law. I had never been interested in becoming a lawyer. I still believe it’s because if she couldn’t say her kid was an engineer, she at least wanted to say lawyer.

        But then I got a PhD, and I’m pretty sure if my career ever comes up they just name whatever company I was working for rather than My Daughter the Doctor, probably because my specialty is not well known.

    9. Wendy Darling*

      I have my MA in a field with no directly related job prospects, so I’m already simultaneously overqualified (I have an advanced degree!) and underqualified (…but not in the thing they want!) for every job I apply for. The only things a PhD would qualify me for are 1. the tenure-track academic job Hunger Games, and 2. adjuncting for shit pay with no benefits. Also it turns out I hate teaching, I hate academic politics, and I can do all the stuff I LIKED when I was in grad school but actually get paid for it in the private sector. I actually have to explain this in the vast majority of interviews I go on because no one understands why you’d get an MA in a non-professional discipline and then stop.

      Unless they’ve also done it. The people who don’t ask tend to have PhDs.

      1. Ghost Town*

        I left an MA/PhD program with an MA b/c I realized, like you, that I didn’t like or want the end result and what went into it. I’ve transitioned to higher education administration and having an MA (in that specific discipline) did help me get that first job. In my MA discipline, “they” have been saying that the old guard is going to soon retire, leaving a large number of openings for the new class for at least 2+ decades now. I don’t think the old guard will exactly retire, and combined that with the reduction in honest-to-goodness tenure/tenure-track positions and the increasing number of admitted and graduating graduate students, there will never be “enough” positions for the new(er) classes.

        I completely get stopping with an MA in a non-professional discipline.

    10. Lady Anonymous*

      This is such an interesting perspective to me, as I’ve discovered in the last few years that I pretty much *have* to get a PhD in order to advance in my field, and though I’m nervous about the financial side of things, my parents are probably more reluctant than I (I’m in my early 30s, and I think sometimes they’d prefer to see me making stronger progress towards buying a house, etc)

    11. Middle School Teacher*

      It’s funny that you say that, because I have a colleague who I think wants to get her PhD, but her mother is strongly discouraging it. It will make her “too intimidating to men” and no one will want to marry her :(

      Apparently with her masters, in teaching, she’s already too educated in her field and too scary to men. (Of course, if she was a doctor, that would be different…)

      1. Snark*

        That’s not a good reason not to get a PhD. There’s plenty of good reasons not to get a PhD, but that’s a terrible one.

      2. Language Student*

        The kind of men who would be intimidated by women having a PhD are not the kind of men I’d want anything to do with, so that’s almost an argument *to* get a PhD.

          1. sap*

            I have this one casually misogynist friend that I still keep around anyway, and back when I was still single he often gave me “advice” about things I was thinking about doing being turnoffs to most men, and this was always basically my response. “Wait, if I do this thing it will help me avoid wasting my time on dates with the type of man who thinks women as a gender shouldn’t do some things? I’m doing it.”

      3. The New Wanderer*

        It’s definitely true that grad degrees can be intimidating in the dating world.
        It’s also true that it helps weed out the ones who’d be bothered by that.
        If I liked quantity over quality, I wouldn’t have gotten the advanced degrees in the first place.

        1. Kj*

          So true. I was in grad school when I started dating in my current city and my friends and I had TONS of absolutely horrifying stories about what men on dating sites would say to us when we said we were in graduate school. From making fun of our field, to getting weirdly competitive, to being passive aggressive about it… it was a side show of horrors. Thankfully, I met my husband, who loves that I have an advanced degree and is always supportive of me. But some men do get weird about women they are dating having more education than them.

      4. Temperance*

        Those are the kind of low-quality misogynist losers that a heterosexual woman should want to scare away. Good for her!

          1. Temperance*

            Oh no, these men absolutely exist. My own grandfather once told me I had “too many opinions” to meet a husband, and it was a regular issue with the men in my former community. They didn’t want women with more education than they had, or more money, because that’s emasculating somehow. These are low quality jerks, though, and are somewhat of outliers.

            1. Dr Wizard, PhD*

              Oh no! My parents have a lovely story where, when my Dad told my Mum’s parents they were engaged, Grandad (my Mum’s father) declared ‘Well isn’t he doing well for himself, her with her two degrees!’

      5. Artemesia*

        She hasn’t pointed out that she isn’t interested in a man who wouldn’t find intelligence the most important characteristic in a mate? My husband is attracted to smart women; my son is attracted to smart women. They both figured out ways to meet women who were smart as the first step in a future relationship. (yeah smart isn’t everything, but for the man I want, it is a basic requirement)

      6. Middle School Teacher*

        To be honest, according to my colleague it’s a cultural thing. Her mom is super old-school Chinese, so my colleague already has two strikes against her: she’s a teacher instead of a doctor, and she’s single. I’m pretty sure if they were in China her mom would be in the park with her info on a sign so prospective mates could check her out. (Yes, that is a thing.)

        I’m also single and we’re in our late 30s, so we routinely commiserate about how we’re terrible daughters who will die alone.

      7. Plague of frogs*

        I had a friend who was putting together a resume for an arranged marriage. I, of course, was fascinated, and asked her what kinds of things she put on it. I asked her if she put her grades down, and she said no because her grades were too good and thus would be a turn-off.

        I’m happy to say that she ended up marrying a lovely guy she met in law school, who is happy to have a smart wife.

      8. Specialk9*

        A master’s degree… in teaching… would be too intimidating to men. (Blink blink) I’ve had a lot of teacher friends, and that just wasn’t the case, though granted I have lived in big cities where grad degrees just ain’t no big thing. But the kind of dude who gets intimidated by a grad degree is also the kind of guy to dismiss the masters because it’s in women’s work of education. So yay on screening them out?

    12. (Different) Rebecca, PhD*

      There are two reasons to get a PhD: 1) A deep seated love of the subject you’re pursuing, and 2) a desire to teach full time/tenure track. Reason 1 is distinctly necessary to finish the degree with even a modicum of sanity left.

        1. (Different) Rebecca, PhD*

          On the occasions that the first one failed me, I had the second, and vice versa. I got through, but I’m pretty stabby with people who are like “so, when are you going to become a double doc? heh heh heh!” Like I’d put myself through that mess again…

          2. Tau*

            The “multiple PhDs” thing really confuses me. It seems to be a staple of fictional geniuses, among otherss, but seriously – who *does* that? Who would voluntarily do a second PhD (I third lighting myself on fire), and why on earth would one be necessary?

            1. (Different) Rebecca, PhD*

              I’ve thought about going for another MA or MS in cognitive neuroscience, but only if I end up wealthy and bored, because that’s something that interests me and would keep me from going completely spare if I were in fact wealthy and bored. Another PhD? Effing NO.

              This represents two “only” states of being for me: the last time in my life a small group of people can yank me around that hard without my consent (as you can’t exactly fire your committee and quitting your degree is…bad, yo. Very, very bad. But I’d happily quit a job that did that–there’s almost always another job to be had…), and one thing that no one can take away from me–I’ll be Dr. Different until I die.

              1. Tau*

                I can see that! If I were wealthy and bored (and didn’t have an executive function disability that made university a misery) I’d probably pursue some degree(s) as well – I did a course in linguistics and absolutely loved it, for instance. But that would be bachelor’s or Master’s. Not a PhD. Under no circumstances a PhD.

                And agreed on being Dr. Tau! That’s turned out really handy, too – I look almost a decade younger than I am and have a speech disorder that I think sometimes makes people assume I’m stupid (:/) so having “actually, it’s Dr. Tau” in my arsenal is very reassuring. Especially in Germany, which tends to take academic titles very seriously.

            2. The Other Katie*

              The only person I know who has actually done this leveraged the same research into applications in two different fields. It was by no means necessary, she just has an unhealthy love of the challenge.

            3. sap*

              I also wonder when these fictional people found the time to accomplish things in their field at the age they purport to be.

              It’s just not physically possible to have gotten PhDs in three unrelated fields where you can’t overlap research, and also have built a billion dollar business after getting 3 PhDs, and also be 45. Because you can’t expedite a PhD THAT much–you can’t magic required classes to occur faster than courses occur, or your teaching duties to not take an entire semester each time, etc. That’s not how life works–no matter how smart and efficient you are, universities have a pre-existing schedule for when the things required for a PhD are offered.

              1. Dr Wizard, PhD*

                While I agree that these characters are always ridiculous, the UK model for PhDs would allow it to be done faster than is generally possible in the US. Thesis-only in the vast majority of cases – median and expected time four years, but three is possible and happens.

                1. (Different) Rebecca, PhD*

                  I did my (American) one in 3.5 years, but I also went into it with a fully formed project idea, and advisor who was mostly on board with said project and how the dissertation would look when it was finished, and a burning desire to do the degree and get the eff out of dodge so I could start teaching. As I’m unlikely to have anything of the sort ever again…no.

            4. Cedrus Libani*

              I had a relative with several PhDs. She was of an age (born ~1910) and social class (rich) where married women did not work. Her husband didn’t want the shame of her earning a salary, but she didn’t want to be a housewife. So they compromised, and she stayed in school for her entire “working” life.

              Good for her. Personally, I’d had more than enough by about 0.6 PhDs, and while I hung in there, I’d also cheerfully scrub toilets for a living instead of going back for a second PhD. (While I understand the value of the training, there’s something unhealthy about having Your One Project, which you must complete to Your One Supervisor’s standards, no matter how unreasonable. And if you fail, you were obviously unworthy…nope, once was enough!)

              1. (Different) Rebecca, PhD*

                Daaaaaaamn, she can get it!! That’s massively awesome, and good for her!

                I’ve scrubbed toilets for a living before. In some ways, it was easier, as the expectations were considerably lower, and the work day ended when all the houses were cleaned.

            5. bean*

              I had a really lovely professor in college who did this… I’d taken a few different courses with him by the time I learned he had two PhDs. In totally different subjects. He had started college himself really young, and he had done one PhD in theoretical physics and the other in sociology. Blew my mind. He wasn’t one to tell you all about his accomplishments if you hadn’t asked, either.

              I did one doctorate and I barely made it through that in one piece. People have suggested to me that I should “just go back” for “one more degree” in [related field X or Y or Z] and whenever anyone makes that sort of suggestion it makes me twitch. I have a master’s and a doctorate and I’ve been working since I finished, but truthfully I’m still figuring out what I actually want to be when I grow up.

              1. (Different) Rebecca, PhD*

                *reflexively twitching in sympathy* I knew exactly what I wanted to be, and I still have moments/days of existential why am I even doing this type abject misery. Mainly if I’ve found a plagiarist among my students.

                1. bean*

                  Yeah, I am so done with school. I finished about 4 years ago and I think it’s time to switch gears somehow. I never taught, but I can’t imagine finding a plagiarist – how demoralizing. What I’m struggling with is that I always thought I knew exactly what I wanted to be and what kind of setting I wanted to work in and all of that, and it’s just not feeling like this actually suits me as well as I’d thought it would, and isn’t sustainable long-term. I think I need to take the knowledge/skills I’ve acquired, because it’s plenty, and figure out how to, well, refocus it to use it differently, if that makes sense.

                  I should also clarify that my wonderful professor didn’t seem to have done his two different doctorates out of any kind of dissatisfaction – when he would speak about them, he made it sound like he had just been pursuing the natural progression of interests, as if the two *of course* led to one another and this was the most natural thing in the world. (Of course, this was way long ago – he somehow managed to start his undergrad at like 15 or something, and he would have to be around 80-90 by now.) He apparently developed different methods of mathematical modeling for social structures and such. Brilliant guy, and very humble, especially for having had such a fascinating life. But I just remember thinking, “What? Two doctorates? Who does that? And then acts like it’s normal?” :)

      2. PB*

        Yep. I have no desire to teach. I tried it, and hated it. I’m still in an academic field and I’m on the tenure track, no PhD required.

      3. Optimistic Prime*

        Well, there is a third reason in some fields, which is that there are some non-academic jobs that require or strongly prefer PhDs. I work in one of those fields, in the tech industry.

    13. Healthnerd*

      This is my dad as well! I work in research management (with 2 relevant masters degrees) and he’s still of the mindset that more education equals more pay and more opportunities. He still constantly asks me why I don’t get my PhD. Despite my explanations that it would completely pigeon hole me, would be financially draining, would require me to eventually relocate and that I actually like the position I’m in. Plus I’m still early in my career and may decide that I don’t want to stay in academia forever. Its the same conversation with him every year.

    14. Just another fed*

      Ha, my experience was actually the opposite: when I told my parents I was applying for PhD programs, they basically sat me down for an intervention and ask about my back up plans. I’m pretty sure they thought I’d need to pay for it, so when I said I’d only go on a fellowship (with stipend), they lightened up considerably. I would not recommend it as a thing people just go do without a very specific goal/plan in mind…

      On the other hand, my parents tried to convince me to take the LSAT and apply for law school – in hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t take on debt to be in a field I didn’t want to go into when I would have graduated right in the recession…

    15. LJL*

      How funny..my experience was the opposite! When I started back to work on my doctorate, my father told me not to do it as I’d be over-educated and never get a job. (To his credit, he’d seen that happen in his field.) Since I’m in academia, a terminal degree is pretty much required (at least in my area). I did learn a valuable skill.. the ability to say “thank you for your input, I appreciate it, but this is what I need to do.” Oh, he was proud when I finished to be sure, but also quick to say that he hadn’t been much support.

    16. Jesmlet*

      My mother keeps asking me if I feel bad because two of my cousins are getting their Masters degrees. My response is to remind her that I make $75k a year at the age of 25 and they’re both in endless student loan debt and there’s literally no reason why I’d need an advanced degree in my field. She still doesn’t get it. Meanwhile she has her Master’s from Columbia and has never used it one day in her life.

    17. Optimistic Prime*

      My dad was the opposite. When I was in a PhD program, he kept trying to convince me to drop out. He kept telling me that with my MA, I could go be a school principal or something and make a “lot of money.” Never mind that my MA was in public health and I did not have a teaching license nor any K-12 teaching experience.

      1. whingedrinking*

        Speaking on behalf of educators everywhere, THANK YOU. Education is a specialized professional field, and it drives me up a tree when people are dismissive of the depth and breadth of knowledge (not to mention experience) it requires. People who would never dream of questioning the advice of their doctor, lawyer or accountant feel completely free to tell teachers and administrators how to do their jobs because “it can’t be that hard”.

    18. crookedfinger*

      Hah, my parents said something similar after I got my BA. I had to explain that a masters degree was very unnecessary in my field unless one is interested in becoming a director or teacher, neither of which I will ever want to do.

    19. Katie C.*

      In my field, it can actually be a detriment. I know more than a few PhD people who struggled to get jobs after they graduated, mostly because they were now too specialized for most markets outside of research and academia. One guy I worked with was extremely bitter that he wasn’t paid more than anyone else, but really, he wasn’t contributing any more than any other person. He was a code monkey, just like the rest of us.

    20. Birch*

      I’m so sorry you get that! If it makes you feel better, for every “just go get a PhD ” comment you get, other people are getting “why did you bother getting a PhD?” Truly no one can win when it comes to the advice of other people about your life.

    21. no one, who are you?*

      …are we siblings? When I told my family I wanted to pursue a master’s in social work, my dad told me he wanted me to be the first person in the family with a PhD. You don’t need a PhD in social work unless you want to teach university full-time, and I assuredly do not. And anyway if I do want to teach, my MSW and a couple years’ experience is all I need to get started.

    22. Kate H*

      My grandpa asks me every time I see him if I’m thinking about going back to school. To be fair, when I graduated with my bachelors’ I applied for grad school and I did express intentions to try again in the future. Now I have a good job in a completely unrelated field and while I’m not ruling out graduate school, I definitely don’t have concrete plans to do so now, especially when I’m still paying off the loans from last time.

    23. LiveAndLetDie*

      This is my father. I already don’t use my masters in history in my professional life (much to my chagrin, but history jobs aren’t exactly lucrative or easy to get right now), why would I ever drop what I’m doing and go be a PhD student right now? It’s the worst choice for me, financially and professionally.

  4. Cassandra*

    When my sister graduated from information school, our parents dissuaded her from applying to a fellowship with the Smithsonian Institution. “Not prestigious enough,” they said.

    THE. FREAKING. SMITHSONIAN.

    That turned into a long arduous job search for reasons I don’t even want to get into (but the phrase “clueless helicopter parenting” would figure in). I was so glad when sis finally landed a job, I can’t even begin to tell you.

      1. Cassandra*

        Oh, yes. Our father is an anthropologist.

        This probably came from our mother, though, and she always had — weird (not to say outright twisted) notions of prestige. Some of it was garden-variety classism. Some of it I just never could make sense of.

        1. Manders*

          My mom was like this too, although not quite that bad. Both my parents taught at a well-regarded research institution you’d almost certainly recognize, but mom was pretty insistent when I was looking for colleges that it wasn’t good enough and I needed to do better.

          People who’ve been in academia their whole lives develop really odd ideas of what prestige means, possibly because only the top sliver of grad students end up making it (in the sense that they get a tenured position at a research university) in any given field.

    2. Amber T*

      The whole “prestigious” comments/advice kill me. Slightly off topic from job advice, but when I was in high school my dad was convinced that I would never get a job anywhere “prestigious” if I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. He said all of his coworkers went to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. (which now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not sure how he would have known that, so this may be an instance of BS that I’m just realizing years and years later…). He didn’t appreciate my argument that he himself didn’t go to an Ivy League school and did just fine. No, I didn’t go to an Ivy League – I went to another very good school and had a great experience.

      Apparently my current company isn’t prestigious enough because he hadn’t heard of it… (he’s maybe heard of two or three companies in my industry, and really knows nothing about it.)

      1. I'm A Little TeaPot*

        In my industry, if you make the evening news, that’s really, really bad. The last big one everyone thinks of involved a minor company no one’s ever heard of, Enron.

      2. limenotapple*

        My dad still tells me to apply for jobs at prestigious universities. Nope! Happy working at my liberal arts school where there is little red tape, the students are a mix of backgrounds and races, and the campus is small and close-knit.

        I think I missed out on a lot of great opportunities when I was younger and listened to him, and I worked in a lot of places that were not a good culture fit because I was more worried about what people thought of the name of my company than what the company had to offer that was right for me.

        1. Rachel Green*

          I felt a lot of pressure from my Dad to get a job at a prestigious, well-known company when I graduated from college. I ended up not getting any offers from those huge, global companies and now work in government. I’m pretty happy with where I ended up, but I think my Dad is convinced that I “settled” and will eventually move on to bigger and better things.

        2. Sterling*

          I work in administration in higher ed. My mom was really upset that I turned down an interview with Stanford. I couldn’t make her understand that state schools and community colleges tend to pay their administrators better than the Ivys or private schools. I had a friend 2 rungs up the ladder at Stanford who told me his pay. It was way less than I was already making. There was no way they would pay me more.

          Also my mother never understood that in state schools you don’t really negotiate a salary or benefits package. They plug your info into a computer and it tells you the scale for which the state will pay you. There may be some wiggle room but typically not a lot and no you can’t get extra vacation or PTO to make up for it.

          1. Sam*

            I really appreciate that public schools universities publish salaries, but I really don’t have a sense of how much private schools differ. I’ve developed most of my professional network while working at state schools, so I don’t have a lot of industry friends to compare with, either. I currently work at one of Stanford’s peer institutions, and I definitely earn more and have more promotion potential in my current role than I ever expected to have without a PhD, but I may’ve just gotten really lucky.

            1. Sterling*

              I only know because I have asked. Also some of it may be public vs private in California specifically. With my field I have seen that as a very well known private school in California they paid nearly 40% less that the same role at the local community college. Some of this probably has to do with the specific field but over all it seems that the private schools do not pay as well in student services and the public. I don’t know what the difference may be in faculty salary.

      3. Olive Hornby*

        I will say that I have a lot of colleagues who went to Harvard, and they manage to bring it up in conversation quite a bit…

        They’re otherwise lovely people, though!

        1. Peter the Bubblehead*

          That’s like the old saying; How do you know you’re in a room with a Naval Aviator?
          He’ll tell you!

        2. Artemesia*

          the usual is that when you say ‘where did you go to school’, they say ‘in the northeast’ or ‘I went to a school in Massachusetts’ — you don’t say ‘Harvard’.

        3. Clewgarnet*

          There are two varieties of people who say they went to university ‘in Oxford’.

          There are those who went to Oxford University but don’t want to be one of Those People.

          And there are those who went to Oxford Brookes but want you to think they went to Oxford University.

          1. Violet Rose*

            Them there are the brookes students who hang out with students from Oxford University but seem really embarassed about where they go.

            I also had a friend who went to Harvard for his undergrad – and started every comparison to his old uni with, “Well at Harvard…” I’m not sure if one of us finally said “[Name], we’re all at Oxford now, no one cares!” (He was a lovely person; I think he just had a bit of a blind spot there)

      4. H.C.*

        Ditto, every time I read/hear prestigious – I think of the Dear Sugar snippet about its origins (“derived from the Latin praestigiae, which means conjuror’s tricks. Isn’t that interesting? This word that we use to mean honorable and esteemed has its beginnings in a word that has everything to do with illusion and deception and trickery.”)

        2. Alienor*

          I never thought of that, but it makes sense, b/c “prestidigitation” is a five-dollar word for magic tricks. You learn something every day!

      6. whingedrinking*

        There was a study a few years ago that tracked people who were admitted to the Ivy League, including the ones who didn’t go. The findings basically showed that if you had what it took to get in, you were probably going to be successful in life whether you went to Harvard or to Podunk U.

    4. JustaTech*

      Some people have the weirdest ideas about “prestige”. A high school friend of mine had her grandmother freak out when my friend said she was going to MIT rather than Harvard because the grandmother believe that MIT was “just a state school”.
      Oh we laughed and laughed.

        1. nonegiven*

          My son flunked out and worked for a while before he went back to finish his Bachelors. Before he was readmitted to MIT, he was required to do well in 2 classes at another school. He took the two classes from Harvard.

          He graduated from MIT in 2010. We couldn’t afford to go to the ceremony so we watched it streamed live over the internet.

          1. Meghan*

            They warn you at the opening ceremony that 1 out of 3 don’t graduate in 4 years, but that doesn’t mean we don’t ever graduate. It took me 5 years. He’s in a good club.

        2. Zirco*

          Front of t-shirt: “Harvard”

          Back of t-shirt: “Because Not Everyone Can Get Into MIT”

          (Yet another MIT grad)

          1. Violet Rose*

            Caltech has similar shirts for MIT – and thus the cycle continues! (I never attended Caltech, but I lived close enough to take the college tour!)

      2. Cedrus Libani*

        I think I still have relatives who believe I went to school in Michigan… (Another MIT grad here.)

      3. Go Crimson*

        Now, if she had said that about Stanfurd, she’d have been on to something. It’s a junior university.

    5. paul1010*

      I have a funny sort of personal issue with this same topic. I have only had jobs at prestigious organizations in my field, and I’m finding it hard to expand my thinking about potential new jobs that aren’t at similarly well-known places. Like, if you’ve only ever worked at the Guggenheim, the Met, and the Louvre, it is a bit of a challenge to conceive of a job at the Art Museum at the University of North Dakota at Hoople, even if the job is running the place. There is a lot of weirdly skewed thinking like this in the world of big nonprofit institutions.

  5. Antti*

    My dad once told me I should gun for a particular kind of position in my current company because they make the big bucks. As an industry outsider. Who only seems to know anything because my aunt once worked in this industry as well. (Spoiler alert: you can make decent money, but I certainly wouldn’t expect to be making six figures as a junior Teapot Evaluator.)

    Funny thing is that I did end up becoming an Assistant Teapot Evaluator. Though not at all for the same reasons I was advised to do it.

    1. Juli G.*

      This reminds me of my family.

      My husband and I live in/near our hometowns and our families are still around. There is a major employer here that is a big, big company. The perception is that everyone that works for them is rich. I started working for them at 33k, a little below the right pay for the job/level. I still work for them and make way more now but am probably a little underpaid for my experience.

      There are family members that are convinced we are rich because I work at Big Company. They don’t even know what I do. Big Company just hands money bags to employees when we walk in the door.

      2. eplawyer*

        I got this when I told people I was applying for law school. “oh you’re going to be making $150K a year.” Well no, I am planning on working in the nonprofit sector. I finally had to flat out say “You know they don’t hand you a check for a $150K with your diploma.”

      3. Don Lucia's Mullet*

        Well, I suppose if you went to work for an armored car company, and part of your job was transporting money bags, then they might just hand you money bags when you walk in the door. But you don’t get to keep that.

      4. Ghost Town*

        My husband and I both work for the university in town. The university is definitely a big employer in a small pond and most people assume that anyone working for them is well to extremely well paid. This is not always the case and we encounter the same assumptions from friends and family.
        In my old position, it felt like we were barely treading water. Doing much better in my new position.

    2. JokeyJules*

      My grandfather proudly told me to apply for the most executive position they had at any company, whether it was available or not and “theyd be so surprised by your balls theyll give you a great job”

      Sure thing, pop.

      1. Amber T*

        Lol I can just imagine a cover letter/resume for that – “I’m applying for the Chief Financial Officer position. My experience includes one year as a Junior Teapot Analyst and President of the Business Club in college.” Sounds like a great fit!

        2. Startup fan*

          Join a startup. It’s a great way to leapfrog titles early on. And yes, I’ve known people to parlay startup experience into senior roles at big companies (assuming you still want to do that).

      3. Middle School Teacher*

        We actually got a letter like that once! It was for a part time teaching position, and the guy who wrote the (three-page, single-spaced) letter talked extensively about his amazing life experience, the songs he wrote and sang that we probably heard on the radio, the education he had, that he could do any job at our school up to and including superintendent, that he should have been a superintendent by now but “the man” kept him down, and in conclusion, we would be very fortunate to have him and we should hire him immediately and he would solve allllllllllll our problems.

        We laughed and laughed. Then we scrunched up his letter and chucked it.

        1. Hildegard Von Bingen*

          Poor guy. Imagine going through life that clueless. I think reading that letter would have made me sad. Also, not inclined to hire him.

        2. Hey Nonnie*

          Heck, I would have framed it and used it as a teaching tool.

          “Don’t do this, kids. Don’t do this ever.”

      4. Meganly*

        That reminds me… When I was living at home post-college and searching for a Residence Director job (person in charge of a college dorm), my mom would try and convince me to apply for jobs at the top of the Housing totem. It didn’t matter how many times I explained to her that no, I barely have the experience to be an RD; no one is going to hire me as a friggin Vice President of Housing or whatever. She said something along the lines of how they’ll be impressed by my gumption and put my application at the top of their RD pile. I never did end up getting an RD job.

  6. Snarkus Aurelius*

    My mom, raised in the 1950s, would get so upset when I’d negotiate pay. She thinks that’s the most horrendous thing in the world, and that I should be lucky to even get an offer. When I was an unpaid intern, my mom would get mad that I’d consider leaving or ask for, you know, money.

    I seriously think she’d be thrilled if I was an unpaid intern for the rest of my life.

    These days, she’s horrified that I’m constantly looking for more money. I guess because I pay my mortgage with good feelings? Ugh. “My daughter can be bought off?” Yes, Mom, yes I can.

    1. Antti*

      “Money doesn’t buy happiness!”

      Maybe not, but it does pay the bills and put food in the kitchen. Sorry, I can indeed be bought off.

        3. LadyL*

          My grandpa used to say, “Listen, you can be poor and unhappy, and you can be rich and unhappy. But if you have the option definitely choose rich and unhappy, it’s much better”.

          1. paul*

            Exactly. The analogy I’ve heard that I liked (about a different topic but it works here): A bathroom isn’t the only room in the house, and if I hate the rest of the house I’m not buying it just because of the bathroom. BUT I DAMN WELL WANT A BATHROOM!

          2. MJ (Aotearoa/New Zealand)*

            What’s the saying? “Money can’t buy happiness, but it’s much more comfortable crying in a Porsche than on a bicycle.” Something like that.

        2. Recruit-o-rama*

          You can’t say that universally. I certainly don’t think money is everything, and I have struggled many times in my life. Actually, that’s why I know, that for me, money is not everything.

          It is important though.

          1. Blue*

            I am definitely motivated by money, but there’s a limit. I’m being nudged into a promotion I don’t want, and my mom’s first question was, “Would it be more money?” Well, yes. But not enough to make up for the fact that I’d be taking on management responsibilities. I’m not making a ton of money currently, but I can live comfortably enough (even alone in a big city) that I’m willing to weigh other considerations. (In case it wasn’t clear, I’m definitely someone who should not supervise other people. I’d be terrible and I’d hate it!)

            1. Recruit-o-rama*

              Exactly my point, I totally understand your perspective. There are some aspects of my job that I would not trade for more money. That doesn’t mean money isn’t important to me, it is, but it’s not everything.

            2. LBG*

              I was nudged into a supervisory position a few years back. Took it on as “acting,” as a favor to the boss, almost didn’t submit an application (required) for the position. Two things pushed me: Projects that I knew I could accomplish that the office needed and fear of the unknown supervisor who would come from the outside and not know our needs. The thing that crushed my soul was managing people. I escaped from that job after 5 years, and my sanity is just returning. Don’t let them push you if you don’t have the people skills. I didn’t. I could have taken on those projects without taking on the supervision, if the right manager had been hired.

          2. Hey Nonnie*

            I’m not motivated by money. But I am motivated by having enough food, having shelter with adequate heat in winter and a bed to sleep in, having plumbing and access to water, having electricity, and having access to healthcare. And ideally I’d like to be able to have and do things beyond the basic necessities of life. In a capitalist system, which we are stuck with whether we like it or not, these things require money. Even if I want to, completely independently from an employer, go out and do meaningful work (which is my primary motivator), even doing it for free, that costs money too. At a minimum I need tools and supplies for the work, and ideally I’d be working with other people who also need basic necessities and are required to spend money to get them, and so should have their time and talent respected. It’s impossible to achieve without money.

            Money may not be everything, but it buys the things that are. No one can disregard money prior to money-based economic systems being torn down and replaced with something else.

      3. paul*

        Money doesn’t buy happiness is a phrase that hits almost all my hot buttons.

        Most folks get a little more stressed with they’re homeless/at risk ya know?

        1. Antilles*

          Interestingly, there’s actually been some research on this in the past few years. Apparently, “money doesn’t buy happiness” is true…but only once you’re past a certain point (the usual estimate is about $75,000 a year).
          If you’re below that level, extra money *does* mean extra happiness, because it removes some kind of financial insecurity in your life causing stress/unhappiness. Above that level however, more money doesn’t improve overall happiness, because you’re already making enough to avoid the major sources of fiscal unhappiness.

          1. Colette*

            In addition, I’ve read that money can buy happiness … if you spend it on other people. So doing something great for other people (via a charity or directly) will increase your happiness. Spending it on yourself will not.

          2. Mike C.*

            I hate these studies because I’ve seen them used as excuses not to increase compensation. Even if they are absolutely true (and who knows, it’s a handful of studies in a very limited context), having a bucket of money makes it much easier to eliminate, mitigate or otherwise compensate for a whole lot of things that will cause me to be unhappy.

            1. SusanIvanova*

              They’re taking the entirely wrong lesson from it – I’m in Silicon Valley, living example of the effect. Yes, above a certain level, more money is not going to motivate people if the rest of the situation is suboptimal, but that doesn’t mean more money is irrelevant. It’s a tangible sign that they really do appreciate you. I get warm fuzzies from being told I got an above-average bonus, even if I don’t bother to look at what that bonus actually is.

            1. paul*

              I would gladly be a control case here; they can hand me sacks of 100 dollar bills and I’ll tell them when it stops making me happy.

            2. Antilles*

              That study doesn’t say that. It says that people are happier when they spend money on the things that make them happy.
              However, the study doesn’t actually address is the idea of diminishing returns (which is where that $75k number comes from).
              Let’s say your personality is “conscientiousness”. If you’re going from $30k to $40k, you’ll almost certainly be happier – that extra money gives you the chance to pay a personal trainer or to travel to a triathlon or etc. But if you’re going from $70k to $90k…well, you might get a better trainer or be able to do more exotic triathlons, but it won’t be nearly the same level of added happiness that you got previously.

          4. Hildegard Von Bingen*

            Given the lamentable state of healthcare in the U.S., money can indeed buy happiness. And, quite literally, life (yours, your spouse’s, your child’s, your friends’).

            God, how I wish that weren’t true. I agree with those who say that people who use the phrase “money can’t buy happiness” and mean it haven’t really been up against it financially, or maybe they don’t know anybody else who has been. Or maybe they’re just not very curious about how things work in this country for people who aren’t doing very well financially…which is an awful lot of people.

            1. Hey Nonnie*

              I’m in the ironic position that if I start making enough money to live, I’ll lose my access to healthcare for at least 3-6 months. Healthcare that I am currently very actively using, for the first time in years, because I was spending so much of my income on premiums there was literally nothing left for co-pays. I have years’ worth of issues to untangle at this point. And now that the individual mandate has been tossed in the trash, I expect marketplace plans to be out of reach just on the basis of premiums, nevermind co-pays. I’m a pawn in a political “neener-neener” game where the GOP has a strong emotional need to “prove” that Obamacare was a failure, so they sabotage it.

          5. CinnamonRoll*

            So money can buy happiness. It just can’t make you any more happy if you are starting out at a happy level ($75k).

          1. MaureenS*

            And paying a cleaning service to come in once a month makes me very happy! I hate vacuuming and scrubbing bathrooms. Money well spent.

          2. saffytaffy*

            I’ve always suspected that ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’ is something powerful people say to the employees they underpay.

            2. Observer*

              Sure. But they didn’t think it up.

              All you need is to look at the lives of a lot of rich people to see the truth of this. That’s not to say that money is “nothing” or unimportant. But, that’s a different thing. Food won’t buy most people happiness, but you can’t live without it.

            3. Artemesia*

              And who expect those employees to finance a fancy ski trip for their family each Christmas.

        3. Not that Kat*

          My last boss drove, among other cars, a pretty new Maserati sedan. The engine kicked the bucket at some point. He paid as much for the replacement engine as I made in a year at his company. I know because he told me the exact figure.

          1. Snark*

            In fairness, any new car is more reliable than just about anything from the ’80s. But Italian cars are still….special. They have a lot of soul. Character.

          2. babblemouth*

            My boyfriend’s boss likes to golf in a new country every third month, and was telling him all about the great golf courses he saw in Portugal. Told my boyfriend he should try golfing, it’s such a fun sport and you can see so many awesome places. Boyfriend nodded and invited an urgent TPS report to write to escape the conversation.

      5. Blue_eyes*

        Exactly. There have actually been studies that show that money DOES increase happiness, up to a point. When you’re worrying about covering necessities, more money correlates with increased happiness due to reduced stress. If I remember correctly, they found that above about $70,000/yr income, more money didn’t significantly increase happiness.

      6. GertietheDino*

        My parents are the opposite, they are so proud that I negitiate salary. They brag about it!

      7. Cedrus Libani*

        Money doesn’t solve all problems, but it sure solves a lot of them. Fewer problems = more happiness.

    2. ZSD*

      Oh, my dad absolutely is opposed to negotiating anything about an offer. He’s counseled all of us kids to just be happy we’re getting an offer and to make do. His whole career, he never made as much as he was worth.

      1. peggy*

        I knew nothing about negotiation when I got my first post-college job and my dad sat me down and gave me an extremely stern talking-to about how I had BETTER NOT lose that offer by trying to get greedy and ask for more, and how I was basically nothing because I had zero experience and I’d turn off any employer if I asked for more money, it was irresponsible and stupid to negotiate at the start of your career when you had absolutely nothing going for you, no experience to leverage, etc.

        My dad is a super nice guy, and was very good to me in almost every way, but had a weird way of making me feel really stupid and worthless in certain types of situations. (Not all situations – he is truly a great dad overall.) I had no reason NOT to believe him so when my first offer came in in 2004 for $20k a year, I took it. WHAT A SUCKER. My counterparts were making $30k, I got lowballed and they expected me to negotiate. I was walked over the entire 2 years I worked in that dump – I set the stage for it by laying down and letting them steamroll me with a joke of an offer. I had never worked outside of retail, I had no idea what I was worth or what I deserved, but it was a PROJECT MANAGER role in 2004, 20k was CRIMINAL – I was working 60 hrs a week! And I was a huge idiot for being like “sure, thanks, I’d love to work for you for what equates to below minimum wage!” Thanks Dad!

          1. peggy*

            The short version of this story is, at that job I couldn’t. I had one shot at it and I proved myself as the weaker party and I never got what I needed or what was fair with them from that point on. It was a medium sized family owned business and the owners were sociopaths who took a lot of delight in abusing their staff. They brought in a lot of people without degrees and constantly reminded them of how lucky they were given a chance without education, and they’d never make it anywhere else. People heard that over and over, and they stayed because they started to believe they were worthless in the workforce and owed everything they had to these two losers!

            It was my first job out of college and I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was a coward and had some issues with self-worth. I had to grow up a little and stand on my own two feet for a bit to realize I was being mistreated and to convince myself that I did deserve better and could do better.

            14 years later, all good. It’s been onward and upward ever since. 24 year old me is kind of in awe of where 38 year old me ended up, actually. :)

            1. peggy*

              I should add, i DID have a degree but no experience, so they wanted me to grovel at their feet daily thanking them for giving me a chance. When I quit, the owner told my friend who did payroll, “that bitch is such an ingrate, I can’t believe she doesn’t appreciate everything we did for her.” (like 2 years of abuse and 60hrs a week at a 20k salary and no benefits and no time off… yep, super grateful.)

        2. SusanIvanova*

          Wow. In 1992, coming to Silicon Valley from Texas, I had no clue what I should be making – and neither did the VP of Engineering because he’d bought his house in the 70s. I actually got a lot more than what I’d asked for, but what would’ve been a lot in Texas barely covered rent here. There were 3 of us in that situation and when the CEO found out, she made sure we got the highest raises the finance department would allow until we were up to par.

        3. Hildegard Von Bingen*

          No, you weren’t a “huge idiot.” You were inexperienced. Please don’t run those old tapes in your head – just pitch ’em. Maybe you meant it in jest, but even thinking that about yourself is counterproductive. We all make mistakes. You learned from yours. (Big idiots don’t learn from theirs.) Congratulations.

          1. peggy*

            I needed that comment. I WAS speaking about my 24 year old self in jest, but I do often need reminders to be kinder to myself (both my present self and in reflecting on past experiences). It’s not productive to think of myself as worthless or an idiot, and even if I’m joking, it can chip away at you. My self-esteem and battles with self-worth have been evolving my entire life and I think it would serve me well to be a little less deprecating even when I’m joking around! Thanks for that reminder. :)

    3. Just a Thought*

      My husband went to a fundraising workshop for the nonprofit he worked for and the presenter said: “more money is better than less money”

      That is our family mantra.

      (The presenter was combating the idea that nonprofits *should* operate on bare bones budgets).

    4. Coalea*

      Dear Mortgage Lender,

      In lieu of my monthly payment, please accept this internet hug.

      Regards,
      Coalea

      1. cobweb collector*

        Dear borrower,

        We can only accept it if you also make a blog post saying how nice we are as a mortgage company so we can get exposure.

        Regards,
        your bank.

      2. whingedrinking*

        I do theatre out of the kind of love I would never give to another human being (a partner who wants all my time can expect to meet Ms. Curb; a production will make me cry because there aren’t more hours in the day to give it), and few things send me up the wall more than having twenty people say, “I dunno, I guess I could come if the show were free [even though it costs less than two pints at my local]. Hey, if you comp me I’ll write about it on my blog [which is faithfully read by their mom who lives two provinces away].”

    5. Amber Rose*

      My dad was upset when I left my minimum wage job for a job that paid double but had less awesome benefits.

      You can’t pay bills with prescription drug coverage. You can, however, buy prescription drugs with cash.

    6. Catalin*

      Though not ‘bought off’, I will confess to working harder/putting up with more for more money. I mean, doesn’t everyone?

      1. Mike C.*

        Yeah, it’s a lot easier to put up with BS if you have less stress due to being financially secure or are otherwise able to indulge in something like having a new car or take a nicer vacation.

      2. Jadelyn*

        It’s a “you get what you pay for” thing. If you pay me $10 an hour, you are buying $10 worth of my labor. If you pay me $20 an hour, you are buying $20 worth of my labor, so I’ll be willing to expend a lot more energy and give-a-damn on your business. If you pay bare-minimum wages, you’ll get bare-minimum work in exchange, because people aren’t stupid and they’re not going to give you more of themselves than you’re paying them for just out of the goodness of their hearts.

        1. whingedrinking*

          A manager at an earlier job cut my hours and then wanted to have “a talk” with me about my attitude – not how well I was doing the job, just that she felt I wasn’t displaying the proper “wow, I love my workplace!” vibe. In her words, “I feel like this is just a job to you, you know?” I worked in a coffee shop that seriously tried to insist the employees had to pay for their drinks*. She was amazed that my response was basically, “Yeah, and I worked hard until I noticed that I never got compensated for it.”
          *Fair notice to anyone who’s thinking about owning a cafe: your workers will be making themselves lattes whether you allow them to or not; I advise allowing it, because the amount of ill will you will engender by making and enforcing such a rule is stupendous.

    8. cobweb collector*

      I sense a bit of enforced 1950s gender roles going on here. As the woman you’re supposed to just “bring in a little on the side” while your husband “provides for the family”. Feh.

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        That’s the irony! She was one of the first women in her generation to pursue a career , get a grad degree, and stay the course. She chose working over staying at home.

        Plus she worked her butt off. She was vastly underpaid, especially when she could have gone to the private sector. As a public employee, she knew how much everyone made and she knew when raises were available.

        She still wouldn’t ask though.

        1. Observer*

          Because it’s not LADYLIKE. And, you know, she’s supposed to be working for the challenge, desire to be of service and the benefits of being in the workplace rather than the home. Not, heaven forbid, from GREED. Oh, no.

      2. Sled dog mama*

        People are still weirded out when they find out that I work full time and hubby is a stay at home dad/home manager (a decision we made before our first was born due to the fact that straight out of grad school I was making 2.5x what my hubby was making with 10years in his field). He contributes so much that I have a really hard time figuring out how people function with two working parents, of course I also am in a position where I work many evenings and my hours are kind of irregular.

      3. Mike C.*

        I hate this so much – I look at what I make and I would absolutely love it if my wife made way more than me. For several when we were first together she was and seriously who cares!?

        1. Jadelyn*

          My (male) partner currently makes about 30% more than I do. However, over the life of our careers, my earning potential is much higher as I get to higher levels of responsibility within my field, and he’s joked with me about how much he’s looking forward to being a “kept man” once I make enough to support us.

          Whereas he has a coworker, doing the same job as him, whose wife incidentally also worked in my field before they had children, and they were at that later point in careers where she made more than he did. But he got all prideful about it and refused to be the stay-at-home parent even though that would’ve made much more financial sense (specifically because of gendered expectations, he’s told my other half this outright that a man provides for his family blah blah), and so they’ve always struggled financially, when they didn’t have to if he’d have been willing to set aside outdated gender crap and make the best decision for the family.

          TLDR I wish more men were that sensible about women out-earning them.

          1. krysb*

            When my grandma retired in 1990 from GM, if she had stayed a couple weeks longer, her pension would have increased significantly (nearly double). My granddad wouldn’t let her, because then she’d be making more money than him, and that was unacceptable.

    10. Serin*

      The spouse is really freaked out about negotiating pay! When I got an offer for my last job and I counteroffered, he was in a fidgeting, pacing, chattering anxiety for the three days it took them to respond. He knew I had consulted with Bestfriend, who is my advisor in everything related to grown-up life, and he kept saying, “And you’re sure that Bestfriend told you this is the kind of thing people do?”

      1. Adlib*

        At a former job, some of my coworkers looked at me like I had two heads when I told them I was going to ask for a raise after we hadn’t just been given one. Guess what? I got it. They acted like that was literally the scariest thing you could do. The worst thing that could happen was that I could get told no. People are so freaked out by money!

    11. Nea*

      Are we related? My mother insists that I’m wonderful, beautiful, brilliant… OMG, I want THAT much money?!! Call them back and say I’ll take less.

    12. Ghost Town*

      My husband’s family are all huge Specific State University fans, and so is he. University Where We Work gives us paychecks and benefits. As long as they don’t play each other ;), husband is a big fan of University Where We Work and relishes rooting for them at sporting events.

      Our loyalty can be bought….

  7. Red*

    I didn’t have any sort of interview clothes because I was spending all of my tiny paychecks on groceries, so I asked my mom if she had anything I could wear to an interview. It was for Tuxedo Junction in the mall. She gave me a sun dress and sandals. I did not get the job.

  8. NewHerePleaseBeNice*

    My mother took me shopping to buy smart clothes / a suit that would be suitable for job interviews during / after university. She wouldn’t let me try on any suits that were ‘boring’ dark grey, navy blue, black, and tried to steer me towards a ‘lovely’ pastel blue number which would help me to ‘stand out’. This was the late 90s, in the UK, and I was (still am) short and almost as wide as I am tall. And ginger. A pale blue suit would not have been A Good Look.

    I bought my own (dark grey) jacket and trousers in the sale…

    1. PB*

      My mother tried to give me one of her old suits from the 70s. She said it was a “classic look” that would never go out of style.

      Yeah, it was a suit from the 70s, and everyone who saw it would know that.

    2. AnnaleighUK*

      As a fellow ginger I sympathise! My mum tried to force me into getting a bright pink shirt to go with my ‘boring’ black suit. I wonder if inappropriately coloured outfits are a British parents in the late 90’s thing…

      1. paul*

        My (American midwestern to Texas transplant) MIL tried to convince my wife to wear a godawful paisley and floral abomination to interviews…so it’s not exclusively British

        1. nonegiven*

          That seriously makes me think of the news anchor on the local tv channel. She looks like her clothes are made from rug or upholstery material. Oh look, the weather person must have borrowed a necklace from news anchor! (Over sized and gaudy) I don’t want to make fun of her clothes, I just wish she’d dress in the same solid colors the male anchor wears every day like a uniform, just without a tie.

      2. NewHerePleaseBeNice*

        Aaaaah, I’d love to be able to wear bright pink. It’s not a good colour on me, but I love it as a concept!

          1. WonderingHowIGotIntoThis*

            Or brown, because you look like a Cadbury’s Crunchie bar….
            Or black, because you look like a Duracell battery….

        2. AnnaleighUK*

          I can’t wear any shade of pink. I’m a dark ginger but still pale as pale can be. Pink just does not work, which is why Mum was so misguided on that one! I ended up with white shirts out of sheer panic, I’m sure there were better colours but I was at uni and terrified of making a bad impression! Mum hates that the majority of my work wardrobe now is dark greens and blues. She maintains that I’m dull. That’s fine by me, I look professional and that will do nicely!

    3. Gen*

      My mom gave me a red and black 80s shoulder-padded power suit for a job interview in 2004. Fortunately I was three sizes too big for it. Five years later I interviewed for a job at her organisation and I all the women dressed in that style, it was like stepping into a time machine

      1. 2 Cents*

        At Old Job, there was a women who must have bought all of her outfits in 1988 and then never bought anything ever again. Every time I saw her, I swore she’d just gotten out of her Delorean.

    4. Boy oh boy*

      Very similar here! My mother took me to a UK department store that has a good range (John Lewis) but bought me a bizarre beige thing with lace trim. It made me feel like a sofa trimmed with doilies.

      1. Hildegard Von Bingen*

        I feel that away about big floral prints. That kind of thing looks like it should cover a big, squishy sofa on somebody’s screened back sun porch in Georgia or the Carolinas. Nope.

    5. JustaTech*

      My MIL once offered to buy me a blazer to wear to work (I work in a lab). That shopping trip nearly ended in hysterics when she insisted that I wanted a St John suit and would not listen when I said that while my aunt the litigator wore St John it was super not right for a very junior scientist. Even the sales lady was trying to steer her away from it, but nothing go through until I nearly screamed “Condaleeza Rice wears St John, I can’t!”.

      I don’t think my MIL has ever worn a suit in her life and lives and works in a very casual area, so I have no idea why she was so fixated on it.

    6. Katie C.*

      My mother’s advice to interviewing: Show some cleavage.

      First, I was a b-cup. There wasn’t much going on in that department.

      Second, I was mostly interviewing at tech companies. Looking like a sex pot was NOT going to win me any points. The less they were reminded of my gender, the better.

      Third, in her career, she never really ‘interviewed’ for positions. It was all done by the numbers. Whoever had the most years and didn’t completely fall over during the interview got in. Once, two other people were competing for the same position, and she was horrified since normally every new position was a shoo-in. She couldn’t conceive of a world where one had to compete against droves of strangers.

  9. Forced to be formal*

    My dad used to tell me to call all the higher-ups “Sir” or “Madam” (not Ma’am, Madam) for at least the first two weeks of any job.

    This was while I worked in retail/hospitality during (and just after) high school. Rest assured I very quickly got corrected once I was actually in the world of work.

    2. Sleepy Librarian*

      My new hires call me ma’am sometimes and I tell them they can stop basically immediately.

  10. Rosamond*

    Not terrible advice, just misguided. When I was in high school and college, my mom really pushed me to look for office jobs rather than retail. She thought entry-level office work was more prestigious, interesting, better paid, and would look better on my resume later. After all, that’s how she started out in the 1960s. I listened to her and ended up working for two toxic managers in struggling small businesses, which of course were the only places that we’re hiring teenagers to do office jobs in the late 1990s. I got fired from both of them. I stopped listening to my mom and worked in a string of service jobs for the rest of college, all of which had competent and respectful managers and were generally fine places to work. I think my mom is still disappointed.

    1. paul*

      How did you find multiple retail jobs that all had good managers?! I had a few good managers during my retail and restaurant stints in HS/college but goodness, there were a lot of bad ones too

      1. Rosamond*

        I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were all “good” – just competent and respectful, which neither of my office job managers had been. My managers in retail we’re mostly nose-to-the-grindstone retail lifers who just wanted everyone to show up to their shifts, try to make their numbers, and not create any drama.

    2. Snarkus Aurelius*

      Similar to what I originally posted, my mom also thought I was ungrateful for wanting to do more than entry level or office work. She still says that volunteering to make coffee or take notes or order office supplies shows I’m not too good to do anything and everyone will appreciate me. What she fails to realize is that’s *all* I get stuck with if that’s what I’m aiming for.

      For some reason, it really gets under her skin that I won’t unload the office dishwasher or I only volunteer to do substantive work. I keep reminding her of how easy it is for women to get stuck with stereotypical women’s work and she thinks we’re being snobs, completely ignoring that men get out of this work.

    3. Junior Dev*

      My aunt believes, for some reason, that white collar managers are never abusive and service industry managers usually are. She was expounding on this while I was working for the first in a series of emotionally abusive bosses in tech jobs and missing my days as a server in a cafeteria.

    4. Triplestep*

      I don’t know that I’d call this advice “misguided”. Maybe for a high school student, but for college? One of my kids got summer internships in office settings (State agencies) throughout college, and it does look good on her resume. It’s unfortunate that you had toxic managers, but I don’t think that makes the advice “misguided.”

      1. Rosamond*

        I certainly wouldn’t argue that internships look good on a resume, Internships are different than part-time jobs. This was the 90s, when internships were barely a thing.

    5. Katie C.*

      My mother insisted that the only job I should ever hold is a government job. There so easy to get! Just fill out an application and something will turn up!

      The reality? She was lucky there was a war on when she got in, because that was the last time it was ‘easy.’ Nearly all hires today are from contracts or inside, and there’s not NEARLY as many positions as there once was. Oh, and no one is hiring some wet behind the ears kid unless they’re amazing or the niece/nephew of someone important.

      1. Government job*

        “Oh, and no one is hiring some wet behind the ears kid unless they’re amazing or the niece/nephew of someone important.”

        This is untrue, and the government job hiring process in the US is optimized to prevent it.

  11. Aphrodite*

    Not weird but outdated.

    The bad: My dad always advised my sister and I to show up in person about jobs. “It will show you are enthusiastic about the job, he said. This was in the pre-Internet age but was when most job ads gave a fax number (and no company name) and told you to fax your resume. He couldn’t believe it when we told him we didn’t even know, in many cases, who the potential employers were.

    The good (really good): Wear good clothes any time you show up for an interview or even to just fill out an application. This once made me stand out when I showed up at a group orientation for FedEx–where anyone can come and they tell you all about the company and job and have you fill out an application–and discovered that I was the only one in a suit. One other man, perhaps a little older than me, came in black slacks and white shirt, looking very nice. Other than us, everyone was in jeans and tee shorts and I think one guy was even in shorts. Out of around 30 people I think they offered six of us interviews–and I got hired.

    1. Lemon Zinger*

      Sooooo many of us were told to show up in person to ask for jobs! And it was such wrong advice!

    2. Mockingjay*

      “The good (really good):” I advised my girls to do the same when asking for applications at small businesses – the ones without online applications. Their appearance often netted an interview.

      Interestingly, my oldest worked for Cutco during college as the interview booker for sales reps. She would call people to schedule interviews and advise them on the dress code. The vast majority made no attempt to comply.

    3. Peter the Bubblehead*

      When my daughter came of working age in HS, the one piece of advice I impressed on her was “Always dress nicely for a job interview, whether its for Register at a grocery store or Manager at a retail location.”
      While she hasn’t gotten EVERY job she applied for, she often stands out against the other applicants (and has been told such by the hiring manager) and has never had much trouble finding a job of some kind or another.

    4. Jadelyn*

      Ah, yes. Good old “pound the pavement” advice. My dad was the same way – this, coming from a man working a specialized skilled job in a small industry where one changed jobs by word-of-mouth and networking. Aside from the one time he got laid off in the late 80s/early 90s, I don’t think I ever saw him actually *apply* for a job – it was just, “So-and-so from Other Bigname Company reached out to me today to ask me to come interview next week.” And he never really got the whole apply-online thing no matter how many times I told him showing up in person would just get you told to go to the website.

      So I just smiled and nodded and ignored his advice until one time he was being particularly pushy and insisting that the reason I was unemployed (during the recession, when jobs were not exactly thick on the ground) was because I wasn’t “getting out there and pounding the pavement” and I finally snapped back, saying “Dad, remind me, when is the last time you actually had to go on a job search? Back in the 80’s? Oddly enough the world has changed in the last 20-plus years and the way you got work back then is not the way I can go about getting work now.”

      It only shut him up for a couple months before he was back at it again, but god was it satisfying to say.

    5. LiveAndLetDie*

      My mother-in-law definitely told me to print out my resume on nice paper stock and go in-person to local businesses to drop it off with receptionists and then follow up with nice thank-you cards. Which maybe was a thing back in the 80s or 90s when she last looked for a job, but is definitely not what you do now.

      1. The Expendable Redshirt*

        Oh Gosh, my mother told me the same thing. The last time that she applied for a job was in the early 90s. Mom has worked for the exact same company for about thirty years. I honestly didn’t know where to buy this mythical nice stock paper. All paper was the basic white printer stuff right? Now days, the receptionist where I work doesn’t accept paper resume submissions. Everyone who applies is redirected to the company website.

  12. EA*

    Lord, the career advice my mother gave is a mixer between things that are 90% untrue with a tiny hint of truth thrown it, and a hell of a lot of narcissism.
    – when I graduated colleg pitched a huge fit about me not moving back to my home town immediately (I had a nanny job and wanted to try and get a job for a few months, and I got one), claims that the only way you get a job is through connections, and that looking for jobs ‘on the computer’ was a waste of time, as those jobs get hundreds of applicants. (I got a job randomly applying)
    -when I was interviewing for said job, kept telling me I would never get it. As according to her the company probably had a nepotism hire all lined up, and just had to interview me for appearances. She kept calling my interviews fake.
    – when I got the job, told me it was pure luck and because I am pretty.
    -referred to my unpaid college internships as volunteer work. Told me that if a company starts off not paying you than why would they ever.
    -in an internship I told her I needed to ask for time off, got mad and I said I shouldn’t have to ask for vacation, as I am not being paid (clearly asking was a formality, I just wanted to let them know)

    1. AliceBD*

      I got a very good internship in college and 2 of 3 post-college jobs from blindly applying, writing good cover letters, and having good interviews. No connections used (not for lack of trying.) After the job I got this summer, the second one I got without connections, my parents have finally stopped saying looking online for random companies is a waste of time.

      1. Triplestep*

        I network like crazy, both for myself and my friends. I have ONLY ever gotten jobs by applying to online posts, and before that, newspaper ads. (I am 54)

    2. Cassandra*

      Wow. A lot of that is straight-up negging. I’m glad you don’t seem to have internalized it — I hope you haven’t!

      1. ContentWrangler*

        I got my current job through connections (well, an internship which I then turned into a permanent job). It’s definitely not the only way to a get a job but I’ve found that it can be really helpful to branch out of your desired field, at least at the first level of connection. I went to school with a girl who’s mom was in banking (definitely not my field). But she was a really nice woman and had been living in my city for a long time and was really involved in the community. She had a friend who was in my field, so she helped set up an informational interview. That friend sent out my information to some companies/people he had worked with previously and that’s how I got the internship. So, it was more a chain of connections rather than happening to know the perfect people right away.

      2. Junior Dev*

        I got my current (about to start) job through a friend and my previous job through a Twitter follower. But the previous job sucked so I don’t know that that says anything about the success of that method.

        1. EA*

          It’s not that I think getting a job through connections is bad or not a good method, I just think that if you don’t have connections you should definitely apply online.

          1. the gold digger*

            I think it would be wonderful to have connections! I just have never gotten a job that way. My jobs have all come from either the career center at the University of Texas or from online ads. It seems like it would be a lot easier to go through connections.

      3. Typhon Worker Bee*

        I’ve managed it, but I work in a small field in my city, where everyone knows everyone.

        Job#1: I got my first job in this city by applying from a different country – didn’t know anyone
        Job#2: my head of department from Job#1 has a very successful spin-off biotech company, and set up interviews for me there with various department heads
        Job #3: in a different research department in the same organization as Job#1, with someone who collaborates with Boss#2’s wife, who works in the department from Job#1 (although that’s not how I got that job! Boss#2 didn’t know I was looking, so it was just a coincidence). NB the various departments in this organization operate somewhat independently.
        Job #4: in yet another department of the same org, with a team I first met while working in Job#3 (Boss#3 collaborates with a lot of people from that department). Two friends from Job#2 were already there, and a couple more from that company joined while I was working there
        Job#5 (current job): with someone I met while working in Job#4 (he was a co-applicant on one of Job#4’s grants. As was Boss#3. And also Boss#2’s wife, again)

        1. JanetM*

          I got my first full-time job sort of through connections: my Dad came home from work one day and said, “The janitorial agency that cleans my building is hiring. Go apply.” So I did, and found out they had a receptionist position open, so I applied for that as well, and was interviewed and hired. Over time, I moved into a position where I was actually recruiting and hiring mechanical and electrical assemblers, technicians, drafters, designers, and engineers for contract positions.

          My second job, I applied to a classified ad for a word processor that offered a higher pay rate than I was making as a recruiter, and was interviewed and hired.

          When I moved to Tennessee, I temped in admin support positions for a few years and then was hired direct by the law firm where I’d been temping.

          When I left that job, I temped again for a year, and the wife of the man I was working for asked me to apply for an admin assistant position in her department. I was interviewed and hired. A month later, she accepted a promotion from Director to Vice Chancellor, and I moved up with her.

          A few years after that, the administration was restructured, all the Vice Chancellor positions were eliminated, and another Director asked me to come work for her group.

          Then, last year, I applied to take a course in Project Management, and was promptly offered a junior PM role (which I am really enjoying!). With any luck, I’ll be in this role for six more years, when I plan to retire.

    4. GG Two shoes*

      your mom sounds… fun. :/

      My father-in-law was convinced that my company wasn’t a real company and was going to fold any minute. It’s over 120 years old, in the life insurance industry. It’s fine.

      1. SanDiegoSmith82*

        I’m in the insurance biz too- on the Commercial P&C side- i work for one of the giants, and am doing quite well with plenty of growth potential- but my parents keep pushing me to go back to my old barely above min wage job and work for State Farm (my first job/first boss)- in their town- so I can answer their questions and be “their agent”. That’s a negative- in so many ways. That’s actually their main advice- work for the little small business owner instead of the corporation- needless to say- after having to do things their way due to my previous area of residence- I plan to stay with the giant corporation for a LOOOOONGGGG TIME. Like “work here until I’m retirement age in 35 years” long…

        1. JessaB*

          I know little about insurance but unless you’re talking some teeny two person agency, I cannot imagine any mainstream insurance company permitting someone to write/maintain/service policies for their direct relatives. The conflict of interest would be crazy. Any job I ever worked that had any kind of fiduciary relationship with clients, would never allow that. I mean I once worked for a magazine company and if I got a screen up that had someone related to me or even a friend I knew I had to put it back in queue. I wasn’t allowed to call them because I might convince them to spend money they didn’t have because they knew me.

          Maybe explaining to your parents that even if you came home you wouldn’t be able to handle their account anyway.

      2. Puddingpye*

        My first job interviews did benefit from my dad’s skepticism about the companies I applied to. Because of his doubt, I did extensive research into the companies and their products (mostly to say, ‘see dad it is a real company’). So when I went on the interview I think I surprised everyone (myself included) with my company knowledge.

  13. Lynca*

    At my very first job, I was about 18 or so, my dad wouldn’t let me drive 10 miles home at night from the big retail store I worked at. I would get dropped off/picked up because they didn’t want me walking to the car in the dark or driving home in the dark because ‘bad things would happen.’ Should point out that I was not the only one leaving when the store closed so there were plenty of people around. Thankfully the helicopter parenting was restricted to just this one job.

    You can imagine how I was the butt of jokes with the other cashiers though.

    2. Juli G.*

      I just found out my parents sat in the parking lot across from my first job at night to watch me and make sure I was safe.

      In their defense, I often worked completely alone until 10pm at 16 which as an adult I realize wasn’t exactly safe. But if it was my kid, I would have helped them realize it was unsafe and encouraged other employment.

      1. paul*

        I worked in a rural grocery store; I was pretty happy to get picked up after work sometimes. Employees had to park at the back of the lot, I worked late, and there were critters. They once had a black bear get into the summer squash that was in big display bins in front of the store…

          1. paul*

            I wasn’t there when it happened, but I think Parks and Wildlife wound up shooting it. Fed bear is a dead bear.

        2. Adlib*

          My parents live in a very rural community, and the crap that goes down out there sometimes worries me more than my living in a big city does!

    3. Molly's Reach*

      Slightly off topic, but there’s a fairly popular barber shop here that opens at 7am. A woman in her 70’s opens up the shop at 7 (she is retired but still does this to stay active). Her husband doesn’t like her being there by herself (with whatever random customers come for a cut) before the rest of the staff come in , so he comes in with her every morning and reads the newspaper until the others arrive. Sometimes he’ll chat with the customers while she’s cutting their hair. So sweet.

    4. ContentWrangler*

      I do some extra work on the weekends at a local venue as an event manager (basically I open things up and shut them down when the party is over). This venue was in a very nice park in a nice part of town. But my mom still insisted on meeting me up there (super close to their house) my first couple of times closing late so that I wouldn’t be the only one in the building or in the parking lot.

      Of course, my mom is 5’2″ and super petite, so I’m not sure what she could have done if we’d been attacked by hooligans.

      1. Hildegard Von Bingen*

        She’d have used her krav maga training and shown those hooligans who was boss!

    5. CheeryO*

      This is kind of cute, even though I can see how it would bother you at 18! My dad would always get on my case about driving super carefully when I got out of my 2-10PM shifts at my first job. It was all of 1.5 miles from our house, in your average suburban area.

    6. Frustrated Granddaughter*

      My grandparents live in a small beach town with hundreds of seasonal jobs, so during college I lived with them in the summers and took a job a mile from their house in an extremely low crime area. I frequently worked ’til 11 or midnight and would bike home (less than a 10 min ride) along a very well lit, well populated route with tons of pedestrians, which I’d been traveling my entire life. I’d call my grandparents before I left work to let them know to expect me at home within 10 minutes, but that wasn’t sufficient safety measures for them – my then-80yo grandfather would insist on driving his clunker car uptown to meet me, and then would follow me home in the car while I biked ahead of him.

      I was grateful for his concern, but it got pretty annoying knowing I had to either wait for him to accompany me or get in a big argument about how unsafe it is for young women to be out at night.

    7. Hobgoblin*

      My mom told me to call her as soon as I got home from my first career-type job so she’d know I got home safe. I was (still am) a police officer…

      2. Rusty Shackelford*

        On the one hand, this is hilarious. On the other hand, if my child were a police officer, I just might insist on a daily post-shift “I’m not dead” phone call…

        1. Hobgoblin*

          Haha well she probably would love a daily phone call. My other fun “but, Mom, I’m a cop!” story is this: we met up for coffee while I was on shift and, when we were leaving, she put out her arm across my chest to prevent me from stepping off the curb into the parking lot because a car was coming. Sigh. It was very motherly but made me look stupid. There I was, in tac gear/mirrored sunglasses/bristling with weapons, and my mommy told me to look both ways before crossing the parking lot. It’s pretty funny now but not so funny when I was still young and kind of new.

  14. Brandy*

    We were watching Judge Karen and Karen was arguing with a unemployed defendant to get off the computer and go look for a job. Stop in the stores. My mom is fairly progressive and teaches me stuff she learns on the computer, but we argued about this. I said even WalMart, Publix, etc you fill out an online application. My mom said you go there and fill out the application on their computers they have there. U said you could do this from home. Needless argument as we both have office jobs and shes retiring in 4 months but still. Judge Karen said they get so many online applications they need to see you. I think this is bad advise.

    2. Justme*

      I agree with you. Even if you use the store’s computers (which are notoriously awful) there’s no guarantee that anyone who matters in the hiring process will see you.

      1. Liane*

        Yes, when I worked Customer Service at one of those retailers, our application kiosks used the World’s Largest and Worst Trackballs. Over a dozen years into the 21st century. The only upgrades made to them, as of when I left a couple years ago, was they were finally unplugged and plastered with out of order signs. They really did not work well, even when they were working.
        My spiel at the Service Desk when someone asked about applying was, “You can apply online at Retailer dot com. I strongly recommend going online from home or the library, although you can use kiosk there or in back. But online from a computer will take much less time and effort.”
        I did have a few people call or come to me and ask to “Follow up/speak with the hiring manager.”

    3. Doreen Kostner*

      To be fair, although large chains like Walmart or Target certainly do have online applications , and walking into the store is not going to be helpful , there are also a lot of retail-type jobs that don’t even advertise openings online and basically rely on signs in the window. You can apply for Home Depot online, but you’ll never know Harry’s Hardware with 5 employees is looking for help unless you actually go there.

      1. Peter the Bubblehead*

        When my daughter applied in person to retail stores like JC Penny and Wal-mart, she was told she needed to fill out the application on-line and if she qualified the company would call and arrange an interview. The big retail stores are not accepting in-person applications anymore at all!

      2. Liane*

        My state’s unemployment office, per the worker who saw me, counts “Walking into a business, asking about jobs, and being told to go to the website” as an in-person job contact, and one of your minimum 3 job contacts/week has to be in person. So yes I pay attention to signs in windows and ask my friends.

        (But the paper record you must keep asks for a name and title for *every* job contact, regardless of method. I hope putting “ATS Software Name” or the web address of the online form is acceptable, because that is what I have been doing.)

      3. As Close As Breakfast*

        Well, maybe. But I’d think most of the ‘Harry’s Hardwares’ out there are actually posting free job ads on Indeed or Craigslist at the very least. And if they aren’t currently, they will be. (Probably as soon as someone working there goes “Wait, you’re looking for employees how? Let me show you how to post one online.”)

      4. Pollygrammer*

        My first job was at an ice cream place, and the manager was a 20-something stoner. I showed up a couple times after putting in my application (with the excuse of getting ice cream). It worked to remind him that 1) I had applied and 2) he was supposed to be hiring at all.

  15. Amber T*

    “You’ll never get a job if you get a tattoo!” (in response to me getting a small tattoo in an easily covered area)

    Half of my coworkers have similar tattoos (small and in covered areas).

      1. EddieSherbert*

        Oh the other hand, weirdly enough, my mom spent YEARS encouraging me to get my nose pierced? When I didn’t want to and had never said I wanted to?

      2. Countess Boochie Flagrante*

        My mother thought the scar from my eyebrow piercing (which I got, and also took out, while I was still in college) would be a permanent hindrance in my career.

        You can’t even see it unless you’re about five inches from my face.

        1. Wendy Darling*

          Also I’m pretty sure like half of everyone who went to high school between 1990 and RIGHT NOW has that scar. If “I had an eyebrow piercing one time” scars disqualified you from jobs the unemployment rate would be astronomical.

        2. k.k*

          Ditto on the scar from a years-ago lip ring. It’s a tiny dot under my lip. Even if you notice it, it looks like a little freckle or something.

          1. Ramona Flowers*

            I’ll see your lip ring scar and raise you an ex ‘Madonna’ top lip stud and two eyebrow piercing scars. That nobody notices.

          2. peggy*

            i’ve got that lip ring scar! i also have a chip on my tooth from biting down on that lip ring, which i someday intend to fix but yet never do.

        3. SarcasticFringehead*

          I have acne scars that are much more visible than my former eyebrow piercing, and I didn’t have particularly bad acne.

        4. Autumnheart*

          And why would it disqualify you anyway? If you had any other scar (from a zit, from chicken pox, falling off your bike, car accident) it wouldn’t disqualify you.

        5. OlympiasEpiriot*

          I have two scars on my face and multiple small scars on other bits of my body. None have stopped me from having a job that I know of. How odd.

      3. Kate*

        My postdoctoral adviser’s told her daughter that a tongue ring would make it harder for her to get a job. I told her, “I had a tongue ring when you hired me.” She had no idea.

    2. EddieSherbert*

      This as well – and a lot of my coworkers have large uncovered tattoos! We’re in an office for a software company. The best part is that my tattoos are on easily covered areas (and I’m not about to wear a backless shirt, crop top, or short-shorts to the office ANYWAYS, mom!).

      Hilariously, this complaint also spilled over to my wedding dress when I got married – everyone would see my unseemly tattoos! I was very curious what kind of dress they were picturing that would show my thigh tattoo…

    3. Esme Squalor*

      I’ve run into this belief with a lot of boomers. I think the social context of tattoos has shifted a lot since they were starting out. At my last job, my department head had full sleeves, and she usually didn’t bother covering them. No one cared.

      2. Triplestep*

        I am 54, born in 1963, so “Boomer” by many standards. I think that views on tattoos have softened, but I also think it depends on so many factors: How many, where they are, what they depict, and the quality.

        I am a very visual person and work in a deign field, so when I see a beautifully done tattoo that’s clearly had a lot of thought put into it, I find it attractive no matter if I’m in the office or elsewhere. But when I see multiple random tattoos (as opposed to a sleeve, for example) that just seem like an odd collection, it does make me wonder about the person. Are they indecisive? Did they really think this through? Were any of these done impulsively? Those aren’t the kinds of things people want their hiring managers, bosses and/or co-workers thinking about.

        Obviously I don’t speak for my generation, but permanent visible marks on your body – that are intended to be displayed, and by many accounts mean something to those sporting them – might say things people don’t intend.

        1. Annabelle*

          Most people who get tattoos aren’t doing it all in one go, so having different subjects doesn’t mean they’re indecisive. Good tattoos are expensive and take a while to get done, so multiple ones with different themes probably just mean that someone has a multitude of different interests or things that are important to them over the years.

          1. Triplestep*

            Yes, I get that. I still think those tattoos would be more aesthetically pleasing if some thought were applied as to placement. Otherwise people risk looking like a sticker book page with stickers randomly applied – any bare skin real estate will do.

    5. Red Reader*

      Haha, woo. My dad used to give me that lecture. At the time, I both lived at home still and worked in my father’s store. So I saw him on a pretty frequent basis right? One morning, he walks into my office and starts in. “OH, IS THAT WHY YOU DIDN’T GET HOME UNTIL LATE LAST NIGHT?” and I was like … what? Cue tirade about that tattoo on the back of my neck, how amazingly unprofessional and obvious it is, and he can’t believe I was out late on a work night getting a new tattoo ….

      I waited him out, and then when he took a breath, I said “Just one thing, kay? I got that tattoo eight months ago, not last night.”

      Fifteen years and 20+ tattoos later, he has not said a single word about any of my tattoos since that morning. (Amusingly, I am in fact now at a job where tattoos must be covered per the dress code. Except I work remotely, so it doesn’t matter. Plus they are all fairly easily cover-able.)

    6. Ask a Manager* Post author

      My husband’s mother and grandmother seem to periodically forget he has tattoos and both get upset all over again when they see them and act as if he’s ruined all career prospects for himself. His grandma sometimes sees them and bats at him with her cane in anger (she is 101 so he can withstand this attack).

      3. EddieSherbert*

        MY GRANDMOTHER DOES THIS TOO!! Minus the assault via cane. Just offended yelling and then I remind her that I got “that thing” two years ago and she’s already berated me for it.

      5. Machiamellie*

        I got a tattoo at 20ish and showed my dad. He huffed and said “Show your grandmother that!!” so I showed Gram. She said, “Cool!” She was like 80 at the time. She was an awesome lady.

        1. The New Wanderer*

          Mine too! My parents were aghast, they didn’t believe I would go through with it because needles, but I did. Then they tried to embarrass me in front of my grandmother. She thought it was perfect, and she showed me her “tattoos” (two ink dots indicating previous radiation treatments for breast cancer).

          1. Grumpy*

            My friend’s (now deceased) father had a forearm tattoo, courtesy of a work camp he escaped from. He never tried to hide it. I miss him, he was so positive and awesome.

      6. Mockingjay*

        My mother almost fainted (in the waiting area at Outback Steakhouse) when she found out my oldest daughter got a tattoo. It took her years to warm back up to her.

      7. Gen*

        My grandfather went bananas when he found out the care home manager had a small forearm tattoo. He was convinced he was going to abuse the residents and steal all their money. Then he turned to me -purple hair, eight tattoos, seven piercings- and sort of wound down mid-sentence before starting up on why they should hire me. Not even close to being my area of competence but I never could work out if he’d decided it was a good industry or thought I should rob people like he’d just accused the manager…

      8. Wendy Darling*

        My college roommate wanted to dye her hair purple. Her mother and grandmother both had epic meltdowns about it. They had taken us out to lunch one day and were berating her about how she would never succeed in life if she dyed her hair purple, and sensible, respectable people did not dye their hair unnatural colors, and ISN’T THAT RIGHT WENDY??? I was a placid, well-behaved straight-A student so they thought they had this nailed down.

        I told them I had blue hair freshman year.

        1. Liane*

          When I worked at Retailer, I was talking to one of my favorite supervisors about my daughter applying–which was fine as long as she didn’t work in same area. I said something about the dress code mentioning natural hair colors*. She replied, “You really think they enforce that here?” indicating her hair, which was some rose-red shade. I laughed and pleaded a brain-blip.

          *not even mad Excel skills would help you keep track of Daughter’s hair color/style changes in the last couple years of working at Other Retailer.

      10. Plague of frogs*

        I visited my grandpa shortly after getting a tattoo.

        Me: I just got a tattoo.
        Grandpa: Your mother told me. I’m completely horrified. (Cheerfully) So let’s see it!

      11. MJ (Aotearoa/New Zealand)*

        My grandma HATED my first couple of tattoos. Over 9 years and 17ish tattoos she went from wanting me to get them laser removed, to grudging acceptance that I wouldn’t, to acknowledging that some of them looked good. When she was in hospice, she saw a mandala tattoo in a magazine and told me it would look nice on me, and helped me plan what her memorial tattoo would include.

    7. Kiki*

      I have 7 tattoos and no one at my current job knows I have any. Right now I’m looking at another job and I looked up my potential interview on LinkedIn. She has multiple visible tattoos and magenta hair.

      1. Former Hoosier*

        I say let you be you but to be fair some companies do have no visible tattoos policy including healthcare.

        1. ssbb*

          This seems to be getting less common. I have seen a *lot* of nurses with visible tattoos. (Usually forearm.)

    8. DaniCalifornia*

      Lol my dad told me something similar when I got my tattoo on my wrist. “Well now you can’t enlist in the military.” I was 23 and not interested in the military anyways. Also, that doesn’t disqualify you from the military. You just have to keep it covered.

      1. voluptuousfire*

        That’s strange. Don’t many military people have tats to commemorate their time in the service? Two of my cousins were in the navy and both have navy themed tats–mermaids, anchors, etc.

      2. essEss*

        The Chicago Police department tried to suddenly crack down on tattoos in 2015 and issued a new policy that ALL tattoos needed to be covered up. There was such a backlash from the police officers, especially former military personnel, that they had to rescind the policy.

        1. Pollygrammer*

          A Philly cop was the center of a scandal because he had an openly displayed “German heritage” tattoo on his forearm. Definitely not a Nazi symbol! Just an eagle emblem that was ~used~ as a Nazi symbol and the word “Fatherland.”

          I totally support policies requiring police to keep tattoos covered.

            1. Pollygrammer*

              If he was a Nazi who wanted to show off that fact and his department was either aware or in total denial and he wasn’t dismissed from the force?

    9. Don Lucia's Mullet*

      I work for a company that has a pretty strict dress code for folks working in customer-facing roles – no visible tattoos, only 1 piercing per ear and only in the earlobe, only 1 ring per hand (unless you’re working in food service, then it’s none due to health codes), no unnatural hair colors, etc. It won’t prevent someone from getting hired, but you will be made aware of the policy during the hiring process, and asked if you’d be willing to cover up the tattoos, remove extra piercings, etc. If you then show up for orientation out of guidelines, they’ll either ask you to correct it immediately, or reschedule your start date.

      1. The Luidaeg*

        All of my tattoos are covered by my clothing (except for the one on my upper arm, and I don’t wear short sleeves at work). I purposely, when I worked with my first artist, designed them to be completely covered by work clothes.

        I got my first one in my 20s, living on my own . . . and when I was stupid enough to mention it to my parents (who I was going to be traveling with for 2 weeks), my mother told me several things, including that no one was ever going to love me. Because I had done this to myself. I’m sure she has forgotten she said that, and has also changed her mind, considering I’ve now been married for 17 years.

        Where I work, several people have tattoos (some visible, some not). Not as big of a deal as it was 20 years ago, to be sure.

    10. peggy*

      I have tattoos that are not covered by my regular clothing (big chest piece that comes up out of my shirt). It’s floral and inoffensive, and I don’t wear shirts that show very much of it but you definitely see the upper parts of it with any regular neck shirt (i have 1 cowl neck sweater that covers it and it’s covered if i wear a hoodie or a scarf, but otherwise you get at least a few leaves & petals in view.)

      At this stage of the game, I wouldn’t take any job that wouldn’t have me because of tattoos. I’m just not interested in any line of work where it would matter. I always used to have people say to me, “what will you think of your tattoos when you’re FORTY, UGH!” so 40 feels like the magic number. it’s 2 years away and i’ll be treating myself to a nature-inspired full sleeve on my right arm. like “i AM 40 and i still love this! and i’m still the only one who makes decisions about my body! and i still don’t care what anyone thinks!” :)

      1. Brisvegan*

        I got my first tattoo because I turned 40! :)

        Just got my 6th.

        I am an academic and it hasn’t been an issue so far. I’m tenured and work for a fairly progressive uni though, so thats might not be the same for everyone at every Australian uni.

      2. Wannabikkit*

        Go for it! I’m nearly 46 and got my first tattoos a few weeks ago. I have every intention of getting more!

    11. Radiant Peach*

      Oh! Just thought of another: if go to grad school and make less than six figures on your first job, you’ve wasted your time.

    12. SuchaFineGirl*

      My pops said this too – and then when he retired he went out and got a tattoo. (What? I don’t have a job anymore!)

    13. Typhon Worker Bee*

      I’ve always wanted a nose piercing – just a teeny tiny silver stud. I was actually planning to do it for my birthday in a few weeks (I decided that wanting the same thing for >20 years means that I’m probably not going to change my mind, lol), but then I started a new job a couple of months ago and my boss and the office manager both have the exact kind I want. I kind of feel like it would be weird to do it now.

    14. SubwayFan*

      I got this too, I have a tiny diamond in my upper lip (a Monroe piercing). When I got it my older relatives said I’d never get hired again.

      Honestly most people never even notice it. I had one guy I had worked with for 5 years look at me one day and say “Hey, did you get your lip pierced over the weekend?” and I had to tell him, no, I’ve had this since before we started working together.

    15. Kuododi*

      Neither DH or I have tats. I’ve always appreciated the esthetics of a well done tattoo however I am enough of a needle phobic I realistically don’t see getting a tattoo in my future. DH has always worked in either Hospice or Hospitals and their policies have been very firm. If you want a tattoo…it must be discreet and in a location where it can be covered up while on duty.

  16. CA in CA*

    My mother told me to put my social security number on all my resumes I was handing out (this was back when you applied by putting a physical resume in someone’s hand, no online applications). So God only knows who has that info now. Le sigh.

    2. Lemon Zinger*

      Conversely, my mom told me to never provide my social security number for employment. She even showed up at my first job to speak with my boss because she wasn’t comfortable giving me my social security card that was REQUIRED because I didn’t have a passport.

    4. the Olden Days*

      That was standard in the old days. If it was pre-computers, typed on a typewriter, I’m not surprised. Everyone did it.

      1. Liane*

        Not just for applications but *everything.* My first bank account, in college where my dorm address would change every year, the *bank* advised me to have my SSN on my checks in place of an address and I did it.

        Those of you who work in banks, financial services, IT, security, please accept my apologies for causing horrible nightmares.

        1. puzzld*

          I just added a new dog to my records at the vet (that I’ve used for 30 years or so) they have a new form to collect Rover’s info and it asks for SSN. I just about died right there.

        2. Victoria*

          When my husband was at Basic Training, his SSN was part of the address for mail. The envelope would have this:

          Husband’s Name
          000-00-0000
          Company and Unit number
          0000 Barracks Name
          Fort Lost-in-the-Woods, Missouri 00000

          Deity knows how many USPS workers have his SSN now.

        3. Rusty Shackelford*

          Back in the day, kids, it was a time-saver to have your SSN printed on your checks, since otherwise you’d have to write it by hand, or read it off to the cashier so she could scribble it on your check.

          (I had more than one job where SSNs were printed on time cards, which were in view of all employees. Once, an employee used another’s SSN to pretend to be her and cancel her phone service. The reaction of both the phone company and the employer was “Huh. That’s too bad.”)

      2. Elizabeth West*

        I still see paper applications sometimes that ask for it. I applied for a job in a law office (just clerical) and they emailed me a PDF of an application with a line on it for social security number (I left it off, because no). It was not a fillable form, either. I had to print it, fill it out, scan it, and email it back. They never called me. Um, good.

    5. Talia*

      There is a *solid* chunk of municipalities that require you to put your social security number on the application, which they usually then want you to send as a plain unencrypted email attachment. I have never gotten an interview anywhere I refused to do this, although occasionally I will get someone from HR calling me and saying “You didn’t put your social security number on the form, I need it to complete your application!”

    6. cobweb collector*

      I once got a few resumes like this. They all came from the same University so I assumed they all got that advice from the same professor/career center. It made me very uncomfortable. Rest assured I did make sure to shred them when I was done with them.

    7. Adlib*

      I was working with a recruiter a while back who asked me why I didn’t put my SSN on my application. I asked why they needed it. She told me if I got a contract position where they had to pay me they would need it. I told her they could have it then but not before. Blew her mind that someone wouldn’t want to put it on there.

      1. nonegiven*

        When they switched to having the portable lab come out to sending people into town with a form for random drug tests, that was the first time DH knew his SSN was printed out on the form. He lost his sh!t. They stopped putting it on there.

    8. MostCake*

      In Nevada in the 80s your driver’s license number was your SSN and you definitely had it printed on your personal checks because no retailer would accept a check without it. And at my tech college in Texas in the 90s your student ID number was your SSN, which was printed on your ID badge. Le gasp!

  17. Amber Rose*

    At some point during a job hunt right around finishing university, mom said I should be applying to a hundred jobs A DAY. Basically, every job I saw I should apply to. I mean, I tried, but realistically I managed about ten. There aren’t that many hours in a day, or a hundred jobs a day posted that it even makes sense to try and apply for. Like, I’m not going to apply for registered nurse or long distance truck driver (I didn’t even get my GDL Class 5 until a year after I graduated). And since I half-assed the ones I did apply for and wasn’t really qualified for those either, I didn’t get any interviews.

    I ended up working at a place where they interviewed in batches of 20 and the “interview” was a test to see if you could count to ten and use a hand scanner. Everyone who passed was hired. That’s the kind of job you get with that tactic.

    1. EddieSherbert*

      My parents also suggested this tactic, and would send me links (unfortunately, they figured out how to work online job sites) to random jobs that had nothing to do with my degree or interests and occasionally threw in the encouraging words “I know this isn’t what you’re looking for, but you need to do SOMETHING.” (I literally was hired for my first post-college job 2 weeks after graduation).

      1. Amber Rose*

        The one job I put effort into applying for and was related to my degree hired me after I’d been working at hand scanner place for a month and a half.

        Turns out it actually is quality over quantity. ;)

    2. boop the first*

      Especially now that applications require so much work we might as well be paid for it! I remember getting frustrated trying to apply online for a part time job at a craft store. It took 45 MINUTES because of all of the bogus “personality” quizzes.

      Of course I didn’t even get a phone call. I’m much too old and jaded to pass those quizzes.

      1. LadyL*

        Those quizzes are so useless. A lot of them ask the most absurd questions, like:

        “Your co-worker has a 1 year old and you caught her stealing a can of formula from the store. What do you do?
        A) Help her steal higher value items
        B) Detain her, scream “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!” as you lightly flog her, then call the manager to fire her immediately”

        Obviously I’m being a bit facetious with the answers, but I have seen (a version of) that question at so many stores, and the answers always amount to either “I love crime” or “I’m a narc”. I always want to respond instead, “Are you openly admitting that you don’t pay your employees enough to survive on?”

        1. nnn*

          Reading without my glasses, I read that as “Your co-worker has an 11-year-old and you caught her stealing a can of formula”. And I was thinking that’s oddly specific…

        2. Rusty Shackelford*

          A manager at Giant Soul-Sucking Retail Store told me you’d be surprised at how many people answer A.

          1. SevenSixOne*

            I’m not surprised that a significant minority of employees would DO option A, but I am a little surprised that they’re dense enough to ADMIT it to a stanger, especially on a job application.

      2. Birch*

        In the early 2000s I was made to spend hours on one of these at a Target before they would even let me fill out an application, then they never called me back. I studied psychology so it wasn’t like I answered badly!

  18. designbot*

    My parents really stressed me out about finding a job senior year of college. They insisted that everyone who was going to succeed in life had a job lined up by spring break at the latest, but Christmas break would be preferable. Apparently this is how things worked… in engineering… in the 70s. It was NOT how it worked in architecture in the 2000s. I unfortunately let them stress me about about it enough that I took the first solid offer I had, a month before graduation. The week after graduation I had no fewer than 30 calls and emails regarding opportunities, and responsible person that I am, I told them I was already spoken for. Big mistake, as some of those opportunities were way better than what I’d taken.

    1. Triplestep*

      Ouch. My architecture degree is from the late eighties, and the only people who had jobs anywhere near graduation had taken teaching jobs. I decided to work in light construction, certain that some future design firm would be impressed with this choice (especially since I am female). Not so much; most of them wanted cheap near-newbies who some other poor shlub had taught to do construction documents!

    2. JustaTech*

      I wish my parents had pushed a little bit about looking for jobs before I graduated, but I was so depressed (in hindsight) about not getting into grad school (dodged a bullet!) that I probably wouldn’t have listened.

  19. OlympiasEpiriot*

    Actually, mostly I had really good job advice from my parents. (This was quite a while ago, I’m now in my 50’s.) But, I do recall my mother having some odd hangups about thinking volunteering (rather than asking for money) “showed what kind of a person you were”. My response to that was always “yeah, either an idiot or someone really rich with a martyr complex.”

    Fortunately, my father thought people should be paid for their work and backed me up when it came up in his presence. (They were divorced, so it didn’t work out that way all the time.)

    Both, however, gave me truly terrible dating advice and both in their own ways were terrible about my college education application process…one was extremely hands-off even though I begged for advice, the other kept vascillating between trying to get me to apply to inappropriate programs for my interests and making extremely intrusive (to the admin or profs) connections for me to follow-up on in programs I *was* interested in.

    1. Cassandra*

      I hope your sense of “intrusive” wasn’t too strict. Talking with prospective students is one of the best parts of my (instructor in a professional program) job. Granted, not everybody feels the way I do about it (which is why I do a lot of it compared to my immediate colleagues), but like hiring, higher education ought to be a two-way street.

      (Especially on the post-baccalaureate level. If you can’t get anyone from a graduate department to talk with you, RUN AWAY and find a better one. It’s a sausage factory that is much too likely to make you miserable.)

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        My daughter is applying to grad programs now, and does this two-way interview process. But it would be really, really weird if this was set up by me calling the university and saying “Hi, my daughter Rising is a genius and you should interview her, I looked at your program and decided it was a great fit for what I want her to do.”

        1. Cassandra*

          Oh gosh, I misconstrued the grammar entirely! My bad!

          Our departmental admissions administrator does occasionally have to deal with helicopter parents. I do not envy her that. I do see parents of applicants occasionally — they have usually longish-distance-transported the applicant to the visit, which is fine — but not an over-intrusive one yet.

          1. OlympiasEpiriot*

            No, more like, let’s say, she knew a lawyer who went to Big Ivy League and was a member of Private Men’s Club with somehow whose wife was the assistant to the director of admissions at Exclusive Women’s College (that might have had a program related to what i was interested in, but i wasnt thinking of applying to for any of sevetal reasons) and said wife loved William Morris’s work and my mother would finagle a garden party invite and schmooze with this woman and offer an introduction/invite to the home of the person in the US with the largest private collection of Morris’s work…

            and then she’d come home and press on me how important it was for me to pursue this connection and ALL the WORK she had put into it…blah, blah, blah…my protestations that I was already in correspondence (multiple letters back and forth) with Big Professor In My Field at university with a bigger program covering what I was looking for fell like a lead balloon because she had just Gone To All This Trouble.

            1. Cassandra*

              Oh, criminy. That’s epic overinvolvement. I’m sorry.

              Though I’d have gone to that person’s home just because I am a giant William Morris fan… one of the last of the great polymaths, and a mostly-decent person to boot. (Not perfect. But mostly decent.)

              1. OlympiasEpiriot*

                My mother never did anything by halves.

                That collection is, I think, now in the Huntington Library. It belonged to Sanford and Helen Berger in Carmel, California. In actuality, it wasn’t hard to see as they were amazingly hospitable to anyone who was a Morris fan or even just a bibliophile. They loved sharing their luck and passions. Both architects.

    2. strawberries and raspberries*

      Volunteering to volunteer can actually be great career advice, because if you take it seriously enough and build relationships with the agency there may be a job at the end. (Many people I know, including myself, have come into full-time positions after volunteering.)

      Volunteering to do a paid job for no pay, as in “I know you won’t hire me but just let me work for free and I’ll show you”, is terrible career advice.

      1. Elemeno P.*

        I’m a huge advocate of volunteering in general (the charitable kind, not the “please hire me if I do this for free” kind), and I agree that it can be a great career step. It shows that you have the dedication to a cause to do something on your own time and do well…and you meet a lot of people with similar interests, and occasionally careers you’re interested in.

        I volunteer in an entertainment hospitality venue and work in a hospitality venue. Most of the other volunteers also work in hospitality. There is SO much networking when someone mentions looking for a job.

      2. OlympiasEpiriot*

        The problem was more around (for example) being a cicerone at my high school during the summer and she wanted me to refuse the tiny “gas money stipend” they gave us to make up for interrupting our vacation to show prospective students around.

        Or neighbors who *wanted* to pay for someone to come in to water plants, feed fish and check on their homes while they’re away.

        Or the woman who ran a small clothing store/boutique who offered me a part time job because she liked how I could chat in a good salesperson way with other customers. My mother ranted at me about how the owner couldn’t be making much and I should be working for free to “help” and besides “sisterhood” because women get the short end of the stick. That last bit led to a HUGE fight about the feminism-payscale-women-undervaluing-themselves. I was NOT having it. (1970’s)

        I volunteered for things all the time. I did petitioning for ERA for my state, community center work, tutoring, etc. But, if someone wanted me to babysit, there was at least barter in my book.

  20. Meh*

    I was applying for a company to do video production work. I also had t-shirt printing equipment for a side gig. My dad suggested using the equipment to print the logo of the company on drawstring backpacks to take to the office during the interview to show how creative I am and that I had other talents outside of video. I was hesitant to the idea, but decided to go along.
    But the funniest thing, was that it worked! I got the job and later asked what was the deciding factor, and they told me it was the bags. Though the company ended up being a bit dysfunctional (whether or not the acceptance of the bags was an indicator, I’ll never know). When I was looking for another video position, I decided to try it again and it worked a second time! I don’t know if the bags were the deciding factor, but they didn’t prevent me from getting the job. So I guess not all “weird” advice is bad.

  21. Temperance*

    I know I’ve shared this before, more than once, but it fits.

    My FIL is “quirky”. A few years ago, he decided that he wanted to move to our area and needed a job. So … he put on a suit and handed copies of his resume to anyone who looked “important” on the street. (Other men in suits. Only men.)

    He also went to a few luxury car dealerships and pretended to be interested in the cars so he could talk himself into a job by showing off his expensive car knowledge, which he does not have because he’s only driven Fords his entire life.

    1. EddieSherbert*

      This made me laugh out loud. What? Did he find anything?! Were the random men confused? I’m so curious.

      1. Temperance*

        I bet you are not surprised to know that neither of those weird schemes worked. I’m so thankful to this day, lol.

        I wish I knew how the men he approached responded! If you ask my FIL, he got a good reception and felt great about it, but he’s nuts, so you can’t really take anything he says as fact. (Which is probably obvious from those little schemes. )

    3. Anansi*

      This is hilarious! It reminds me of a time when my husband and his friend had just graduated college and went to a networking event, and spent the whole night trying to talk to this group of men in super fancy suits, since obviously anyone dressed that well must be important. At the end of the night, they realized they were unpaid interns.

      2. Sartorial*

        But it does show that the comments upthread, about dressing well, are not irrational. Dress well, and people will treat you with respect, even if you’re an unpaid intern.

  22. Coalea*

    When I was job hunting for the first time after college, my dad read my resume and suggested that I add that I was unmarried and had no children, and that I was in good health.

    3. Hey Karma, Over here.*

      I was helping my sister update her 1976 resume in 2006. Yup, health, weight, marital status.
      I pointed out that she could say she was a non smoker now!

    4. Hildegard Von Bingen*

      Don’t forget to mention your ballroom dancing skills. You never know when your ability to do a mean foxtrot will snag you the job of your dreams.

    5. Wendy Darling*

      I was screening resumes THIS DECADE and got a cover letter where the applicant explained that we should hire him because he was single, had no children, and was in good health, so he could work long hours and lift heavy things.

    6. Plague of frogs*

      During your job interview, let them inspect your teeth to verify your age. Oh, wait, that’s horses.

  23. KJDubreuil*

    My mother (still living, born in 1928) told me more than once “Never learn to type, that way no one can make you be their secretary.” This said while she was typing my high school term papers for me. On a manual typewriter. Wearing those knit gloves with the fingertips missing. And a wool hat.

    My mother failed to predict that 1) she would not be lurking around my college campus to type those papers for me, 2) the computer revolution was coming like a juggernaut and 3) my chosen profession is not secretary but does require lots of typing and pays less than some well paid secretaries while requiring extensive overtime.

    1. nnn*

      Heh. I had multiple adults recommend that I try to earn money by typing up people’s papers for them. This was around 1994.

      1. Mabel*

        I was really glad my dad made me take typing in high school. I typed papers in college for extra money, and when I was between careers, I was an administrative assistant. I’m really glad I can touch type.

      2. sometimeswhy*

        I *did* earn money by typing peoples papers for them in college in the late ’90s.

        I was a non-traditional (read: older) student and associated heavily with other non-traditional students, many of whom just skipped right over the computer revolution waiting for the fad to pass. Whereas: both of my folks were Day One, Hour One participants in said revolution.

    2. AdaLovelace*

      My mother, of a similar age, gave me the same advice to not learn to type: she had trained in a professional role (think lawyer/accountant) in an age when many potential employers wouldn’t let her meet clients. So it made sense in the 1950s, when her peers would see a woman lawyer and think “I can get her to type up my letter rather then ask the typing pool”. It wasn’t so useful for a female software engineer in the 1990s.

    3. Fiennes*

      Typing used to be a skill higher-up executive people not only didn’t have but *refused to learn.* It was a marker that you were clerical only, and from the days when secretaries took dictation.

      The personal computer put paid to that quickly enough.

      1. Mabel*

        My dad is a retired attorney, and he can probably still type >80 wpm. He had a secretary, but he often needed to type notes and other things. We still have letters he typed to my grandparents when he was abroad with the Navy. But he is a white, middle class man, so he wouldn’t have had to worry about being mistaken for support staff.

      2. Kate*

        I once worked a couple days on a huge, HUGE budget movie, working under a production supervisor who made almost $5000 a week. And yet I have never seen another human being in my life struggle so hard to type up the movie’s on-screen credits (just a simple list of names and contractually-mandated titles) into Microsoft Word. Three year olds navigate iPads with greater skill.

    4. twig*

      I have had multiple women who were BabyBoomers or older tell me that they refused to learn how to type because the did NOT want to be secretaries. ( I think this was when I was in college in the 1990’s). These were generally women with other professional ambitions who did not want to be pigeon holed. it was like an older version of “don’t set yourself up to appear to be the office mom/wife”

      1. Pollygrammer*

        The equivalent young-person advice I heard a lot 5-6 years ago was “never let them know you’re familiar with social media.” It was enough of a mystery to higher-ups that it would become all they would want to assign you. :)

      2. Vertigo*

        Man this whole conversation is so fascinating; I’m in my late 20s and in my generation (or at least my experience) touch typing was something everyone was at least supposed to learn – there were endless typing teaching programs and games. I remember by 3rd grade “computer class” always started off with at least ten minutes of one of those typing games.

        The weirdest part (at least, to me), is that apparently kids aren’t really learning touch typing anymore, or at least not the spread out hands home row type stuff. My mother and several of my friends are teachers, and they tell me that with touchpads and smartphones being so common, kids usually just type with two fingers. Time marches on, I guess…

        1. Artemesia*

          I came of age in the 60s when women were legally and overtly kept out of most business roles and from most opportunity in professions. A woman who could type was likely to be put in a menial role even when supposedly a peer. And a generation ahead of us, well Sandra Day O’Connor who was near the top of her law class (2cd or third) was offered only a job as office manager in major law firms when she started out.

        2. Nanani*

          I learned to type on a typewriter because my area’s curriculum had yet to be updated to computers. My younger sibling learned on a computer because it was updated between our years, but it was then taken out completely.

          Sibling is now a high school teacher and this is a real problem – kids can’t type. Someone somewhere assumed they all would “just know” from growing up with electronics, but two-thumb text typing is not really suited to long-form essay writing, so a lot of kids are in a bit of trouble as they literally can’t produce the amount of text needed in a comfortable manner :/

          I hope the curriculm gets updated again.

        3. Cyberspace Hamster*

          Mid twenties here. I had a quarter year worth of lessons on touch typing (i.e. just long enough to get frustrated with it but not long enough to get good), promptly forgot it all and am now a software developer that gets by just fine using just three fingers.

    5. The New Wanderer*

      20 years ago I had a senior manager once walk by when I was typing up a storm. He jokingly said something like I was setting back the ‘women’s movement’ because I could type so fast (I was in a technical role, not secretarial/admin role, so I guess it stood out?).

    6. OlympiasEpiriot*

      Look, this isn’t totally ridiculous. When I joined my current firm — IN THE YEAR 2000 — I had been at my job for one and half days, sitting at a desk doing a sketch of a retaining wall with a stress diagram and some calculations and someone (male) came to me and asked me to type up a short letter he had written out in longhand. I said, sure, but I’m not a very good typist so it might take a while to be accurate…an admin might do it faster and better…and, SERIOUSLY, he said, but you’re a woman! Why can’t you type? I answered that before I studied engineering I was a carpenter and didn’t have much opportunity to type. He was shocked. I don’t think he spoke to me again for 6 months.

        1. OlympiasEpiriot*

          It was pretty funny.

          He started using me on his jobs when it got around the firm that very aggressive contractors we had dealings with were calling the office to complain that I was too stubborn and too demanding in my QA/QC. Even two death threats I got rolled off me.

          One of the partners offered at the first one to take me off the job if I wanted. I said something along the lines of I’m not made of sugar…don’t melt in the rain…this is my job…let me run it. I still get sexist b.s. in the company (and, damn, is it EXHAUSTING) but, some are little frightened of me, too. No one asks me to type.

    7. Triplestep*

      My mother – born in 1931 – told me I should not learn how to work the office coffee pot, the phone system or the copier, all for similar reasons.

      1. That Would Be a Good Band Name*

        I do not know how to work the office coffee pot and have no plans on learning since I don’t drink it. When the woman who makes coffee is off work, the men that drink it go without. She’s left instructions taped to the wall above the coffee pot and they still won’t make it!

      2. a nonny mouse*

        I’m an administrativeish person in an office that has fortunately, historically, expected employees to be relatively self-reliant on a lot of things… but after we got a new boss and a coffeepot (as opposed to everyone going across the street to fetch their own), I’ll admit that I very carefully did not make a pot of coffee for a week or so out of fear that I’d become The Coffee Girl.

        Fortunately the self-reliant attitude stuck around and people are pretty equal about making a pot if they’re first in or if they take the last of it, so I no longer worry about taking care of it when it’s my turn.

    8. essEss*

      Ha… my mom was the opposite. Although she was adamant that I was to be on a college (science based) track and would have a professional job, I needed to know how to type just in case I needed something to fall back on if I ever hit hard times. She felt that companies would always need typists, even if it was just for a temporary job.

      1. OlympiasEpiriot*

        I learned how to type, just like I also learned to work on the internal combustion engine, read a compass and take bearings with a top map, and run a wood lathe. No knowledge is ever wasted.

        But, I have been known to lie about an ability if I think I’m about to get trapped into something.

        ;-)

      2. a*

        That was what my mom said too – learn how to type, so you have something to fall back on! Look at your sisters (they both had part time office jobs in college). I didn’t actually have a choice in the matter – my high school required typing as part of the curriculum for everyone. But I was all…”I will never need to fall back on a typing job!” I can still only type 40-45 wpm.

    9. Pommette!*

      My mother (born in 1951) took this advice to heart. For years, she got by with two-finger hunt-and-peck typing (working in a text-heavy field). After having received a big promotion in her late forties, she decided that it was finally safe to learn. She is still inordinately proud of her ability to type.

      My grandmother (born in 1924) was a secretary, and super proud of it. (Given her background, it was an ambitious thing for her to want to become, and she ended up really enjoying her career). She typed all of her children’s assignments (up to and including theses). She kept her old manual typewriter on hand in order to do the same for her grandchildren, and was shocked and disappointed to learn that I wouldn’t need, or be able to avail myself of, her help. (I’m in my thirties; like all of my peers, I learned to type at a young age, and did all of my work directly on the computer).

      Typing is a skill with such an interesting cultural history!

    10. antigone_ks*

      My mother gave me the same advice when I was in high school in the 90s. She was furious when she found I was enrolled in keyboarding (what do they even call that now?) until the school told her it was required for every student. She told me never to let a workplace know that I could do stereotypically girly things – never type, never bring in cookies, never plan/set up/tear down a party, never clean a goshdarn mug that wasn’t my own. If they know you’re a woman, you stop being their colleague and become just “a woman.” Sadly, for some workplaces that turned out to be absolutely true. Glad I learned to type anyway, though.

    1. PB*

      My FIL saw an item on the news about how much money the founders of Google have and asked my husband “When are you going to do that?” He could play computer games, check email, and surf the net, so clearly he had the skills to make the next Google.

    3. Serin*

      Oh, christ, Herb Caen died during the spouse’s journalism days, and my father-in-law hounded him relentlessly to go down to the San Francisco Chronicle and “put in an application,” since Herb Caen had died and so they had an opening!

    4. Elemeno P.*

      My mom is pretty good about most job-related things, but she did keep telling me to apply to Google.

      I am…not sure what she thought I could do there.

    5. voluptuousfire*

      I truly LOL’ed at that. A hearty guffaw. Call Google to see if they’re hiring! Unintentional comedy at it’s finest!

    6. Ashie*

      My company had an issue with our website a few years ago and my elderly boss instructed our IT guy to call Google and tell them to fix it.

      1. nonegiven*

        The help desk at my ISP told me to call Usenet, when I complained about no connection to the news server.

  25. GiantPanda*

    My mother has never written a job application in her life. On her advice, my brother’s resume contains a section on his parents and siblings and another on his hobbies. They make up more than half of it.
    I’ve tried to talk them out of this with little success.

    2. Merula*

      This is the best. I am dying to know more. Is the Family section bullet points? “-Mother: Jane, 62, avid gardener who enjoys reality TV and crosswords”.

      The only way this could be better would be if this pushed his resume to two pages and he attached a photo.

    4. Rookie Manager*

      One of my reports handed me his CV on my first day in post. It included his wife’s and 2 childrens qualifications and current job title.

    5. Meißner Porcelain Teapot*

      This was actually taught to me by career coaches when I was in 10th grade (this was in Germany, not US) in 2004! Presumably, you were supposed to do that to highlight that you did not come from a family of lazy monkeys and your hobbies were supposed to support your soft skills, so we were even coached on which hobbies to put on there! Swimming? Boring and loner. Karate? Aggressive trouble maker. Volleyball/basketball/any team sport: great team player! Also, you were supposed to do that so long as you did not have enough jobs to make your resume 2 pages long.

      I did that exactly once and got a nice phone call telling me that I was NOT invited to the interview and that I should really drop those sections. Never did it again.

      Oh, also, the same career coaches advised that we list “general competences” like “proficient Microsoft office products” or our driver’s license (which, in Germany, is not the go-to ID as in the US and you’ll find many more people who don’t have one in Europe than in America). Needless to say, I never bothered to include those again either.

  26. clow*

    My parents told me that I should walk into places with a resume and tell them why they should hire me. They also told me that I should call companies that I want to work for, and to keep calling companies I had applied to. Even when I told them most places I needed card access into a building, my dad would say ‘call them up, tell them you want a job’. Did this ever work? He also advised me to never negotiate a salary, just take what they offer. Yeah my first job in my industry, I was grossly underpaid. Like 5-7 per hour underpaid.

    1. AndersonDarling*

      Ugh. A while back I had to watch the phones when the receptionist was on break and I’d get those calls. “I’m calling for a salesperson job.” We weren’t looking for a sales person, and our industry required licensing for sales so cold calling would never work. My favorite was the “I wanna be your sec-a-tarty” call. She didn’t even say hello, or any other greeting when I answered. I actually thought it was a crude call until I realized she meant “secretary.” And again, not looking for a secretary.

      1. clow*

        LOL I am glad I have too much phone anxiety to make phone calls, I never did it. I can’t imagine getting a call like that. I would think the same thing at first..like who is this creep?

    2. Temperance*

      It does not work. I can tell you that way back in my shared office space days, some of the companies would actually have us keep a list of any names who called or especially anyone who showed up to look for a job, and they would blackball those candidates. I agree with this – they put “no calls” in the ads, so if you show up or call, you’re showing that you can’t follow basic directions.

        1. a nonny mouse*

          THANK YOU. If I never have a stranger show up and spend half an hour trying to get an unscheduled immediate meeting with an editor, it will be too soon.

  27. nnn*

    I mentioned in passing that jobs in my (small, highly specialized) profession are hardly ever advertised. My father looks at me like I’m stupid: “Of course they’re advertised! Just look in the newspaper classifieds!”

    No, they aren’t advertised. Including in the newspaper classifieds, which have never within my adult life contained ads for white-collar jobs.

    Also, there are literally zero jobs in my profession in the city where my parents live. It doesn’t exist at all, like how there would be zero jobs for snowplow drivers in the Sahara Desert. Even if my profession did routinely advertise in the newspaper classifieds, my father would have never seen such an ad.

    Out of curiosity, I searched my library’s newspaper database, which includes classified ads. There has never once been a single classified ad for jobs in my profession.

    1. k.k*

      I once worked in the classifieds department at a paper. The listing for that job wasn’t even in the classifieds. (

    2. Serin*

      In my current city, white-collar jobs do show up in the newspaper’s online classifieds — like it’s not unusual to see a listing for an obstetrician or a museum marketing director — but I get the impression that this is the result of a major campaign by the Chamber of Commerce to make employment more accessible.

      It’s terrific, but when you see those ads, it really brings home to you how unusual it is to see those words in a classified ad.

      1. As Close As Breakfast*

        I have to wonder though, are people contacting the paper to post the ads? Or is classifieds person contacting companies that had postings on Indeed or something to see if they want to put an ad in? No matter how aggressive a Chamber of Commerce campaign was, I don’t think it could convince many employers to pay to post white collar job ads in the paper. Unless it’s just become a local ‘thing’ there? I don’t know why but I just can’t seem to wrap my brain around this!

    3. TheAssistant*

      I just admire your commitment to proving your father wrong because I am the EXACT same in this regard.

    4. MashaKasha*

      In fairness, I did find one of my job (software developer for a dot-com startup) in the classifieds. But that was in the 90s. And I left that job three months later, because they’d screwed me over on everything except the pay. Everything else – the work that I did, the commute, the location, the people I worked with – was not as advertised.

    5. Autumnheart*

      I got my first web design job via a classified ad. :) This was in 1996, when a fair portion of that job was explaining to potential clients what the World Wide Web was. No, you do not need a computer for customers to view your webpage. No, your computer does not need to be on for your website to be seen.

      That job did make me really good at using analogies to describe complicated technological concepts to the non-technical, which is actually a useful skill.

  28. Zoomie*

    My dad was a construction worker for 30 years, and his retirement was based on the number of hours he worked rather than years. So we almost never took vacations when I was a kid, because he was working a lot. He did retire at 58, so I guess it paid off in the long run for him, but it seriously skewed his perception of vacation. If I mention I’m taking eight days off work to go on an international vacation, he just gets this horrified look on his face. I think he thinks I’m going to be fired or looked badly upon for actually using my vacation time. Luckily my job isn’t like that and actively encourages people to use their time off.

    1. [insert witty user name here]*

      My parents weren’t ever in construction, but they FREAK THE HELL OUT when my siblings or I take time off, especially for being sick or doctor’s appointments (my brother has a chronic illness and has a lot of appointments and procedures). All of us work in 8-5 office jobs, most of us with flexible schedules and/or the ability to work from home. They still freak out that we’re going to take too much time off and get fired. For some reason, it’s usually when we take off a day or two here or there, but not for a full week vacation? It’s SO weird.

  29. topscallop*

    When I was job-hunting to get out of my last (toxic) job, my dad, who has had the same academic job for over 30 years, had all sorts of unhelpful advice he would repeat. He especially wanted me to get in touch with former supervisors from my first job out of college, which was with a government agency, to get them to help me network. Never mind that, 9 years later they’ve mostly retired or are no longer working there, have moved out of the country (international development), or barely remember me.

    1. Networker extraordinaire*

      “Never mind that, 9 years later they’ve mostly retired or are no longer working there, have moved out of the country (international development), or barely remember me.”

      This is hardly bad advice. A former boss who has moved on to a new company can still help you network. I keep in touch with all of my former bosses. The same is true of someone who has moved out of the country, *particularly* in a field like international development. It takes no more effort to e-mail someone in Kenya than in Kansas.

      As for bosses who “barely remember you,” much successful networking is due to “soft connections”; it’s not your best friend from high school who refers you to a job, but a second-degree connection, or someone you’ve only met once.

  30. Theresa*

    Wasn’t there an ask the readers post on the same topic not that long ago?

    Running out of ideas much?

    1. Really though.*

      Well, this comment isn’t exactly helpful and I’m sure you could have phrased that MUCH more politely.

    3. AvonLady Barksdale*

      And… if there was such a post? Even recently? You think this is a subject that doesn’t have unlimited tales to tell? Hmm.

      Also: rude. There are other blogs if you find this one too redundant.

    4. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Actually, no, there wasn’t. There was one on “gumption” though. But given that I publish ~30 letters here a week, which is a huge amount of content, that’s a weird charge.

      1. This Daydreamer*

        Just so long as you only have the one post about whether or not an employer’s actions are legal I don’t see a problem.

    5. Esme Squalor*

      There was a column on bad gumption advice in general, which is a different topic. Also, I’m enjoying this thread immensely myself. I’m not sure why you felt the need to be so snarky.

    6. Turkletina*

      This is unnecessarily mean. Lots of people enjoy sharing these stories, and more enjoy reading them!

    8. Yvette*

      So what? It is still fun, and if I recall it was a specific ” What’s the worst “you need to show gumption to get a job?” advice you’ve heard? There’s a whole field of career advice that’s based on the idea that you need to show “gumption” to get a job”

      This is specifically about wierd advice from parents. Many of whom had not had to job hunt for decades.

  31. AlsoInGradSchool*

    My younger brother has lost his way a bit after graduating for college and starting a career position with a major insurance company only to realize it wasn’t for him in a big way. My mother who hasn’t worked in twenty years told him that the best next step is to go further into debt and get an MBA from our local small college until he figures out what he wants to do. Aye aye aye.

    I feel like this idea of using graduate school as a furthering of an undergraduate experience is so common these days.

    1. Lemon Zinger*

      It is way too common. I am in a graduate program directly related to the field I work in, and many of my classmates are recent college grads who don’t know what to do with themselves, so they picked this program because “it sounded easy” or “it seemed fun.”

      I also have a relative who is getting her MBA because her very niche college major (and poor people skills) haven’t translated into a job yet. I cannot imagine the debt she’s in!

    2. Cassandra*

      Our professional program’s applicant-review rubric tests specifically for this. If an applicant’s career aspirations don’t make sense or don’t even appear in their essay (commoner than I wish it were), that moves the applicant down the list.

      Partly this is self-preservation; we need our students to land jobs after they graduate! This tends to be harder for dilettantes!

    3. L Dub*

      My ex-husband did exactly the same thing, except he did a year of law school, realized he hated it, then got his MBA. He’s absolutely furious about the fact that he has about $225k worth of student loans, and has even gone so far as to contact his alma mater to ask them how he’s supposed to be able to repay his loans.

    4. Rainy*

      I field questions fairly often about whether someone should go to grad school because they’re not sure what to do next and they need some time to figure it out, and I’ve started being super blunt.

      “If you can afford to go through grad school without taking out a cent in loans, and if you genuinely love your subject and are really excited about the prospect of digging deeper into some specific aspect of it, you should 100% go to grad school…so that you can get more in-depth knowledge of your discipline. If you just want some breathing room, there are cheaper ways to get it than by going to grad school. And if you want to put off jobseeking because you are afraid of rejection, ha! ha!, grad school is not going to help with that!”

      1. minuteye*

        Although if you fear rejection and you’d like to get over that fear very quickly through exposure, grad school will help you with that!

        1. Rainy*

          Ahahah oh god, right?! :) Like, how do you explain to anyone that moment a few weeks into first term?

  32. Ros*

    My mum, who’s generally quite liberal and sensible, said that I (a woman in her twenties) should wear a skirt to job interviews rather than trousers. It was such an odd piece of stand-out sexism that I was taken aback, and she never did give a solid reason.

    1. Yvette*

      For a very long time trousers were still considered inappropriate for women in the work place, at all levels. I am 56 and skirt suits were quite the norm for professionals when I began my career in IT.

    2. CheeryO*

      My mom insisted I wear heels to all of my interviews. I’m sure there are fields where that really is a requirement, but (a), she runs a small business out of the house and hasn’t had a job since the 1980s, and (b) I’m an engineer, and really, no one expects heels. I can’t walk in heels. Eventually I just brought flats in a bag and switched in the car.

      1. Nea*

        OMG, yes. My mother cannot figure out how I could possibly be hired if I’m not wearing hose, heels, pearls, makeup, but for some reason, I’m not supposed to tie my long hair back or put it up.

      2. Sk*

        I think I once lost a job opportunity for this. Immediately out of college I applied to work at an animal kennel and showed up for an interview in a blouse, slacks, and heels. The interviewer looked me up and down and said “How do you feel about cleaning up pee and poop and vomit.” I had just come from a camp counselor job and explained in addition to having pets of my own I’ve been doing all kinds of dirty work for children and I can certainly do it for animals.
        He wasn’t convinced.

  33. LadyL*

    Nothing too outrageous, but my parents absolutely committed the classic out of touch parent advice faux pas when I was younger.

    1) Always telling me to call employers back repeatedly, show up unexpectedly, “be tenacious!” “be a go-getter!”. I honestly think the real reason behind this was that my parents mostly just refused to come home from a busy day at work and find a teen chillin’ on the sofa, so if I wasn’t going to get a job over the summer then they figured I ought to spend the day stressing about it. But yeah, no, employers really don’t want you to call them repeatedly (especially when you’re a teen with no car and no experience who is only available for the summer).

    2) Once I was “interviewing” for a volunteer job at YMCA camp and my mom was going on and on about how I needed to dress professionally. She wanted me in business casual, and was appalled that I was going to wear more casual wear. I had planned to dress like every other camp counselor: shorts and a t-shirt, but she kept insisting that I was going to miss the opportunity because I didn’t look professional enough. We compromised on me wearing nice jeans, a dressier shirt, and casual-ish wedge heels. Well it wasn’t an interview, the YMCA just needed warm bodies to watch the kids and didn’t care, and I looked like a freaking idiot chasing kids through the mud wearing wedge heels. Next day I came in tie-dye and cutoff shorts, and I fit right in. Now I know that what you wear the first day really varies by industry.

    Bonus Grandparent Bad Advice: When my mom was in high school (70s) she was a highly competitive straight A student who was on track to be valedictorian. She was in the top math and science classes her school offered, and was getting the best grades in them. She planned to go on to major in Biology in college. My grandpa, who was fairly egalitarian but also very practical, insisting my mom take a typing class because he just really didn’t think that as a woman she would be able to find jobs that didn’t require typing. It’s not that he was trying to limit her potential, he just was trying to be smart about the world they lived in, and figured she had many years of being someone’s assistant/secretary ahead of her. Well my whip smart mother sucked at typing, and got her first C, meaning her rival got to be valedictorian instead of her. And yes, my mother is still bitter about it.

    2. JamieS*

      Well on the bright side typing is a needed skill and in today’s world pretty much everyone in an office job has to be able to type not just secretaries so his advice wasn’t that terrible even if she lost out on being valedictorian.

      Also curious if she did wind up being a secretary for a bit.

      1. LadyL*

        Nope, although briefly after college she worked in food service (another idea of my Grandpa’s that my mom still bitterly complains about. She ended up reporting that place to the better business bureau, lol). She also still can’t type (neither can I, must be genetic). We’re both pretty fast at hunt & peck though.

    3. Rainy*

      My mother grew up in the cult she eventually raised me in, and she won a scholarship to her state university that her parents wouldn’t allow her to accept, because the cult had a college and why didn’t she try harder to get into the cult’s college (which was not accredited).

      1. Thany*

        I feel like there is more to this story. Did your mom ending up going to the cult college? Did your mom or you eventually get out of the cult? Did you go to the cult college? So many questions.

        1. Rainy*

          I don’t think she applied, and even if she had, her parents wouldn’t have paid to send her, so she couldn’t have gone.

          I left home at 17, mostly to get away from the cult. My entire family was in it (dad’s side) or had been at some point (mum’s side). And no, of course not. The whole point for me was to get the fuck out. I went to actual universities. Most of my family still in the cult left some years later after the schism began, some to slightly more mainstream Christian denominations, some to other Christian cults.

  34. Snark*

    My parents insisted that I sould dress in business casual for every even vaguely professional job I had. She didn’t really grok that field work was not really the place for it. “You work for a prestigious consulting firm! Act like it!” “MA. I’m a field crew slave and I get paid ten bucks an hour to walk transects looking for a single endangered cactus or whatever. I literally stepped on a rattlesnake yesterday. I sweat so much the back of my shirt looks like the rim of a margarita glass. If I wore chinos and a shirt doing that, they’d be shredded. Get off my back.”

    1. Sabrina*

      In a similar vein my mom never really understood that field work was work.

      “Have fun playing outside with your friends!”
      “Mom I’m walking 10 miles off trail and taking detailed notes of every possible sign of dessert tortoises. It’s going to be a 12 hour day, I’m carrying all my own water/food/gear, and I’ll be doing this six days a week for the next three weeks. I do have fun, but it’s exhausting hard work.”
      “Ok, enjoy your walk!”

      2. Snark*

        I think my parents were imagining me as some kind of consulting engineer, standing with the clients, holding a map, wearing a jaunty hard-hat and pointing sagely at some feature of the landscape.

          1. Snark*

            They’re interior designers and furniture people. They never expected to have a scientist in the family. They’re supportive, proud, encouraging, and even 15 years into my career I think they still frame what I do in terms of stock photos. I’ll take it, but it’s occasionally very funny.

        3. Not that Anne, the other Anne*

          My parents certainly thought that’s what my fieldwork was like. “Oh, enjoy your trip to the national park!”

          Uh. Sure. It takes an hour on a high-clearance one way road to even get from the research station to the trailhead and then I have to hike up another mile to get to the actual site. And then I’m not sitting around on a lounger.

        2. Snark*

          Is that at all like a chocolate turtle? Or is it a tortoise just nomming down on some cake? Either way I like it.

          1. Plague of frogs*

            It’s the tortoise that brings you your dessert. The slow service allows your anticipation to build.

      4. Wendy Darling*

        I started a work-from-home job a few years ago and my parents were unexpectedly clueless about it. They just assumed they could pop in at 1pm and ask me to do something with them and I would be available. They were genuinely shocked when I told them I couldn’t because I was working, and it took them a good six months to stop intermittently trying even though I was *literally never* free from 9am-5pm.

        1. The Other Katie*

          This is my mother every day. She tries to IM me about 5-6 times a day, and just doesn’t get that my phone logs me into fb messenger but I’m still actually working. “But you work at home, you can set your schedule!” Yes, but that does not mean I want to spend Friday night finishing a project I should have finished Friday afternoon so you can tell me about my aunt’s routine doctor’s appointment!

    2. Lynca*

      Sounds like my mom. She didn’t have a concept of a woman working a job where you needed to wear clothes you could get dirty.

      Now a guy? Sure but not me. I can literally come home caked in mud up to my knees depending on site conditions. Wouldn’t want to deal with that in business slacks.

      1. Snark*

        I’m imagining every female field crew member I’ve ever worked with, laughing hysterically in unison.

    3. PB*

      Business dress is hard to get through to my parents! I told my father that my office is business casual. He wasn’t sure what that meant, so I described what I’d wear on a daily basis (trousers or skirt, solid shirt or sweaters in cold weather, flats), and he thought it sounded far too casual. I asked what he thought business casual should look like. He said, “Suits.”

        1. PB*

          I’m not entirely sure. I explained that “suits” are business formal, not business casual, and he conceded the point, but I was too flabbergasted to think to ask. He was a teacher, so I think he just had very little understanding of office norms

    4. paul*

      *twitch*

      What species? I’ve stepped on/into C. atrox twice that I can remember but thankfully they just slithered off…I still haven’t bought snakeproof chaps

      1. Snark*

        It was a very, very lethargic C. oreganus lutosus on a chilly morning in early April, which is probably why I didn’t have a REAL bad day.

        1. paul*

          Almost jealous (I’ve never had the chance to find C. o. lutosus) but man oh man that pucker factor! All we get are atrox and viridis (in abundance though–I’ve found an even dozen viridis in an hour before).

          1. Snark*

            Yep, this was out in Utah near the Dugway Proving Ground. Come to think, maybe it had been recently nerve gassed.

      1. Snark*

        He was cold and sleepy, and it was more that I kind of tripped over him – no harm done to either party, thank God. I was still glad I was wearing calf-high Danners.

    6. Hey Karma, Over here.*

      Friend told me he showed up at his first day as a chemist in a nuclear plant wearing his suit. Boss told him, “Don’t wear what you can’t afford to throw away.”

      1. Snark*

        “Don’t wear what you wouldn’t want to have buried in a lead vault for the next 10,000 years.”

          1. Wendy Darling*

            My mom taught kindergarten for over a decade. If it wasn’t machine-washable she didn’t buy it.

            1. Elizabeth West*

              I don’t do that either–mostly because I can’t afford dry-clean-only clothing upkeep, but also because I learned the hard way about copy machine toner explosions.

            2. whingedrinking*

              I’m a teacher/tutor, and my age group skews older (my classroom students are all adults in second language acquisition, and my youngest tutoring student is ten). I once allowed myself to be talked into filling in for a colleague just for a morning with the daycamp kids. I left afterwards for lunch with a friend, who said, “Why is there paint in your hair?” I didn’t even know, I hadn’t gotten anywhere near the paint.

    7. Bionerd*

      Haha. I had a relative tell me that at least I could take my infant son to do biology fieldwork with me (in the desert, in summer, in rough terrain, all day everyday) in a baby carrier backpack. So I could save on daycare cost and still be a good mom who didn’t let other people raise my kids for me.

      She just couldn’t get how it wasn’t like taking a hike on the local paved nature trail. She wouldn’t believe that…no you can’t just quit whenever you get hot or tired…yes you have to carry 1.5 gallons of water and gear…and it was really a stupid idea to bring a baby into that sort of heat and UV.

      Though we once had a worker bring her dog to fieldwork. It almost ended in disaster (dog was fine ultimately but wasted many hours and gave us all a scare).

      1. Not That Anne, The Other Anne*

        There was a very long, impassioned discussion on a science listserv about babies and fieldwork a few years ago. It was highly entertaining, mostly because you know that if you have five scientists in a room (even a virtual room), you’ll have at least seven opinions.

    1. Snark*

      Mine were generally loving, supporting, and sane, and they were business owners, so they basically knew better.

      1. fposte*

        This is kind of like the baby-name thing–ordinarily sane people just lose perspective sometimes when it comes to their kids.

        1. Snark*

          Oh, I meant more that, aside from telling me to wear business casual while doing field work, they basically avoided some of the insanity in other comments.

    2. Elsajeni*

      To be fair, I think a lot of these are loving, supporting, sane parents — they’re just generalizing too broadly from their own experience, not super knowledgeable about modern job searching, or suffering from some common delusions that affect even basically sane parents (like “my child is uniquely talented and special and of COURSE other people will recognize that” or “my child, age 35, is basically still 7 years old and in need of my constant guidance”).

  37. the one who got away*

    They insisted on sending college graduation announcements to two major names in the field (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), thinking that my chutzpah would lead them to find me and offer me a job. I begged them not to do this and was horrified when they did it anyway. Sadly, no jobs materialized.

    Also, every time I have ever complained about a coworker or boss or office policy I found unpleasant, they’d press me to go to the CEO about it.

  38. Mockingjay*

    My dear husband used to tell my girls during high school: “just show up and ask to speak to the manager, multiple times” for retail / restaurant jobs. He was a civil servant and hadn’t interviewed in a VERY long time. As a contractor on yearly expiring task orders, I pointed out that I had a lot more experience in this realm and that they should not do this. He insisted anyway.

    My youngest got yelled at by a grocery store manager, who informed her that she did not have time to speak to everyone who just shows up, because the manager would never get anything done. She did not get the job.

    1. Grumpy*

      I still see kids being dragged around the mall by their parents. My heart aches for these kids who have clearly figured that this is not the way…

      1. Yvette*

        That only works for small local businesses hiring teenagers. The kind that put up Help Wanted ads in the window.

    3. k.k*

      The last time I worked retail was a small store, the kind that still used a “Help wanted” sign in the window and handed you a paper application. But even there that advice wouldn’t work, because half the time the manager wasn’t there. We’d get people who got pretty rude demanding to hand their application directly to the manager, when I was literally the only person in the store. Some eventually caved and just gave me their applications, which mysteriously ended up in the trash bin.

      1. Inference*

        “Some eventually caved and just gave me their applications, which mysteriously ended up in the trash bin.”

        Which goes to show that they should have handed to the manager after all.

    4. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

      My dad used to tell me and my siblings this, too–until he got laid off from his job and had to job hunt for the first time since the 80s. (This was in 2009.) He caught on pretty quickly to the fact that times had changed after that.

  39. Anne Onne*

    I was 16 and phone interviewing for a job as a lifeguard at a pool in the worst part of town (my summer job has been delayed for various reasons and the “preferred”pools were taken).
    My mother overheard the address and started screaming into the phone that there was no was she would ever allow me to work there, hang up now, full on helicopter tantrum.

    They were desperate, I was desperate, so we agreed to try it (wink wink, nod nod, don’t tell her mother).
    It was the best pool ever. The parents and caregiver were crazy strict with their kids and wouldn’t let them out of their sight, let alone misbehave. They brought me water and snacks to thank me for working there. No issues ever.

    To this day my mother doesn’t know.

    3. SLF128*

      My mom is like that about parts of our town. There were great places in our area I missed out on visiting, because the Neighborhood was “Bad”. But of course, she has always been like this. I am in my 30’s and she had a fit last year learning I took a vacation by myself to the Biltmore. I was literally locked in the gates at night in the hotel there.

      In high school, I worked at a store, 5 or so blocks from my house, but I didn’t drive at the time. I wasn’t allowed to walk there, so my mom, dad or sometimes grandparents had to drop me off and pick me up. Same after college as well. I didn’t get a license until about 9 months after I graduated college, so someone had to pick me up and drop me off every day from my job because public transportation was too dangerous. I was living at home at the time still.

    4. Anonymosity*

      Mine did that to me once when I was offered a summer job with a traveling carnival. She basically told me that if I accepted, I would be disowned and could never return. Because carnival folk are dirty and evil, don’t you know.

      In hindsight, I wish I’d done it anyway.

  40. TBoT*

    My dad gave me some of the standard bad advice, like following up relentlessly until you could get your foot in the door. But really the *worst* advice he gave me was to apply for jobs I didn’t want and knew I would hate. (He didn’t specifically say, “Apply for jobs you don’t want and know you’ll hate,” but he encouraged me to apply for jobs that fit that description, like a customer service call center job at an HMO, which I was not a fit for at all.) Some of this was motivated by his exasperation that I’d had to move back home after graduating from college. He was eager for me to be out of the house, and I couldn’t afford to do it as a temp, even though I had lucked into an ongoing temp assignment that had me working steadily at 40 hours a week for the foreseeable future. So, Dad encouraged me to get a job, any job, as long as it would allow me to get out on my own.

    The result was that I got a job (with that same HMO, although in sales support rather than in customer service). It did allow me to finally move out into my own apartment, but it was a horrible place to work. I was absolutely miserable. And it really set the stage for the first part of my career, in which I spent several years working for a series of draconian, unpleasant employers doing work that wasn’t challenging or interesting, all for not nearly enough money. In the long run I think I would have been better off if I’d held out for a job that I was remotely suited to, ideally at a company that wasn’t so toxic.

  41. Notthemomma*

    My father staunchly argued in the early ‘90’s with me that I (and other women) shouldn’t go up against men in a job because the men ‘have families to support’.

    My husband is worried when I work from home that I’ll get in trouble; my manager and rest of the team is in another state and have no idea nor do they care where I am plugged in.
    A friend will go through the car wash before an interview in case anyone looks outside before/after the interview.

    1. Liz2*

      The car wash thing is weird- I’ve had two places practically order to walk me out to the door/my car and it was obvious they wanted to get a look at it. But those are also the people you don’t want to work for anyway so…

      1. Inspector Spacetime*

        I’m confused. Why would they want to see your car? To see if it’s expensive?

        1. As Close As Breakfast*

          I’ve heard it has been a thing, at least for women applicants, to see if there is a car seat in the car or something that gives away that she has children other than asking. Because obviously women with children can’t be great employees (/heavy sarcasm/.) This could be urban legend, but after everything I’ve read about here I wouldn’t be at all surprised it does/has happened.

          2. Inference*

            They want to see if you care for your car, or whether it is sloppy. Which I think is a good idea. They know that you’ll be on best behavior for the interview itself and shine your shoes, but applicants are less likely to care about their cars.

      2. nonegiven*

        My son said when he traveled to the city his new job was in to look at apartments, they wanted to see his car. He didn’t own one, he was moving from a city where he didn’t need one. He said, “I don’t know what it will tell you, it’s a rental.”

    2. SLF128*

      My father is basically the same. He still to this day believes women entering the workforce is what has caused the decline of our society, by taking the men’s jobs and emasculating them and also not being at home to reer the children.

  42. Kit*

    Sometimes even when parental advice is spot-on it doesn’t have the intended effect… When I got to the point in high school where I needed to choose a foreign language to learn, my dad spent a fair chunk of time proclaiming that if I *really* wanted to be a teacher I would take Spanish, it was the only logical choice, anyone with half a brain could look at the demographics in public schools and see that studying Spanish was the only rational path, think about future employability, etc., etc. Which is how I ended up taking three years of German.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      My daughter followed that advice, taking Spanish throughout middle and high school. In college, she’s done research stints in Germany and Switzerland. But no Spanish-speaking countries.

    2. Midge*

      Hahaha! Whenever my dad tried to talk me into some lesson or class I wasn’t interested in (Spanish when I had taken French forever, piano, golf), my response was always, “If it’s so great, why don’t you do it?” That did not go over well. Though to this day, I still don’t speak Spanish, play the piano, or golf.

    3. Apostrophina*

      My mom did that too! My dad went to the information session at my school and ended up being quite taken with the German teacher.
      …As you might have suspected, this is the story of how Apostrophina took French.

    4. Catarina*

      As someone who has seen the bills for technical translation services, I highly recommend learning a language uncommon to your area, rather than one common to your area. These days, learning Spanish is the language version of getting an MBA.

    5. kible*

      I took German because I knew I’d actually learn something in those classes, because less people taking it = smaller class size. Spanish classes had 30+ students per class, my German class had 8 total.

  43. EddieSherbert*

    My parents were (and still are) really big on “loyalty” to a company. In their minds, the company gave you this job and you should grateful / they spent all this time and money training you / they pay you and even gave you a raise! and are fairly aghast anytime I’ve moved onto a new job.

    The silliest examples:
    * In high school, I worked a VERY awful food service job (like “your shift is 11.5 hrs so you will only get one break, which you will take one hour into your shift”) and they convinced me to stay there for over two years! Without any raises.
    * Tried convincing me to stay at my unpaid internship when they asked me to stay on longer… when I had already decided I didn’t want to follow that career path AND had a paid internship lined up for the nest semester (I left anyways)

    1. Temperance*

      OMG my parents were similar with the bad advice! At my first job, one of the managers was preying on teenage girls. I was afraid of him. My parents wouldn’t allow me to quit and accused me of just being a liar/lazy. So I asked the GM if I could switch out of his department into another one, which I was allowed to do. They were LIVID that I didn’t ask permission first (which they would have declined, as they insisted I lied). The second job was way better and I worked there for years.

      1. Esme Squalor*

        That is appalling!! Have you ever brought this up with them as an adult? E.g., “hey, guys, remember that time you tried to force me to work for a sexual predator?”

        1. Temperance*

          Oh there are so many worse things that they did that I haven’t brought it up. When I was speaking to them, I did point it out, and my mother made some kind of comment about the girls lying about it. (They weren’t.)

      2. Plague of frogs*

        My aunt told me that back in the 60s the father of a child she baby-sat would try to grope her when he drove her home. My grandparents wouldn’t do anything about it, and neither would the parents of the other girls her age who baby-sat. So the girls would only baby-sit at that house in pairs, to keep themselves safe. They were 13 and 14 year olds.

    2. saffytaffy*

      Can I just say, and I’m sure your parents are lovely whole human beings with many good qualities who raised a wonderful kid, but there MUST have been feudal serfs and slaves and all kinds of people in wretched situations since the dawn of man saying this kind of thing. It’s baffling.

    3. Emalia*

      My dad told me that he wished he had moved around in his career. He learned his loyalty wasn’t reciprocated by his company when his department was closed a handful of years be for he could retire.

    4. Djuna*

      Oh boy, my parents are like that too – but in the opposite way.
      I was laid off (with my entire team) from a job I loved, and there was a hiring freeze which meant I couldn’t be rehired in another department.
      I spent almost a year fruitlessly looking for another job, and had to move home for a while (the mortification, I had not lived at home since I started college 25 years earlier).
      The hiring freeze at old job ended and they contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in coming back.
      Different role, but similar money and benefits.
      I jumped at it.

      My parents tried to talk me out of it.
      No amount of explaining to them how rare it was that a company would bother to remember me and reach out like that had any effect. Nope, they were disloyal and terrible and not to be trusted.

      It’s taken three years and a string of promotions for them to come around to the idea that maybe it’s an okay place for me to work.

    5. H.C.*

      A variation of that, every time I tell my folks I changed jobs (for better pay, more growth opps, improved quality of life, etc.) – their first questions are “Did OldJob fire you?”

  44. Master Bean Counter*

    When I was looking at getting out of old toxic job my mother, being helpful, one day showed me an ad in the paper for an open position. She said it looked like something I could do and had the salary listed.
    I looked at the ad, looked her right in the eye and said, “I could do this, but I don’t want to take that kind of pay cut.” The position was for entry level in my field and I had 10 years of experience at that point.
    My mother, being a smart person, has stayed out of my job searches since then. She’s also started putting much less of a fight when I want to pick-up the dinner check.

  45. Linzava*

    So, I’ve mentioned this story before on this site. When I was 25, my mother sent an 18 page fax to my therapist about how awful and dramatic I am. She said I was a liar and so on.

    Moving forward a couple years, I was working for a very toxic boss, she yelled at me and called me stupid a lot, so basically, she treated me like my mother did. Boss admitted she’d looked up my mother’s company online and gushed about how beautiful she was and how kind she seemed (My mother’s pictures are prominent on her website) . I have no proof, and feel a little paranoid for thinking this, but from that day forward, I knew there was a chance they secretly became friendly. I never tell my mother the name of the companies I work for because of the therapy thing and a few time she contacted my managers when I was in my 20s.

  46. DaniCalifornia*

    My mom recently told me that even though she knows you have to apply online these days, it couldn’t hurt to call the office after submitting my resume. She worked in HR a very long time ago (>20 years) and said that yes it was annoying when someone would call about the job after submitting their resume, but she’d usually go look at their resume anyways. I just nodded and smiled, knowing I would never do that.

    I assume that even if I could actually figure out the HR team or hiring manager after I’ve applied online, that if I took her advice my resume would go straight to the rejected file. About 1/3 of the companies I apply to online, don’t even give their company name! Many just say ‘Real Estate Firm’ or ‘Accounting Firm’ or something vague.

    1. CheeryO*

      One of the only real fights I’ve had with my dad as an adult was when he started to get on my younger brother’s case about not calling to follow up on his online applications. My dad is in a really small field, so whenever he needs a new job, he can make a few calls and get something within days. He truly did not understand how it was different for my brother, who was applying for engineering positions at companies all over the country.

  47. Goya de la Mancha*

    My father has never understood the word “appropriate” and he’s a many of few words.

    I worked for his company my summers in college and on the car ride to work one day we (mostly me talking…) were discussing some big changes coming up with shifting of positions. I asked why Wakeen was given the job over Jamal. Dad’s response was *shrug* “It’s not what you know, but who you blow”.

  48. nnn*

    I’m pushing 40 and have been in a specialized profession for my entire adult life, and my mother still thinks I should add tangentially-related extracurriculars from high school to my resume. Her stated reason is “So they know you’ve been into this stuff for a long time!”

    And it’s not even relevant. For example, one of the ways I add value to my employer is by being bilingual in English and French, so I can work with clients in Quebec as well as in the rest of Canada. My mother thinks my resume should say that I was in Spanish Club in high school “so they know you’ve been into this language thing for a long time.”

    2. Aixi*

      My mom does this too! When I applied for my current job she told me not to forget to add that I was in Brain Brawl (basically Jeopardy! club) in high school to my CV.

      I’m a professor.

  49. Wannabe Disney Princess*

    At a former mom-n-pop retail job, I was a manager. I had many parents who would collect applications for their kids. Most of said parents returned the applications. (Those usually went to the bottom of the pile…)

    My favorite? Was the mom who talked to me, at length, about her son. He wanted to start a similar business. So she urged him to apply with us so we could share all our insider knowledge, show him how to run a business, get the names of all our suppliers, learn our recipes, and then open his own. Yeah….hard pass on that one. She was LIVID when we didn’t grant an interview.

  50. Mockingjay*

    As for my parents, my dear dad knew that I had a strong interest in science, particularly lab work. So he thought it would be great if I worked in the local hospital and drove me down to apply one summer.

    Just two small problems: 1) at the time I had a strong aversion to blood and things medical, and 2) my parents wouldn’t let me get a license, so I had no way to get there.

    (*They had really ‘old-fashioned’ views about girls shouldn’t do pretty much anything, but brother could – whole other story. They’ve grown out of that mindset, mainly because my sisters and I grew up as really strong women. We had to be, to push back on the restrictions and get somewhere in life.)

    1. Goya de la Mancha*

      *snicker* I still have that strong aversion to blood and medical stuff. Family joke while I was in college was that I was going to school to be a nurse.

  51. Moo*

    A few years ago I got a job and I wasn’t sure about the culture and whether it might turn toxic – turns out it was fine and the problems that I had heard about were resolved – anyway I was talking to my dad about it and saying ‘if X happens then I’ll quit’ (where X is something I’d heard had happened to others). I have a sought after speciality for which there are more jobs than people with experience and know I could easily find a comparable role. My dad was horrified that I would leave under any circumstances and advised me (should this happen) to stay in the role but do nothing until my contract was up. He was very surprised when I said that that would make me miserable and tank my career.

  52. Talia*

    My mother has this idea that I absolutely need to wear full pantyhose to job interviews. I have no idea where she got it, although she actually *does* do hiring in her profession (social work), and periodically complains about the things “these young interns” are wearing to interviews, so somewhere there actually is a group of people who are getting discounted in the hiring process for not wearing pantyhose to the interview. (People who insist on pantyhose in this day and age are often crazy in other ways– as indeed she is– and so I generally don’t. The last job I had that I can picture anyone caring about it was a *massively* unpleasant place to work.)

    And she’s told me that I’m more likely to get hired if I get my hair professionally done before the interview and wear makeup.

    She also jumps rather annoyingly between “You MUST take anything and do anything because they give you money!” and “You shouldn’t have to put up with that (perfectly normal) nonsense; don’t take that job!”

    1. SansaStark*

      I’d think we had the same mom except the social work part. The last job she had was in the early 90s, but she knew for sure that my slightly-longer-than-shoulder-length hair was too long to get a professional job. She is somehow still surprised that I’ve held professional jobs now for 12 years with my “long” hair.

    2. Serin*

      “Won’t hire you if you don’t wear panty hose” tells you something about a workplace in the same way that “Complains about gold-diggers in introductory message” tells you something about an online dating candidate. It’s always nice when people/places announce themselves so clearly.

    3. no one, who are you?*

      Would like to point out that I’ve been hired as a professional social worker twice without wearing pantyhose (I did wear tights both times though). I hope I never interview with your mom.

        1. Minerva McGonagall*

          I define it by degree of opaqueness and thickness. Pantyhose are translucent and so prone to running they rarely get worn more than once or twice before becoming unwearable. Tights are opaque or nearly so, and much thicker such that they usually get thrown out after many wearings due to excessive pilling rather than runs. YMMV

  53. Amber Rose*

    Can I just point out that I love your “You May Also Like” link settings, and how they are recommending an article from The Onion?

    I think a good rule of thumb for deciding if something is bad advice is if The Onion is also advising it.

  54. Sara*

    My parents refused to let me take an unpaid internship in college. They kept telling me that any company that couldn’t pay their interns wasn’t worth working for. They just didn’t understand why I would bother and encouraged me to get any job that paid me over the summers.

    Fortunately, they learned their mistake for my brothers, but man, I had some good ins back then.

    1. Keli*

      Sounds like my mom. Why intern with a small publishing company or a technical writing firm when I could sell teapots at Macy’s for $6.25 an hour? When I graduated I couldn’t get a job and had to go back to school to get marketable skills. (And this time, I took every internship and opportunity that would have me.)

      My brothers did not suffer the same fate after I told them about my monumental mistake–they got internships as soon as they could, and ended up getting jobs from them, one of them in a field that is notoriously hard to find jobs in.

      1. Inspector Spacetime*

        The same thing happened to me and it bit me in the butt in the same way. I worked minimum wage retail-type stuff all through college and then, surprise surprise, had a hard time getting a career job after I graduated.

        I did need the money, though. It’s frustrating how class can be a real barrier to advancement.

      2. GriefBacon*

        Same here! My parents wouldn’t let me work during the school year (they were paying for college, so I couldn’t really argue), which meant they also wouldn’t let me do summer internships because I had to be earning enough money to last me all school year. I spent my summers working retail, food service, and hospitality…and then couldn’t get a full-time job after I graduated.

        I went back for a second B.A. to get some marketable skills, and my parents were shocked when I managed to work full-time while going to school full-time (magna cum laude!) AND completing two internships.

  55. Xay*

    My mom always reminds me to clean my car before an interview because the interviewers might send someone to look inside it.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        This is like the “make a backpack with their logo!” advice upthread–for every lock, a key; for every wacky bit of job applying advice, a manager for whom that is the decisive test.

    4. Peasandcarrots*

      I know a woman who used to own a trucking business, and she says she would always walk drivers out to the parking lot and take a peek at their trucks after interviews. Her rationale was that if they treated their own trucks badly and junked them up, they wouldn’t treat hers any better. Sort of makes sense in that context, I think.

      2. Lynca*

        Don’t let any employers see the inside of my car then. It looks like a hurricane hit it.

        My work truck is immaculate by comparison.

    5. cobweb collector*

      How does that even work? At the average office building there will be dozens or hundreds of cars in the lot. Do they send someone out to figure out which is yours and report back on the condition?

      1. Xay*

        I’ve asked her the same question – she can’t explain but she is certain it is a possibility. Even when I explained that I have conducted interviews and I have never checked or heard of anyone checking a candidate’s car.

        She is a nurse that has worked at large hospitals most of her career, I can’t imagine anyone spying on a hospital visitor’s lot to check out someone’s car.

    6. Sled dog mama*

      I know a guy who decides if he will rent to people based on how well they take care of their car, not sure it’s legal but apparently he’s had no trouble with tenants damaging things since he started doing this.

      1. Rusty Shackelford*

        I assume “owner of an unkempt car” isn’t a protected class, so yeah, it’s probably legal. And it does have a certain logic to it.

        (On a related note, I wanted to buy a used car from a private owner once, and my dad told me not to because one of the radio buttons was missing. I said “But that’s so easy to fix!” And he said “Exactly. If they don’t take care of things that are cheap and easy to fix, what do you think they did about the bigger things?” Sometimes the parents are full of good advice.)

    8. Cupcake*

      I ended up cleaning up my car a bit before a job interview not too long ago. I had just taken my dog to the vet a few days before and had a pillow and a comforter in the back seat. I decided that if by some weird chance someone looked in my car, I didn’t want it to look like I was homeless and sleeping in the back of my car.

      Oddly enough, one of the interviewers did end up seeing my car. The office park where their suite was located required that everyone had to have a parking pass in the car. He ended up walking me to my car since the office door locks automatically and it was easier for him to let me back in the building if he knew when I was returning.

    9. paul*

      I almost want them to try that with me….depending on what we did over the weekend it screams “crazy serial killer” or “boring father” or a weird mix. Snake hooks, binoculars, field guides, catch buckets, sometimes ammo, bloodstains depending, fishing gear, diaper bag, trash bag full of wet wipes and kleenex and protein bar wrappers and beef jerky packs, minnow traps, gauze pads…

  56. hiptobesquared*

    The usual “drop off resumes” and “you need to get off the computer and look for jobs” but that has mostly dissipated since I edit their resumes now (My dad’s was like three pages long when we started…).

    My grandfather, who was adamant that I transfer from a great school that I loved to live at home for two year and go to community college (a fine suggestion if I had just graduated HS, but he continued this refrain through to my junior year…), doesn’t understand why you would EVER do anything for free. I freelance in the arts, and a lot of it is volunteer work. “Just tell them you won’t do it unless they pay you.” is something I hear often, despite this being a major passion of mine, I know what I’m getting into, they’d just find someone else, etc.

  57. Lemon Zinger*

    My mom forced me to dress in business casual, at age 17, for an interview to be a lifeguard. My interviewer (who would become my boss) was wearing sweats.

    1. Goya de la Mancha*

      This really wasn’t bad advice on her part! I work in the recreation field, while our attire will vary based on what we have to do that day – it’s ALWAYS appreciated when teens/college students take the time to groom themselves. Even if we’re in a swimsuit/sweats ourselves, we notice.

  58. gingerbird*

    I’ve posted this before, but right before starting my first professional job, my mother pulled me aside and lectured me on the importance of dressing pofessionally. She then told me an important part of that was wearing hose underneath my pants. Not stockings or trouser socks, full pantyhose, preferably control top.

    The entire point of me wearing pants to work 90% of the time is because I hate putting on tights or hose.

        1. NaoNao*

          The snugness of the hose plus the warmth of the extra layer of pants (that could cause sweating/dampness in a “nowhere to evaporate” area) on top creates an ideal environment for such to occur. They don’t inherently “cause” it, no.

    2. AndersonDarling*

      And don’t forget to wear hose with open toed shoes. No one should see an undressed toe. Ha!

    3. strawberries and raspberries*

      This is possibly one of the most 80s-early 90s things ever. It makes absolutely no sense. I put it in the same category as the women who used to wear basketball sneakers with their skirt suits. (In high school as a rule I immediately questioned the credentials of any teacher who dressed like this. Admittedly I was a little snot, but I was often right.)

        1. strawberries and raspberries*

          I think you meant commuting? I think that’s true, but I feel like a lot of women (at least the ones I saw) would then just leave their sneakers on all day, which totally defeats the purpose.

  59. miyeritari*

    Every piece of advice my grandma gives me (such as: try not to take time off, don’t negotiate for raises, never express an opinion different from your boss) begins with, “You know, Grandpa worked for Revlon for 30 years and…”

    Once I hear those words I tune out.

    1. PSB*

      My mom responds to every story I tell her about working on IT projects in a large academic medical center by reminding me that she worked on an “automation” project 20 years ago at the state agency where she spent her career. It’s always a preamble to telling me IT projects are actually very simple to get right. I’ve been in IT for 24 years and have a PMP certification. She was on the project team for one IT project in her whole working life.

    2. SS Express*

      I realise this isn’t the point, but it’s pretty cool that your Grandpa worked at Revlon back in the day!

  60. AnotherJill*

    “Go to school to become an x-ray technician because you might not get married.” This was in 1974, and my mom was a little hopelessly mired in the 1940s :).

    1. Anansi*

      My mom was constantly trying to force me to become a stenographer, because I played piano and clearly it’s the same thing! I still don’t think she understands that I loved music, not typing.

      1. Lumen*

        Oh yeah… this made me remember how my parents thought that my fast typing skills made me a shoe-in for my pick of a million high-paying secretary gigs that would last for years! Because apparently the Important Men In Suits still will not have learned to type since the 1960s and will need women to do this for them.

        This one makes me shake my head. My parents really believed I that with fast typing and a college degree in ItDoesn’tMatter would set me up for life as someone’s secretary, and all my needs would be taken care of forever. And it’s not like I didn’t look for executive assistant jobs… it’s just that none of them gave a damn about typing, wanted me to have 5+ years of experience, were often part-time, and didn’t pay enough to make rent.

      3. Middle School Teacher*

        I am not kidding, but several years ago in the employment wanted section of our local paper’s classifieds was the following ad: “Girl talented in email, piano etc. wants suitable, high-paying job.” I clipped it and saved it on my bulletin board for YEARS. Periodically I would show it to my classes and we would speculate on why a person would place such an ad: was she delusional? Were her parents delusional? Was this all on her and her parents were like “go for it, place the ad, see what happens”? It’s honestly one of the weirdest things I have ever seen in a newspaper.

        1. Anansi*

          Wow. Wonder what a “suitable” job would be for someone with such lofty talents as email and piano! I sadly found out that my ability to play piano was not a qualification most jobs were looking for…

          1. Middle School Teacher*

            And classified ads aren’t cheap! (At least, they weren’t back then.) I just can’t imagine what was going through this girl’s head.

            I mean, I’m awesome at email. Where’s my high-paying job??

      4. SS Express*

        “You like hitting black and white keys with your fingers for extended periods of time, right?”

  61. Machiamellie*

    My dad went into the Marines after graduating from community college, then he was recruited into the CIA while in the Marines. So he never had to ask for a job. He was the typical boomer, telling me to go walk into places and hand them a resume on fancy paper, etc. He was just from a different time.

    1. Tongue Cluckin' Grammarian*

      My dad was a career Army man. Went to West Point, became an officer for 30yrs, then bought a bar to run for awhile, and now does teaching gigs through the War College where he lives (which he gets via military connections).
      He flat-out told me he went military so he didn’t have to deal with resumes and stuff, and then tried telling me how to format my resume and how to get hired places. (Using a lot of the same advice most of us got, apparently. Pound the pavement, call back a bunch, go in person, etc)

      It took him years to be able to admit that his kids might have more knowledge in some areas than he does.

  62. The Other Dawn*

    No weird job search advice, as my whole family were/are blue collar workers, and mom stayed home off and on for many years. Not sure that has anything to do with it, or if it’s just that my parents weren’t the type to dole out advice unless asked.

    I often got advice from my dad, though. Actually I don’t know that it was really advice, but more “this is how the working world works.” When I worked retail, it was often hard to get days off for family events. Sometimes I could get the day off, sometimes I couldn’t. Anyone working in retail knows that’s life. My dad would always tell me that I should tell them I’m taking the day off and they should just deal with it. Um. no. I have a boss and that’s a good way to get fired. When I started working for a bank and eventually became a manager, I would work my vacations around my direct reports unless I had a true need to take specific days off. He would tell me that I should take the time I want, when I want it, and my boss and direct reports would just have to deal with it. Again, even though I am the boss, I still have a boss I report to. Plus there are regulatory deadlines to work around, busy times, etc. Also, being a manager, you need to be flexible, don’t be a time-off hog (we all know who these people are in our companies), and set a good example. I don’t want a bunch of people that think I’m a crappy boss. I wonder if his mindset came from his generation, or the fact that he was the union foreman, or just something his parents taught him?

    1. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

      My parents seem to have a similar attitude about vacation days. Its a little bit odd. “What do you mean you can’t get off for this random vacation that I just booked yesterday and is coming up in 3 weeks? Just take some time off.” Sorry mom, but that’s typically not how that works.

      1. The Other Dawn*

        Exactly! My dad (not typically my mom) basically had the attitude that the employee called the shots and the employer just has to accept it because employee will leave. I feel like it has something to do with being in one place for 40 years and being the union foreman, as the union is very pro-employee. And I think it does have something to do with him having been pretty assertive.

        1. doreen*

          It probably does have something to do with him being the foreman- I’ve known a lot of managers who basically let shop stewards/foreman “call the shots” because they don’t want to deal with the hassle of doing otherwise ( it’s not unusual in places I’ve worked for stewards to claim they didn’t get the vacation or assignment they wanted as a form of retaliation for *being* the steward)

      2. paul*

        what’s the normal lead time for requesting a day or two off? Most places I’ve worked at 2 weeks is OK *if* it’s short. Longer vacations have always required more notice but like a long weekend on a non-peak time hasn’t been a big deal

      3. SarcasticFringehead*

        My dad & stepmom once told me I was a selfish person because I didn’t want to lose my job to come on a mission trip with them (it would have been a whole week; when I asked the owner if I could have the time, they told me that if I went, I shouldn’t bother coming back). Granted, it was kind of a crappy job, but still. Same when I couldn’t get time off for family holiday celebrations that weren’t on the actual holiday.

  63. Leigh*

    When I had just graduated school and was job hunting, my mom consistently sent me job listings that I was unqualified for along with suggestions of what I could put in my cover letter to make me appear qualified. I don’t remember the specifics but she was very persistent about a job at a prestigious publisher dealing in classics (that required 2+ years of experience) and really thought talking about how I loved Latin class in middle school would land me an interview. She also showed my resumé to some clients of hers (she has her own sales business) and they strongly suggested I include my middle initial (her maiden name) instead of just my first and last. She was very adamant about me doing this and really thought the offers would start rolling in as soon as I did so.

    The one great piece of advice she DID give me was to leverage my writing skills for a career in PR instead of editorial. I got the first PR job I applied to and have been working in my current role for a year!

    1. Delta Delta*

      What the what with the middle initial? How does that equate to more jobs? I include mine because as I’ve aged my signature sort of evolved to center on my middle initial. But that’s just handwritten flourish and I like it. You’d never know that’s why I include my middle initial on my resume. Probably I’d get the same results if I left it out. ?

  64. Sara*

    I’m currently in my seventh month at my first job out of college. I was well connected with this company and ended up being offered a position far above entry level off the bat. My parents have now become obsessed with me quitting this job for some reason (even though when I’m job hunting they obsessively lecture me about applying for everything out there and stop being a lazy bum and make it happen). I’ve explained that I want to stick it out at least a year or more so that I can really use this great title on my resume and open up future opportunities in my field. My dad says he’s “not so sure about all of this resume stuff” and that I should quit and learn to code because that’s where the money is. For the record, my degree is in Art History and I haven’t taken a math or science course since high school. Coding is probably the last thing I would ever be good at. But I should quit my management position to pursue that for sure.

    1. AvonLady Barksdale*

      Ooh, yes, I have heard things like that. My mother used to send me job postings for things she thought sounded “interesting”. I reminded her that I was a manager at a huge company with a lot of connections, and I LIKED my job, yet… I will never understand some of that reasoning. Stay strong.

    2. cobweb collector*

      I was told to learn to code (and other IT related things) ever since I showed an aptitude in middle school. It paid off in that I majored in CS in college and have an IT job that pays me good money, however I wish I’d been smart and majored in humanities instead. Even if the career path is less obvious, it’s more fulfilling.

      1. Junior Dev*

        I’m a programmer who studied Religion and went to a boot camp after having trouble finding jobs that paid the bills. I’m glad I took the path I did though, I think my communication skills have paid off recently.

        1. Don't Blame Me*

          Junior Dev, I’ve thought a lot about doing a coding boot camp. If you don’t mind my asking, which one did you use and were you able to pay for it yourself or were there scholarship opportunities you used? The best I can figure, even if I were to get accepted to one and be able to pay for it, we can’t afford to live on one salary for the time it took for me to complete it so my hands seem to be tied, but I’m still mulling it over.

    3. seejay*

      I’m a software engineer and I’ve been coding since I was 12. My mom still likes to mention how “computers are how things are changing now!” whenever she sees something on the tv or news about some new automation thing or online progress. Like I haven’t been in this industry for over 20 years.

      Or she still asks me if I can “take a course” in some new programming language I need to pick up. No, that’s not how it works, stop telling me to take courses or classes. I have to pick this stuff up on my own, it’s how my industry works.

      1. PSB*

        Is she asking about your employer paying for the training? There *are* classes you can take, but most people don’t have a few thousand dollars laying around to pay for them every time they need to learn a new skill.

  65. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

    Five years ago or so, my mother in law offered to let me wear her “interview suit” to a job interview, because I didn’t have one. It ended up being a royal blue pantsuit with massive shoulder pads, gaudy gold trim/buttons, and those baggy Alfred Dunner-type pants that my great grandmother used to wear when I was a child. Needless to say, I passed, and I wore black dress pants with a nice blouse instead. I got the job.

    1. Hey Karma, Over here.*

      Gummy waist pants and shoulder pads. Did you thank her? As in:
      Let me thank you for being a friend.
      And travel down the road and back again.

  66. IDeas*

    My mother, who hasn’t held a job in four decades, repeatedly tells me, “The right thing will come along.” As though it is an inevitability! (She says the same thing about dating, to be fair…or, rather, exceptionally unfair.)

    1. Agnes*

      Surely better than her saying, “Forget it, you’re doomed!” or “Settle for whoever you can get, ’cause it ain’t happening otherwise.”.

  67. Goya de la Mancha*

    My parents were from large poor families. Married/had kids very young. They didn’t go past high school, so the fact that their kids graduated with college degrees was a very proud moment for them. However, they have very outdated views on college. You go for 4 years and you come out with a piece of paper that will allow you to start off at a 6 figure income. As more of their friends had kids go through school, they came to finally realize that this was not the case. They have toned down on the harping of the fact that our jobs do not provide us with 6 figure incomes or that we maybe went 5 years instead of 4.

  68. PB*

    My father did not understand the difference between “fixed term” and “contract.” I graduated in the recession, and my first two jobs were fixed term, the first for six months, the second for a year. Since job searches in my field tend to be long-winded, I kept applying for jobs the whole time, since I’d need to move on pretty quickly. He was convinced that if I gave notice before the six/twelve months were up, my employer could sue me for breach of contract.

  69. overcaffeinatedqueer*

    During my last three college summers, there were no jobs in my small Midwest town. This was 2008-2011, and I could not work at the main factory hiring people for summer since I had gotten injured doing so in my first summer.

    There were some temp agencies that sometimes offered work that wasn’t farming or flipping burgers, such as working in a local shop that prints and packages standardized tests, setup and parking for the annual county fair, and stings for buying cigarettes/booze to see if ID is checked. That was pretty much what the jobs all were for summers, and these often were for a day/week/few weeks at a time. So recruiters would call you, didn’t want you calling constantly.

    But my mom helicoptered so much that she insisted I call every day! It got to the point where I would literally pretend to make the cal and have my side of the conversation, to get her off my back.

  70. Kat B.*

    When I was about to graduate college, my dad advised me that I should re-design my resume dividing the page into quarters: one quarter with my education, one with my work history, one summarizing my student & community theater experience, and one with my theatrical headshot. Uh, no Dad. I’m pretty sure the people hiring an Inventory Manager don’t care at all about my experience playing Lady Macbeth, and including my picture is creepy.

    1. Music for all*

      The headshot is a big no, but I have no problem with listing community theater or music experience. Several studies have shown a correlation between business success and music. I can very easily see the same being true for drama. In general, when I hire people, while I of course look at experience and education first, I like to see someone with at least one serious “extracurricular” interest.

  71. Anansi*

    One time in junior high my mom dropped me off for an interview for a dishwashing job, and as I was walking in the building, she told me, “Just a heads up, you look shifty all the time. You need to make sure to make as much eye contact as possible and don’t blink or look away!” Yeah, that was a confidence booster. I’m pretty sure the entire time I just nervously stared at the manager, trying not to blink.

    However, the worst career advice I got was from my dad. I worked at several restaurants in high school and college, and my dad (who is unionized) was constantly telling me that I need to demand my lunch breaks and make sure that if others are taking smoking breaks that I should insist I get breaks too, etc. I only followed his advice once – I was 14 years old and told my boss, in the middle of the lunch rush, that I was going to take a break to eat. There was much laughter, and no break.

    1. Inspector Spacetime*

      “Just a heads up, you look shifty all the time.”
      I’m laughing so hard right now, oh my gosh.

    2. Pollygrammer*

      I’m imagining interviewing with tears and a facial twitch because I wasn’t allowing myself to blink :)

  72. Rin*

    Mom, when I was about 18: “Show up somewhere you want to work and just start doing stuff– you know, helping out. Eventually they’ll get the hint and give you a job!”

    ….or escort me from the premises.

    2. zora*

      ooooommmmmgggg, this is probably my favorite. I’m picturing people walking into offices and just sitting down at a computer and typing. Or walking into a store and plucking things out of the hands of staff and saying “let me get that!!”

      As much as I like surreptitiously facing half a shelf when I’m in a really messy store, I never considered doing that to convince them to hire me!!

    3. The New Wanderer*

      Basically the plot of “The Secret of My Success,” although I imagine that doesn’t turn out well for people who aren’t in Hollywood movies.

  73. Dovahkiin*

    My dad was a hardcore believer in showing up super early (as early as an hour) to interviews and checking in. He was a lifer in federal law enforcement and I have no idea where he got this.

    I do always show up super early, but sit in my car and prepare instead of barging into the office like he always recommended.

    1. Lumen*

      Yikes. I once worked the front desk at an office and had to sit in our reception area for close to an hour with an applicant. It was incredibly awkward and didn’t make him look good to anyone except one of the owners, who steamrolled all advice and hired him.

      Anyway, when this was fired a few months later after blowing up screaming at the entire staff, we found lots of creepy pick-up artist and porny stuff on his computer. But, y’know, he showed up super early that one time!

    2. whingedrinking*

      I was once running auditions out of my house and a guy showed up an hour and a half early for his. I wasn’t even awake yet.

  74. Lumen*

    My parents believe in the power of education so completely that they said it didn’t matter what I got a degree in, that a college degree would always help me get a higher salary regardless of the position.

    This did not turn out to be true, but it wasn’t a concern of theirs because I had married young to someone going into engineering, with a high earning potential. They didn’t really worry about my ‘career’ for the years I was married.

    When I got divorced, suddenly no job was good enough for me, even though my random college degree was somehow not securing me the high-paying, totally unspecialized work they’d once spoken of with such faith. Their answer was that I should immediately move several states and live with them, where I could… go back to school, take on several tens of thousands more in debt, and then THAT would magically fix my earnings forever.

    My parents are both well educated and incredibly poor. And I’m not knocking education, but it’s terrible advice to think that what’s on the degree doesn’t matter if you don’t have a plan or goals or career path in mind.

  75. Torrance*

    My mother raised me on the whole idea that you should always go above and beyond because that hard work will be recognised and appreciated. And she bought into the whole ‘get a degree + you’ll get a job’ thing too– and got snookered by one of those exploitative for-profit ‘schools’ to cap it off.

  76. CoffeeCoffeeCoffee*

    Every single time my dad has said “Oh, well, just call them to follow up on your online application.” I did that once when I first graduated from school and didn’t know any better- I’d never dream of doing that now.

  77. Anna*

    Not so much weird, but my Dad always told me to apply for any job I thought I could do. Even if I thought there would be more with more experience, or the company would want more, etc. Always apply because the worst they can do is say no, and if you don;t apply it is an automatic no anyways.

    Well as a Freshman in college, the beginning of my second semester I see a job notice for a Stats grader for beginning classes. I’d taken stats my first semester, and that was the only qualification. At first I thought there was no way that job would go to a freshman. But after passing the posting for a couple of days I heeded my Dad’s advice and applied. I ended up being the only person to apply and got the job by default. Had that job for years and loved it!

  78. Anon.*

    I wanted to major in Applied Math. I would have got my Master’s in probably 1982. Mom told me the only thing I could go with that degree was teach or sell insurance. I would have returned to my hometown of Seattle in the early 80s with a math degree…can you think of any small startup in Seattle at that time that would have been hiring math majors? ugh

  79. MakeItSnow*

    Mine came from my dad. First month of a government internship. We had an evening event and he, coming from a senior role for a financial institution where it was common, suggested that I could arrive late in the morning because I was staying late that night. So I did. About ten minutes after I got there I got quite the talking to from the EA. Never doing that again.

    When I went back to my dad and told him what happened and he said something like “well that was a stupid idea, why did you think you could come late to work??”

    WHAT.

    1. kible*

      And when you told him that he suggested it, he totally denied ever saying it?

      My mom was like that while I was younger :\

  80. Cambridge Comma*

    My mother suggests that if you start a job and don’t enjoy the first morning, just don’t come back after lunch. You can spend the afternoon looking for another job.
    Apparently this worked in London in the 60s and 70s.

    1. KK*

      Haha, we actually had a woman do this at my current job. I got a promotion, and was training a woman for my previous job. I trained her all morning, and things (I thought!) were going well. She left for lunch, and never came back that day. She was through a staffing agency, so the recruiter tried to call her that day and could not get in touch with her.

      Sometime the next day (after the woman still hadn’t returned), my boss informed me that the recruiter had just called and said the employee had been so sick after she left for lunch the previous day that she couldn’t even answer her phone or make a call to tell us she wasn’t returning (FWIW, she’d shown no signs of sickness when she left for lunch that day, but my boss at least pretended to believe this story.)

      The following day, the recruiter called to say the woman (whose name I can’t even remember now!) had gotten another job offer and wouldn’t be returning. Surprise, surprise!

  81. hiptobesquared*

    I work in tech (computer support) and do graphic design and AV. My mother has in the past sent me job for video production, website development, network admin, etc. because they “all have to do with computers, and you’re good with computers.”

    She also thinks I could work in radio because I did college radio and that I can play the piano because I can read music if I try very hard.

  82. Kay*

    I’m an advisor at a college and frequently deal with students who are receiving truly outrageous and terrible advice from parents, and sometimes have to interact with the parents themselves. The top 3 from the past year:
    -the student who followed his parents’ advice to follow up with interviewers in gimmicky ways that started to border on looking like bribery (BIG Harry and David’s boxes, candy arrangements with notes about how it would be ‘sweet’ to work there) who was then panicking a week before graduation because he did not yet have a job…
    -the father who accompanied his daughter to our advising appointment to accuse me of sabotaging her job search because he thought entry-level positions were beneath her (she was 21 with no work or volunteer experience at all). He kept telling her to apply for mid-level positions because “that shows initiative and drive”.
    -the student whose parents insisted that she follow up in-person after interviews without appointments to “show her interest” who ended up getting kicked out of the building of one of the top employers for our recent grads after she started going in multiple times a day. The college dean had to intervene and smooth things over to save our internship program!

    2. Sterling*

      The joys of trying to teach college age people that their parents are not always right, my favorite.

  83. saffytaffy*

    – Don’t put my foreign language experience (Spanish and Chinese) on my resume, because it will intimidate employers and no one will hire me.

    – Stress the fact that I’m unmarried with no children, and therefore can work lots of overtime.

  84. Kate*

    My mom always tells me not to get drunk at company functions because, “that’s when people fool around.” I mean, it’s not *bad* advice. I work for a small business composed of mostly straight males. If people were fooling around, we’d all know about it. I shared this “advice” with my boss, and we had a good laugh about it because I guess we’re just too boring of a company for that. It is generally a good idea not to get drunk at work functions for lots of other reasons though.

  85. k*

    My parents pushed the idea that you should never quit a job, because it’s bad to be a quitter. I spent far too much time in toxic jobs before I realized that sometimes quitting is a good thing to do.

  86. jm*

    1. My mom is a nervous driver, and super scared of driving in bad weather. Every time a thunderstorm is predicted to hit my area, my mom asks if my boss is planning to let us go home early. We live in one of the rainiest cities in the country – thunderstorms are so, so common. Why she thinks my boss would let us leave early due to rain and lightning, I don’t know.

    2. I recently drove my dad to a family wedding in a city about 4 hours away. He’s 81 and can’t drive safely on the interstate anymore. I got us there and back without incident, which must have made a positive impression on him, because he suggested I look into becoming a truck driver. I have zero interest in this field but took his comment as a compliment…because he complained a lot about my driving when I was a teenager! ;)

    1. hiptobesquared*

      When I first read that I thought your mom called your boss every time it rained… so glad it wasn’t true! I live in a very snowy place (as does my mother) and she always asks if i’m going in, like it’s a choice.

    2. saffytaffy*

      JM, my mom and dad used to be like this about snow, so I really sympathize. When I lived at home, they’d say “we’re not LETTING YOU drive” etc. and it would cause this awful anxiety about being a BAD DAUGHTER or putting my job in jeopardy. I couldn’t quite tell from your comment if you live in the same town or home as your mom, but for me, living away made this much easier to deal with.

  87. Annabelle*

    My mom told me never to apply online. Granted, she was talking mostly about restaurants and stuff cause I was a teenager, but it still sounded like bizarre advice.

  88. Jackie*

    When I was in college, my mom and dad told me not to be in a hurry to work as I had the rest of my life to work.

    1. MakesThings*

      That’s great advice and I second it really hard. Did they also provide you with food and shelter while you took them up on it?

      1. Jackie*

        Yes they did. I had both a scholarship and grants for college so tuition wasn’t the burden it could have been. I also worked part-time too.

  89. synchrojo*

    For years my mother has insisted that I should ask former professors and previous employers for written letters of recommendation to have on hand for use in the reference stage of future job searches. No amount of my effort can convince her that these letters would be completely worthless and make me look very immature and naive (I am in my late 20s at this point and have solid work experience outside of academia). Granted, I have had extraordinarily bad luck in that both my undergraduate and graduate academic advisors passed away suddenly within a year of completing my degree, so this may have prompted this behavior.

  90. Anonymousaurus Rex*

    This isn’t exactly job advice, but my dad thought that you could only get a job through connections. When I got an internship (and later a consultant position) at the UN in grad school I found out later that he bragged to several people that he “got me the job at the UN.” Um, no. I got myself the job by applying via normal channels. He didn’t know anyone who worked at the UN, didn’t live in the same country as the internship, had zero connections there. No idea what he was thinking, other than generally feeling entitled to take credit for my work. It really sucked though, as it totally undermined my credibility with a lot of people I needed to professionally network with later who also knew my father and instead of assuming that I had earned my place at the table, assumed that my father’s (non-existent) connections were my “in”.

  91. Kiki*

    My MIL’s cousin is a VP at a global company that is a household name. She asked this cousin to have a call with my now-husband when he graduated college to talk to him about the industry and how to get a job. Fine.

    This VP told my husband to call higher ups of big companies directly and ask them if they were hiring. My husband asked VP if he ever hired people this way. The VP said no, his secretary screens out those kinds of calls and doesn’t pass them on. My husband tried to get VP to figure out the disconnect between the advice he was giving and his own admitted hiring practices, but VP didn’t seem to get it.

  92. DeeShyOne*

    My father in law once advised me to not apply at a local plane manufacturing plant. I was apparently “too delicate” to handle what the job would entail.

  93. effazin*

    When I graduated in the 80s with a teaching certificate (even then teaching jobs were kind of scarce) my mother insisted I apply to every school board in the province (Canadian, here). Unsolicited resume scattering was also recommended by the university so I sent out over 50 resumes with cover letters. Unsurprisingly, I got no positive responses, and only a few, “Thank you for your interest, we will contact you if we want to talk to you” replies. There were a few school boards in isolated northern areas (think fly-in communities) that were eager to hire teachers, but I had no interest in working in these places, and knew that even if I got an offer I would not accept it, so I did not include them in my scatter-shot approach. When my mother found out that I hadn’t applied to the places most likely to make an offer (since they were grabbing up anyone with a pulse who applied) she threw a fit. I couldn’t see wasting their time when I didn’t want a job with those conditions. (City girl here–any job that included isolation bonuses was not going to be a fit for me.) Add in that many of those jobs were in First Nation communities in which English is not the children’s mother tongue, and that I had no experience, qualifications, or interest, in ESL, that I hate winter and these northern communities have long winters, that the school boards were very up-front about the teachers needing to become actively involved in the social life of what were very small communities and I am about as introverted as you can get, and that I knew that I would be miserable if I had to spend 10 months a year separated from everyone I knew (in the days before internet and cell phones, when long distance phone calls even within the country were often 50 cents or more a minute even after 11 p.m. when the rates went down.) I got a local job less than 6 months after I graduated because someone I knew who worked for the board told me about a couple of openings that hadn’t yet been advertised. Since this time I had some details about an actual job opening that existed, I was able to tailor my cover letter/resume to the specifics of the position available, and it turned out one of the people on the interview panel had been my TA for a 1st year course in university and we’d gotten along well, and she still remembered me. Seeing a friendly face put me at ease during the interview, and despite my mother’s fears that I would never get a teaching job if I didn’t get a few years of experience in an isolated community first, I have been with the same school board for my whole career–retiring within the next 12 months. She still, 30 years later, makes derogatory comments about my lack of initiative in job-searching, and how “fortunate” I was to get a teaching job. I can’t seem to convince her that getting an interview and offer through personal contacts is not “luck”, and still required effort on my part, to prepare for and do well enough at the interview to receive an offer. Looking back, I understand her fears that I would end up free-loading off her, living at home forever, if she didn’t light a fire under me, as much of the job search process is not obvious to an onlooker until the interview stage. The advice from everyone at the university–profs, career centre, etc., that every student in the program should apply to every school board, regardless of whether that board had indicated there were any openings available or not, seems in hindsight to be ridiculous. Why anyone would think school boards getting hundreds of unsolicited resumes every spring, from newly qualified teachers who clearly were desperate for a job–ANY job–and who had no idea of whether they were even qualified for any jobs that might be available, was a good idea, is beyond me.

  94. Raluca Enescu*

    I’ll go a bit against the grain, and share an actually GOOD piece of advice my mom gave me, because I feel like a lot of us don’t hear it nearly enough :
    “As an adult person, you spend eight hours a day at work, eight hours sleeping, eight hours for anything else. Whatever you choose to do, make sure that it’s something you enjoy enough to want to dedicate half of your awake time to”.

  95. Systems Administrator*

    My parents gave me some excellent job advice. In my youth, I worked on the farm, I worked for the family business (also agriculture related), I dipped ice cream in a booth at fairs and festivals. I ended a lot of days covered either in dirt and cow crap, or sticky in ice cream.

    The advice: Go to college, get a degree in something you want to do, so you don’t have to end your days covered in dust and cow crap or ice cream.

    It’s worked. Thanks mom and dad.

    1. Systems Administrator*

      Forgot the addendum: And never be too proud to do those jobs if you have to.

      If I must clean toilets to put food on the table, I will clean toilets to put food on the table.

    2. Falling Diphthong*

      I worked food service for a semester, and my husband dug ditches . Those were really useful jobs for being clear what we didn’t want to do.

      Now I have kids in high school and college, and it’s clear the essay “What I learned shoveling cow crap” is likely to be more successful than “My parents spent thousands of dollars to send me to a 2 week camp for future leaders.”

      1. MashaKasha*

        I worked a bunch of menial jobs in college (plus a low-paid office admin job after my oldest was born) and had the same takeaway. Came in very handy when we immigrated to the US. Everyone around me was “find a job, any job, go be a dishwasher at a restaurant with your college degree and you will work your way up, because that’s how things are in America” and I was, “nope, been there, those are dead-end jobs that I will never get out of if I take one full-time”.

  96. Sterling*

    I work in Higher Ed for public colleges. My mother didn’t understand why I didn’t just “get promoted”. I couldn’t make her understand that 1.) You don’t just get promotions or raises on a regular schedule in education. You can be a rock star but there are X number of positions in each department and you don’t get a bump in title just because. and 2.) That for me to advance my career meant moving to different schools and regions. Well there is only 1 state college where I was at. No openings above the the position I was in. If i wanted to move up I had to apply for jobs at other schools.

  97. Gitty*

    I want to give a public shout out for all the great parents out there. I don’t know if it’s because my parents are young (low 50s) or they’re just generally awesome people but I found that both my mother and my father helped me SO much with pulling my resume together, preparing for interviews and with general workplace advice ☺️☺️

    1. MashaKasha*

      I want to give a shout out to anyone who refers to people my age (50) as young. Will take this any day! Thanks!

      And, my older son found his first job out of college (a Silicon Valley startup) through an online forum I was a member of. He also had an interview at Google that same week, that he’d gotten with the help of someone who had gone to the same college as I did, who had his resume put in at all the major West Coast companies. My forum friends also proofread his resume and suggested changes. They also recommended a book that pretty much got him through every interview he had, “Cracking The Coding Interview”. So, agree, parents can be of use sometime!

      (My younger son, who graduates this year, is not remotely in the same field I’m in, so he’s on his own both in terms of job search, and workplace advice.)

    2. Serin*

      I’m glad to hear that there are some parents who don’t feel that they know more than their kids and are entitled to advise them even when the kids are adults working in unrelated fields!

      1. MashaKasha*

        We do exist! My younger will be looking for work in consumer sales. I could not sell ice in a desert if my life depended on it. I’m not touching that with a million-foot pole. All I can do is wish him luck. My older went into the exact same profession as his father and I, so that was different.

  98. PB*

    My father was big on the one-page resume rule. When he proofread an early draft of my resume, he told me it needed to be shorter, because “only a few people in the world should have a two-page resume.” I was a teenager at the time, so yeah, my resume should have been shorter, but the idea that only a few people in the world should have a two-page resume felt like a huge overstatement even then. I’m in academia. My resume is four pages.

    1. Lynca*

      Man. I remember getting that advice at the University Career Center. Needless to say they didn’t help me get a job.

    2. Anony*

      Actually, I think he is right. Very few people need a two page resume. However, a CV (which is used in academia) is commonly much longer.

        1. Autumnheart*

          Especially now that resumes are largely in electronic format, and the presentation is one scrolling page instead of two paper pages.

  99. Pickles*

    I’m fortunate enough to be in a weird profession that my parents still don’t understand what little I’m allowed to share with them, although that might be changing. Recently, I discovered my mom’s trying to find me a job near her hometown (she cannot understand that I don’t want to come back, let alone my specialties or qualifications).

    Overall, I was raised to be a housewife, essentially, and marry well. Perhaps spend a few years teaching, as a secretary, or in the medical field like most of my family. I can clean darn near anything, and hate it. Fortunately, I married a clean freak. Win! So I ignore what little advice I get, which honestly isn’t much as my parents are the first generation to move out of blue collar into white collar, so more silence than advice. I’m okay with that.

    My poor brother, on the other hand, fits right in the family’s medical field familiarity, but struggled with my parents’ bad advice after being laid off. Most has already been covered here – show up in person only to be chased off by security, have printed resumes, etc. The worst was encouraging him to move back to our hometown because of the allegedly lower cost of living. It’s rapidly rising so that’s not even accurate, not to mention his mortgage is paid off. Thank goodness he found another job in his local before he caved in.

    Not helicopter parenting, although it might sound like it. More the blue-collar attitude of counting only on your family, so why would anyone ever move away? Which is exactly why my brother and I both did.

    1. Hildegard Von Bingen*

      My folks were like yours, blue collar. But they always encouraged me to go to university and get a good job, my dad most of all. They didn’t give me much in the way of career advice because they knew that their experience wasn’t applicable to my educational or career goals. They were remarkably non-sexist when it came to that (now, getting married’s another story. Relentless pressure from my mom on that front, which I just let roll off my back).

      I live 500 miles away, my younger sister lives 1,000 miles away, and they’re fine with that. I would have benefited from some well-informed career advice, but I guess no advice is better than what my dad calls “a bum steer.” Just saying that blue-collar parents can be sensible about their limitations. Mine were, and I’m grateful for it.

  100. Victoria Nonprofit (USA)*

    I am 38. I’m a nonprofit program manager, focused on leadership development and civic engagement. I’m sitting on a hiring panel for a Director of Finance & Operations job that’s open at my nonprofit. My father asked why I wasn’t getting that job. (Uhhh… because I’m not an accountant, for starters.)

    1. Ama*

      We’ve had a ton of hiring at my nonprofit this year (both new positions and some standard turnover) and after running a couple hiring processes of my own and talking to some of the other hiring managers I’m convinced that there are a lot of people out there who think nonprofit jobs are all completely interchangeable, regardless of the type of nonprofit and their stated mission.

  101. Mimmy*

    I vaguely remember maybe 20 years ago my mom actually saying a particular outfit was okay for a job interview. Umm…this was a black, sleeveless pant suit that I felt was more appropriate for a summer party than a job interview.

    Just this last Christmas, I made a comment during dinner, basically saying that I’m beginning to tire of the office politics that come with traditional employment and wanting more project-based jobs where I have the flexibility to work from home. She goes, “But it’s nice being out of the house”. This is true….except when you don’t (can’t) drive and have to rely on sometimes-unpredictable transportation. Especially with the weather patterns of late in the U.S.!

  102. Echo*

    My parents sent me a bunch of job listings they thought I was qualified for when I was 22, just out of college, and hunting for my first real job. I remember my mom emailing me a position description from one of the most prestigious organizations in the field I was looking for work in. “Mom, this is a director-level position that requires 5-10 years of experience working in this field.” “I know, but you’re a graduate from a top-ten university with a 3.9 GPA. Someone like you doesn’t need all that.” It gave me serious anxiety about applying for the jobs I was *actually* qualified for – I was sure they would see me as a failure for not getting the more prestigious jobs they thought I could.

  103. Catarina*

    I come from a family of life-long teachers, and their understanding of the business world hovers around zero.

    On the minus side, I’ve been told to do ridiculous things like file a grievance because I had to reschedule PTO to attend a last-minute emergency meeting. (I have no union, no contract, and there’s no such thing as a grievance to file, Dad.) On the plus side, everyone in my family thinks I’m much more professionally important than I actually am, because I have the “luxury” of getting up from my desk for a restroom break without needing to call and wait for coverage first.

  104. Suiting Up*

    My mom recommended that I wear a form-fitting mini sweater dress she had bought me to my student interview at a prestigious law office. She’s been in the military (ie wearing a uniform) my whole life, so I guess she’s just not that familiar with businesswear? I obviously wore a grey suit with a knee length skirt, as did every other interviewee.

  105. Denise*

    My father told me not to consider Sign Language interpreting as a career. I just signed invoices for $60 an hour for interpreters.

  106. Bad Candidate*

    My dad seems to think that you just go work for a place. Just show up, apply, and they shake your hand and hire you on the spot and for whatever amount you ask for. I guess that worked for him in 1969 for the phone company (the only full time job he ever had) and he thinks it still works like that today.

    He also has told me more than once that I can mouth off to my boss or coworkers and if I’m a good employee, it won’t matter, because they’ll have to keep me. I’ve tried telling him it wasn’t him being a good employee that worked for him, but rather his union, but he doesn’t believe me.

  107. Tea cup gal*

    I bought a smart little suit (not too fussy, not too short, etc, etc) at a consignment shop when I was in my late teens and my mother was *horrified* telling me I would never get a job wearing it and I’d wasted my money. Joke was on her as I landed a job at 18 at a large corporation making a very good wage and the hiring manager said it was in part because I’d dressed very professionally unlike so many others. Ha!

    Who would get angry at a teenager for wanting to dress professionally?!

  108. Keladry of Mindelan*

    I graduated with a degree in International Affairs in 2012 and was looking for a job in that field in the DC area. My father was convinced that the best way to get a job would be to knock on all the embassy doors and hand whoever answered my resume and express an interest in working for their embassy. My dad is in the military and hasn’t had a real job interview, but he should have known that this wasn’t a good idea just because of security concerns! I never did go around knocking on embassy doors, but he couldn’t let the idea go.

    I do have a job related to international affairs now, and I got it the normal way. By applying online through the company’s website.

  109. Amy*

    My dad is still convinced that the best way to get a job is to pester the hell out of the hiring manager. Saw the posting? Bring your resume in person and interrupt their day to hand it to them face-to-face! Submitted your resume? Call them to emphasize how interested you are! Had an interview? Call them every couple days to ask for updates and restate your interest! There was no job posting in the first place? Show up anyways, offer to work for them for a week for free, they’ll be unable to resist hiring you for their nonexistent opening after seeing that kind of dedication!

    He thinks this kind of thing shows go-getter spirit and commitment. And maybe it did when he was last looking for entry level jobs??? I doubt it, though–I think it’s obnoxious, pesty behavior that’s going to show functional workplaces that they want to be far, far away from you. My brother and I don’t listen to his advice on job-related things.

    1. Lynn Whitehat*

      Like, did this ever work? 40 years ago or something? I feel like it must have worked at some point in history, for every Dad in America to believe in this strategy. But why would you just hire any random idiot who showed “gumption”?

  110. MashaKasha*

    I’ve got a few

    1) My parents came to the US a year before my family and I did, and befriended a couple my age, who had immigrated at the same time my parents did. He was an accountant, she had a degree in foreign languages from our home country. My then-husband and I were programmers. Other Couple decided that they were somehow qualified to give us career advice. They sent us a really nasty email, which I cannot even quote because of how racist it was, when we as much as questioned it (“are you sure we need to do this?”) Their advice was to go get a Master’s degree at a US college. They said we would not be able to find work in our field without it. Our 5-year degrees evaluated to Master’s (from what I later heard), and we both had several years of work experience. I applied to a grad school and took the GRE the moment we arrived here, but somehow got an interview and a job offer in my field three months after we arrived, and so ended up not going to school. My parents held me against me for years. They said I’d ruined my career by… taking a job in my field?

    2) When a manager in OldJob#3 put me on probation out of the blue one day, my parents advised me to tell him that I could “work any number of hours” to get out of the probation. The whole thing turned out to be a political move on his end, to distract his own superiors from his own awful performance. He was demoted and then let go a year or so later. I never got around to telling him I was willing to stay in the office 24×7 to get on his good side.

    3) Not mine, but an ex’s grown child. Child (Daughter actually – this becomes important later) had graduated with honors with a degree in journalism, and was offered an unpaid internship in a magazine in NYC. Left the job a year later, after realizing there was no growth potential. Moved back in with her mother, and spent her time working retail jobs, applying to journalism jobs and grad programs, and doing all the right things to build up her resume (blogging, networking, and whatnot). (Got a job in her field another year later, and apparently still works in her field now – would not know for sure, I am not in touch with this ex.) Ex’s next-door neighbor one day slipped a catalog for a local career center under his door, with a sticky note that said “(Daughter) should look into welding classes. Women welders are currently in high demand because of their attention to detail.” Next-door neighbor was younger than I (probably late 30s at the time), and worked in an upper-management position at a large company. How did she even get this idea?

        1. ggg*

          The idea of lady welders reminded me that some companies that train highly skilled electronics technicians deliberately look for women who with elaborate nail art, because if they did it themselves, they definitely have the fine motor skills to work with delicate wiring. So you never know what will get you the job.

    2. Sk*

      I have heard of women’s welding groups trying to actively get more women into the trade —- but nothing about the transfer from welding to another industry.

  111. Mabel*

    This wasn’t a parent, but my Dad’s cousin, who is more like an aunt to me. She had a very successful career as a law firm manager, and is very smart, worldly, and usually well-informed, so I was surprised by the advice, but to be fair, she has been retired for over 20 years. Here’s what she said: “My headhunter friend says always write to an executive and lay out what you can do for him. Resumes tend to get buried by HR!” Maybe her headhunter friend wanted me to use their services when the advice backfired…?

  112. LawLady*

    I have 2:

    1. My mom has always worked a union job, and had the same job for about 20 years before retirement. The rules for her jobs were that when she’s off the clock, she is OFF. So she cannot understand that my job basically requires me to be reachable by email all the time. I took a few days off to visit around Christmas, but had to deal with a few things for work and she was totally frustrated that I was being made to work during off time. She thinks I’m being mistreated. (I’m not. I bill all hours I work and my job pays a wage commensurate with me being expected to be available 95% of the time.)

    2. My dad works a blue collar job and he just cannot believe that anything on a computer is real work. So when I visit and spend a few hours on my work laptop, he’s always like “stop playing, do something useful.” For him, the computer is mostly for playing solitaire, so maybe he thinks that’s what I do all day?

  113. saffytaffy*

    Oh, and I’ve said this before, but my Godfather insisted I should get a job in the mail room at Google.
    “Just go and give them your resume, and they’re always hiring- they’re ALWAYS hiring.”

      1. saffytaffy*

        YUP. I get that that’s where he’s coming from, but it’s the ‘mail room’ part that struck me as off.
        You know how Google is famous for the volume of printed correspondence they deal with.

  114. SheLooksFamiliar*

    For reference, my mother’s last paying job was in the 1940s when my father was in the Army Air Force. When I was in high school in the 70s I got a fast-food job, because who didn’t? She told me to flirt with my male manager so he would give me better shifts and – gasp! – a raise. ‘You’re a pretty girl and if you have to work, use it to your advantage.’

    My mother was a God-fearing, bible thumping fundamentalist who called me a whore because I wore mascara…but playing Lolita for my manager was apparently okay. For the record, I didn’t flirt with Joe, he was gay. Shoulda told my mother, just to see her head spin, but I didn’t.

  115. Eugenie*

    Not necessarily job-hunting advice. But my dad, who got his highly-specialized science PhD in the late 70s was convinced that me actually paying to get my MA was a con. He legit didn’t think that anybody (in any field) actually paid for their advanced degrees, the schools just want you so much that they pay you to attend! Maybe in the hard sciences, but not in Museum Studies, sorry dad!

    (I can, however, totally question the necessity for a masters for entry-level museum jobs, but at the time I finished undergrad that was just the only option)

    1. Frinkfrink*

      I followed my dad’s advice when I went to grad school, which was “Go where the best people are. The money will follow.”

      *He* got his PhD on the GI bill. *I* got multiple thousands of dollars in debt.

  116. nnn*

    Just remembered another one: when I was a teenager looking for my first job, non-parental adults would tell me to have my parents ask people they know to hire me.

    The problem: my parents didn’t know anyone who was in a position to hire teenagers. They didn’t know anyone who owned a business, who worked at a place that hired summer students, etc. They didn’t know anyone who was in the market for a non-adult babysitter or who was willing to pay to get yard work done.

    But the adults around me were adamant that my parents must know someone who needed to hire a teenager. I’d be like “You’re a person my parents know. Do you need to hire a teenager? Do you know anyone who needs to hire a teenager?” and this still wouldn’t convince them that perhaps there just isn’t anyone.

  117. misplacedmidwesterner*

    My mom once told me she always pictured me owning my own bookstore. This was in the early 2000s when it wasn’t yet super clear that bookstores were dodos. I looked so blankly at her that she backed out. I do love books (and am in a book-adjacent field), but I’ve never worked retail or had any desire to do much in the way of sales.

    1. MashaKasha*

      TBH, I believe the indie bookstores will survive; it’s the national chains that are the dodos. That said, I am totally understanding of the fact that not everyone wants to own one!

    2. Kate*

      I loved the idea of working in a bookstore when I was a teenager. As retail jobs go, it just seemed peaceful to be surrounded by books all day. My mom told me I would never get hired though because they only hired English majors. Only English majors read I guess…

      1. Autumnheart*

        My parents owned a used bookstore when I was growing up, and later I pulled a seasonal stint at a Barnes & Noble. It is a very peaceful job. No, they don’t care what your major is, although B&N did ask how much I liked reading, and what, in the interview. Turns out that’s how they decide what section to put you in, so you can be useful to customers looking for a particular book or genre.

    3. Inspector Spacetime*

      Awww, this is sweet. My mom has always said this to me, too, because I like to read. It never really occurred to her that I would need some business knowledge as well, hahaha.

      She’s also firmly convinced that I can be a wildly successful author because, again, I like to read.

      1. kible*

        I cooked a few good looking meals via Blue Apron, and my mom suggested I should open a restaurant. I THINK it was in a joking manner, even though she was surprised when I gave her the statistics about first-year restaurants…

  118. TheExchequer*

    My father told me to focus on school while in school, not having a job too. Definitely came back to bite me when I graduated during the 2012 recession. (He also taught me the value of showing up on time and integrity before his unexpected passing, so I forgave him for it).

    My mother thinks online jobs have certain keywords that you have to somehow figure out and then put in your resume to get it past the electronic screeener. I explained it doesn’t usually work quite that way, but I’m not sure she believes me. (She also thought smartphones ran off modems until about a year ago and struggles with the smart TV. New technology is not her forte). Despite her insistence otherwise, I also found out the hard way that office politics DO matter in keeping a job, not just hard work.

    1. PSB*

      Your mother isn’t entirely wrong. A lot of companies do use keyword searching when screening applicants, and not having the right ones really can keep your resume from being seen. But it’s not exactly reading tea leaves – usually the keywords are common skills or experience in the field.

      1. voluptuousfire*

        I don’t think this is true, in my experience in working with recruitment and ATS. I don’t think most employers do a search in their database for applicants for the one role they’re looking for. They’d likely focus in the requisition itself for applicants. Then again, I could see that for agency recruiters, searching for keywords but I’d gather it’s not usual in most companies with a proper ATS.

        Although it is always good to have your resume prepped for such an occasion, hedging your bets.

      2. Leela*

        I agree it doesn’t work *quite* that way, but as a former in-house recruiter, it can! We got something insane like 100 applications per role per day, loads of which were not even slightly relevant and I had no idea why they were applying (engineer at a bank now wanting to be an engineer here makes sense, VIP of a bank wanting to be an engineer here doesn’t), and we didn’t use a keyword search but the most relevant ones would pass through some kind of “show us the relevant stuff first” filter. I might have seen you if you didn’t pass it, but if I have 10 good candidates that pass that filter I’m going to schedule them and see how that goes before probing into number 87 just to see what it looks like. Recruiters are very very busy and have to snatch people up before other companies do if they’re a good fit, and we’re generally hiring multiple positions at a time. Every work day felt 5 minutes long because of the constant running around and the high work load/time pressure, I rarely had time to look through all the candidates for curiosity’s sake unless we really couldn’t find an obvious match right away.

        Having said that, it should be extremely obvious from the job posting what those key words might be. If I’m hiring for a java dev with project management, then having “java dev” and “project management” (or some variation of it, “project manager” would still count) on your resume should do it, you don’t need to magically guess that I want to see “teamwork” or “stellar” or something like that. As always there are exceptions to the rule but I think in general that would do it

    2. MakesThings*

      From what I understand, it works pretty much exactly like this when you’re applying for federal jobs via usajobs.gov

  119. PB*

    I should have thought of this sooner! I found a job that I’m very good at and that I’m passionate about. My father has tried to tell me I should find a job in another field that I’m not passionate about and isn’t part of my natural skill set to “challenge myself.”

    Thanks for the input, Dad.

    1. MashaKasha*

      It’s like a reverse “find a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life” (which, of course, is also inaccurate).

      “Find a job you hate, and…” (????) “… profit?”

    4. Engineering consultant*

      Bit similar to my parents – “You should find a job that pays more but you don’t have to like it. Just as long as there’s one part of it you kind of like/am good at.”

      That’s the worst advice they’ve ever given, so after reading all these comments I think my parents are pretty decent. I graduated and got my first entry level job during the recession, so of course the pay was terrible. I’ve since moved onto another firm, doing the same thing that I’m very good at and love, and getting paid significantly more doing my job.

  120. saagpaneer*

    A friend of mine is the CEO of a small firm. He was hiring someone for an entry-level sales job. Eventually, he picked a candidate and made him a salary offer.

    A couple days later he got a phone call from the candidate’s father. The father said, “I’m calling on behalf of my son. He appreciates the offer, but that salary is too low. We think he should start at [a higher salary].”

    My friend said, “You’re his father? And you’re calling to negotiate salary? OK, I’m revoking the offer.” Then he hung up and hired someone else.

      1. Thlayli*

        Yeah that’s pretty harsh. I would have called the kid first to check if he had asked his Dad to do that.

  121. Delta Delta*

    My parents have always been very hands-off with me about school and work. I was looking for new work a couple years ago and didn’t ask my parents for advice (or tell them what I was doing). We’re in different fields and they both retired at least 10 years ago.

  122. BronzeFire*

    My dad kept telling me to “get a paper route” for my first job. The newspapers in our area were delivered before dawn by a lady in a minivan. I really don’t know how he expected a 13 year old on a bike, living several miles from “the paper” to pull that off while still completing homework and getting sleep. But I still got my work permit, just in case The Paper was hiring.

    1. strawberries and raspberries*

      Getting a paper route also sounds like a great way to get kidnapped, FWIW.

    2. saffytaffy*

      We must have the same dad!! Because mine had a bike route in suburban NJ in 1960, I should do the same thing through the dairy farms of PA in 1996.

      1. BronzeFire*

        It was especially confusing, because my dad grew up in a very rural area, too. But he would milk cows in the dark before school as one of his first jobs. No cows in the area where I grew up, just endless cabbage and wheat fields. So obviously, I should have biked dozens of miles to get to The Paper. My first paid gig ended up being babysitting a nine year old girl, who was obsessed with Zelda and Pokemon, a couple years after my father let his visions of me delivering Papers die.

    3. JustaTech*

      Are *any* newspapers still delivered by children? I live in a city and the paper delivery folks all drive cars (if you’re ever up very early in a residential area and you find a car idling in the street with the door open, it’s probably newspaper delivery). And when I lived in the outer suburbs the paper was delivered by adults in cars then too.

      I mean, my *dad* delivered newspapers by bike, but by the time his younger sisters were old enough that job was gone.

      1. A.R.P*

        It used to be here. There was only one newspaper you paid for, and it hired older kids/preteens to deliver papers. They stopped when they stopped charging

    4. Al Lo*

      In my area, kids got (get? I’m not sure anymore) flyer routes. They didn’t deliver papers, but they delivered the advertising supplements. Delivery didn’t happen in the morning, and the routes were smaller, I think, than the paper routes.

      That was my husband’s first job in the early- to mid-90s, when he was a pre-teen and early teen.

  123. Edina Monsoon*

    My parents think that you cannot, under any circumstances ever leave a job without another one lined up. Even when I worked in an office that was so cold I kept getting chest infections from working there or when my boss decided to only pay half my salary because he couldn’t afford to pay me (he still managed 2 foreign holidays that year though!)

    It was such a revelation when I realised that now I’m an adult my parents aren’t the boss of me and I can do what I want!

    1. puzzld*

      Yeah. My Dad was horrified when I quit my job to go to grad school. Even though the school was offering assistantships so the program and room and board were covered… and I had a tentative offer of a job (where I still work 30 years later) upon completion of my MLIS. IT’S NOT A SURE THING!!!

  124. Hildegard Von Bingen*

    My parents always figured my career was my business and never offered unsolicited advice. They would not have dreamed of accompanying me to a job interview. They were concerned about some of the guys I went out with, but not about my job searches or career advancement. They knew I’d be OK, and I was.

    I did ask my mother for job advice just once. I interviewed for a job with a psychologist, to be his personal assistant, when I was 18. It was one of the first job interviews I’d been on (other than high school babysitting).

    He told me part of my job would be to keep a journal covering the time from “when we were strangers to when we were lovers.” I was so stunned I just wrapped up the interview and left. For the first and last time in my life I experienced what I guess is cognitive dissonance. It was just SO out of bounds, so completely at odds with anything I’d expected to hear during a job interview.

    The guy called me at home that night, asking me if I wanted the job. I asked him to hold on. I was still in total disbelief, but I knew I’d heard his words correctly. I asked my mom if what he said meant what I thought it meant. She laughed and said yes it did, that he was a dirty old man, and not to take the job. I resumed the call and told him I didn’t want it. I think I would have said that anyway. But I’ll never forget that experience, and how comforting it was to hear my mom confirm my misgivings and back up my gut instinct. She taught me to trust my instincts. Thanks mom!

  125. Blue Anne*

    My mom routinely tells me to remove any trace of my queerness and depression from social media. Do not list as interested in females, do not talk about dates with women or “like” queer pages, do not post about medication or therapy or mental health news or progress. She says that someday these things may prevent me from getting a job I want, even though I’ve told her I wouldn’t want to work anywhere that doesn’t want a bisexual employee, and every time I’ve been job hunting I’ve found something good within three weeks. And when I got a huge corporate job, they told me that they hadn’t been able to find any trace of me on social media, so I know my privacy settings are good. Mom doesn’t care, scrub it for professional reasons.

    Sigh.

    1. Snark*

      This is in large part why my wife has largely estranged herself from many of her mom’s side of the family – the unrelenting “we’re FINE with it OF COURSE, but whatever will the rabbi/our friends/your grandmother/your next boss think about it” pressure to re-closet herself and conceal the facts that she’s bi, in an open relationship, and occasionally dates women even though she’s married to a guy (oh, and maybe don’t mention him so much, we’re FINE that you married a goyim but the old neighborhood is atwitter about it).

    3. saffytaffy*

      I’m so sorry you have to navigate that, and I’m sorry your mother has that kind of anxiety over your success and safety. Bless you both.

  126. Van Wilder*

    My dad has never worked in an office but when I got my first office job, he had lots of advice. My favorite was that he hypothesized that if I wore heels to work, I could also keep “fuzzy slippers” under my desk and wear them while sitting there. He brought up several times, specifically, *fuzzy* slippers. (I have yet to bring slippers of any variety to work.)

    1. LawLady*

      Well… my office is freezing and you can’t see my feet if you just glance into my office, so… I definitely keep a heating pad under my desk on my feet. I think your dad has it exactly right! Maybe I should get some fuzzy slippers…

    2. Curious Cat*

      Eep! is it bad that I literally right now have my feet inside some cozy Ugg boots? My feet are hidden under my desk, but still, it’s darn cold today on the east coast! :)

      1. Blue Anne*

        I wear ballet flats to work and constantly slip out of them to sit with my feet tucked in cross-legged… maybe I shouldn’t, but no one really cares when I’m in my little cube.

        So I wouldn’t worry about the ugg boots, personally! :)

    3. Qmatilda*

      Many a female associate in my old firm kept slippers of some sort under the desk…long nights and trial prep make for wanting to slip off the stilettos.

      1. Delta Delta*

        So glad to practice law in a laid back sort of place. I wore my LL Bean duck boots to court for a motion hearing today. Whatevs. It’s snowing.

    4. voluptuousfire*

      I keep slippers under my desk and use them daily. We tend to be pretty casual, so its not unusual to see some coworkers walking around barefoot. (That I never got, btw.)

  127. autophage*

    I’m a guy with long hair – not “kinda long for a guy” shoulder-length hair, but “down to below the middle of my back”.

    My parents always told me that I’d end up cutting it once I started looking for real jobs. I ended up in software development and have always kinda figured that, yeah, I’d probably cut it eventually, maybe next time I’m looking for a job.

    I interviewed for my current job (as a consultant) a bit over a year ago. I thought the interview went badly, but it turned out (long story short) that it didn’t.

    Fast-forward to a few weeks ago, when one of my coworkers mentioned “oh, we never told you about your hair!” I asked what he meant, and he related that he’d talked to the person that interviewed me shortly after and asked how the interview had gone. My interviewer’s response was apparently “Did you see the pony tail on him? Guy *definitely* knows what he’s talking about.”

    The more likely scenario is that he was kidding, but part of me wonders if he didn’t think it was some sort of power play.

    1. LawLady*

      So I took a class with a guy at the business school where I went to law school who had this whole thing about “performing power.” The whole idea was that if you do something that is obviously not the norm, you’ll be displaying that you’re a person who is confident in his skills and/or in control. Sortof like the person who is a total rockstar, so can wear flip flops even though that’s really not within the dress code.

      He would totally have approved of your ponytail.

      1. Thlayli*

        OMG this makes so much sense! I’ve totally seen people get away with more if they’re good at their job.

    2. Rusty Shackelford*

      “Did you see the pony tail on him? Guy *definitely* knows what he’s talking about.”

      LOVE THIS.

    3. Blue Anne*

      I really think that’s a thing with software development. I know a lot of developers, and the ones who know the most always seem to be the ones who just don’t give a crap about trying to look like a corporate drone. To the point where if I ever have to hire one, I’m probably going to be looking for a bushy beard or blue hair. :P

    4. saffytaffy*

      My dear friend is a vet, and he’s finally confident enough in his medical skills to grow out his dreadlocks again. I get this.

  128. Laura*

    Not advice necessarily.

    But I want/need to transfer and my folks don’t quite understand that I have to wait for a position to open and be available. And that I don’t have (possibly any/enough) political capital/pull to get that transfer any earlier and while my management is lovely- I don’t want to ask for any string-pulling on them.

    1. Ally*

      My parents think I’m a lot more valuable to my company than I really am. Like I can ask for absurd benefits or accommodations – it’s just not happening. They don’t quite understand, but it is flattering, of course.

  129. Ruth (UK)*

    My parents haven’t ever told me anything especially outrageous though they’re just a little out of date with how things work. My dad was a teacher (recently retired) and taught in the same highschool for the last 35 years of his career. My mom also worked in a school (non teaching role) and held her most recent position nearly 20 years, so neither were very up to date with job hunting, especially outside of school based jobs.

    Both my parents think my ear piercings are ‘extreme’ and will prevent me getting hired in almost any setting (though I recently managed to get a new job in a university (admin job)). In my left ear, I have two lobe, and one outer cartilage piercing. In the right ear, I have the same, plus a rook piercing. All are quite small (ball closure rings or those small stud-sized bars). I also have long hair so they’re not even immediately noticeable. My mom often tells me that they are going to prevent me from getting a job. If I point out I have had several jobs that haven’t cared about them, including being currently fly employed at a university which I, at present, forsee myself not necessarily leaving for a long time, she says these are flukes and I need to get rid of the pricings at once… Even though I could remove them at any time in the future if I decided I didn’t want them or couldn’t have them any longer…

  130. TiffIf*

    Sometimes I find myself very grateful for the fact that I have completely sane and normal job/boss/family/parents.

    The first job I had (in high school) was one my mother helped me get; she found out from a lady at church that her department was hiring for a position that was absolutely appropriate and in reach for a high schooler (Wal-Mart 1 Hour Photo Lab) and asked me if I was interested. So my mom helped me network, but that was it. Once I got the job it was all my responsibility.

    Then I moved 1500 miles away for college and haven’t lived in my home state since. My parents ask how I’m doing, how work is going etc, but have never interfered in any way or offered unsolicited advice.

  131. iglwif*

    My father paid his university tuition–in the late 1940s/early 1950s–via a summer job as a gandydancer and a part-time job as a building night watchman. He went on to become a tenured professor in the humanities, and the combination of those experiences forever shaped his perceptions of what the working world is like. Which presumably explains why he lectured me all through university about how I shouldn’t think I was too good to pay my own way with “a job at McDonald’s or Co-op”. In actual fact, I had a tuition scholarship and RESP money to pay for my room and board, so applying for a job at a fast food place or a supermarket was not really a top priority for me.

    1. LawLady*

      My mom’s a high school counselor and she has talked with SO MANY parents who have no interest in saving to help their kids with college tuition because “they can just get summer jobs to pay for it.” No matter how often she explains that tuition has skyrocketed, all she ever hears are “back in my day” stories.

      1. JustaTech*

        Yeah, and I bet “back in their day” your *used* textbooks for just first semester freshman year didn’t cost $500 either.
        I totally respect families that want to do college debt-free, but that takes tons of planning, not hoping for 6-figure summer jobs.

    2. Blue Eagle*

      Your comment just reminded me that we need to make a reservation for dinner at our favorite restaurant – the Gandy Dancer, for our anniversary!

      1. Delta Delta*

        I suspect you live in one of the most wonderful midwestern cities. I also lived there in the late 90s and worked at the florist around the corner from the Gandy Dancer. Alas, now it’s condos. Have a wonderful dinner!

        And if I got this wrong, I still hope you have a wonderful dinner!

  132. Ally*

    I was working up the courage to ask for a raise and my dad advised me that the only way to get one was to turn in your notice. My boss would then offer me more money in order to get me to stay. My dad is still certain that this is the correct (and only) method for negotiating a raise.

    1. Ally*

      I suppose I should also add that while I was freshman in college I really wanted to be an intern in my dad’s office. He was the VP at the time and I thought it was perfectly normal for me to work in his office over the summer. He said flat out no, that it was not appropriate, and I was offended lol.

      I did look into some internships but my parents were flabbergasted when I explained that they were unpaid. I worked 20-30 hours a week throughout college and they thought it was super absurd to work for free. Having an internship in my desired field would have been really helpful when applying after graduation though.

  133. Tilly*

    I worked at Footlocker in high school and was hoping to move over to working at Victoria’s Secret bc they paid .75 cents more an hour. During this time, Dru Sjodin in North Dakota (one state north) was murdered walking to her car after working a shift at Victoria’s Secret. My mom was convinced Victoria’s Secret attracted weirdos and pervs and forbid me from working there. Meanwhile back at Footlocker (and several restaurant jobs to follow), the amount of inappropriate behavior I received from managers and coworkers is disturbing to reflect back on but at least I wasn’t selling panties to pervs (satire).

    1. Tilly*

      I should also mention in previous corporate Fortune 500 job, a colleague and her children were kidnapped at gunpoint by her estranged husband in the underground parking garage in front of several people and security. Goes to show… (Also, they were all ok and found.)

    2. saffytaffy*

      Actually the VS near my 2nd job has a walk-out policy specifically because they have a problem with men following the employees.
      Apparently VS also has a national reputation for getting a lot of counterfeit cash?

    3. Pollygrammer*

      I probably wouldn’t want to work at a Lululemon after one employee murdered another…

  134. Jackie Paper*

    When I was 16 I had a terrible time getting hired for my first job, because I was 16 and had no experience in anything whatsoever. My mom convinced me that I should put down my black belt in Karate on my application to work at a restaurant, because it would show commitment or something … even though I was a super skinny white kid and “earned” it at a martial arts place where they give anyone who pays the fees a black belt … not because I could actually kick anyone’s a**.

    Anyways, I highly doubt that helped me get the job, but because everyone who works in restaurants is a huge blabbermouth, it DID mean I got made fun of for the several years I worked there because I wrote that I had a black belt on my job application. Thanks mom.

    Also, I’m pretty much (100%) positive that what did get me the job was having a relative with an “in” call and ask the manager to hire me.

  135. dear liza dear liza*

    I think I shared this on the gumption thread but…

    My grandmother is always pushing us to join the local Democratic party because “that’s how you get jobs.” Gram, Tamany Hall closed a long time ago!

    1. doreen*

      This might not actually be inaccurate. I’ve worked for state and local government agencies, and in both , political connections will not help you get the lower level , civil service jobs but they are definitely a plus ( maybe even necessary) for the “serves at the pleasure of” jobs.

    2. Lynn Whitehat*

      I’m active in my local Democratic Party, and I don’t think it’s a totally cracked idea. People are always looking for ways to connect and be of use to one another, but it’s small enough that we all have to live with each other, so we want to keep a good reputation. If my company were hiring and a fellow active Dem said I should look at their friend’s resume, I would definitely look.

  136. Irish Em*

    My uncle has given me sound advice for panel interviews, but he told me not to work on cover letters, and gave me a template for cover letters that always works… It’s the most generic possible cover letter imaginable. For example:

    Dear Sir/Madam,

    I am applying for the role of Teapot Consultant.

    I am very interested in this role and feel I have the required experience and qualifications. I look forward to hearing from you.

    Sincerely,
    IrishEm

      1. SL #2*

        I imagine this, visually, to be along the lines of Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind, except she would be clothed.

  137. Curious Cat*

    In college I interviewed for an internship at a place that specialized in a certain disease (think: a cancer research organization). I’ve actually had a few family members unfortunately pass away due to the disease, and my dad told me before going into the interview that I should talk about them and how it affected me. Needless to say, no, I did not go in and discuss my dead family members with my interviewers.

    1. Esme Squalor*

      While bringing up your dead family members right off the bat would certainly be awkward, it doesn’t seem like it would be a terrible idea to connect with the organization’s mission if it comes up by saying something like, “This disease has impacted my family, which has helped me understand why research/education/prevention is so needed.”

      1. Curious Cat*

        True! And I did do something along those lines of mentioning that I was pretty passionate about that field, but decided specifically mentioning my deceased family members wasn’t necessarily something I felt comfortable doing in an interview.

  138. RedSonja*

    As I was wrapping up my MS in animal welfare science, my husband and I visited my family for some holiday or another. I shared some interesting animal facts I’ve picked up through the years, nothing earth shattering. Later, as we’re talking about my job search, and how there was very little in my field in our geographic area, my grandfather chimed in. He suggested that I go around to local schools talking about animals. 1) Talk about animals for free 2) ????? 3) Profit! seemed to be the business plan there.

    My husband still teases me about this if I grumble about my (field appropriate) job.

  139. Liz*

    At age 14 or 15 I was appointed to be a moderator on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer message board. My grandma said I should put this leadership achievement on my resume. I did not bother explaining why that would not actually be a good idea.

  140. MashaKasha*

    Not the parents, but the first career advice I got upon arriving in the US was from the landlady in my apartment building. We arrived in the evening. She came by to say hi the next morning (we had not even started unpacking yet), and said, “By the way, I’ve got a job for you.” It was a babysitting job for a woman who lived on my floor, and had 13-month-old twin daughters. The job paid $3/hour cash. It was 1997. I had two sons, a four-year-old and a 15-month-old. I asked the landlady who would watch my own kids while I babysat the neighbor’s, and she said “oh just watch all four together, how hard can it be”. (She herself had one teenage child.) When I said no, she sounded hurt, and told me “This is a very good offer. I wouldn’t say no if I were you”.

    I said no because I’d heard that Americans were fond of suing everyone into oblivion (remember, this was my second day in the country…), and I was afraid that, if something happened to one of the toddlers on my watch, that the parent would sue me.

    2. Leela*

      To be fair, your fears may have been grounded. A friend of mine works with schools who are being sued or legally challenged and last year she told me that a mother was trying to sue a school because her son didn’t get off at the correct bus stop and that caused her emotional distress.

      To clarify: the kid didn’t stay on the bus all the way back to the depot with the driver not realizing/caring, the kid simply looked up, went “oops, missed my stop”, and got off with the kids on the next stop. The mother was contending that every bus driver should know the stop for every individual child, K-12, so that they could personally go around and remind anyone who didn’t get off at the stop closest to where they lived.

      1. MashaKasha*

        OMG. So the kid was ok, and got home maybe five minutes later than usual, but the mother was in emotional distress? Riiight.

  141. Liz*

    I’m a non-practicing attorney, and work as a policy analyst, and work on energy issues. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty good at what I do, well recognized in my field, and perfectly happy with what I’m doing. I’ve also got a decent work-life balance, which I value a lot because I have a young child.

    My mom does not understand why I don’t want to work for a law firm. She went so far as to try to get her friend, a family law attorney, to hire me when she had an opening as a receptionist so I could “get my foot in the door” to becoming a real lawyer.

  142. Katriona*

    When I was in high school applying for my first part-time job not only did my dad insist that I had to show up in person, he made me go in my school uniform because “all employers know that Catholic school kids are more reliable”. This was based on his own experience as a Catholic school kid in the 70s — it definitely wasn’t true in 2005, at least not where I went to school. My mom also made me call to “follow up” which obviously didn’t help my case either. Needless to say I didn’t get the job.

  143. Anony Mess*

    Going anon for this. When I was about 10, I was identified as gifted through IQ testing, and my result was pretty high. My dad was very excited about this and gave me the following advice:
    1. Study nuclear physics. He went so far as to take me to the public library and make me check out a stack of books on nuclear physics. I don’t think I ever read them.
    2. This is a direct quote: “Don’t let the government get hold of you.” He explained that if “the government” found out about my IQ, they’d… I dunno… lock me in some facility and make me work for them or something. He was never really clear on what he thought they would do to me.

    For context, it was the 1970s, Dad had a very Cold War mindset–and he was mentally ill. He would also introduce me to his acquaintances and then tell them my IQ. It was horribly embarrassing.

    And in case anyone is wondering: I am not a nuclear physicist, and I am not writing this from a secure government facility :-)

    1. nnn*

      I feel like a career in nuclear physics may well lead to working in a secure government facility…

      1. Student*

        Yes, it’s quite likely. Our job options are pretty much:

        (1) Work for the government (or at least a government) doing nuclear physics.
        (2) Work for a government contractor doing nuclear physics – still basically working for the government in terms of secure facilities and whatnot, but with a better salary and more perks.
        (3) Work for a large nuclear power company doing nuclear physics – not the same as working for the government, but the government is heavily involved.
        (4) Work in anything requiring math, general science, or problem-solving that is not actually nuclear physics. This is actually a fairly popular and lucrative option for people with nuclear physics degrees. Might still end up being a government or government-contract worker, though.

  144. Double Citizen Gal*

    I have double citizenship, so two years ago I started applying for jobs in the UK through LinkedIn. Although I applied for multiple jobs that I was qualified for, I wasn’t getting any responses (and now that I’m reading this blog I suspect it partially had to do with how my resume was done), and my mom’s advice was that I also apply for jobs in other countries within europe, not just the UK… despite the fact that I’m only fluent in portuguese and english. She thought it wouldn’t be such a big deal if I didn’t speak the country’s official language for some reason :P I explained to her why that wasn’t a good idea and she understood and didn’t insist on it. Thankfully that was the only wacky job seeking advice she ever gave me – both her and my dad helped me greatly and gave me really good advice when I started applying and interviewing for jobs.

    Unfortunately, I never did get a job in Europe, because two weeks into my job hunt the Brexit referendum came out, and I knew that most employees would hesitate to hire a non-UK citizen, especially one that wasn’t even living in Europe yet. So I immediatelly change gears on my search, and about a month later I got a really good job in my region; they’re in the talks of transferring me to their US office. Success!

  145. Asperger Hare*

    “Make sure you look them in the eye.”

    I’m AUTISTIC.

    (I will therefore look the interviewee on the bridge of their nose.)

    1. saffytaffy*

      Bless. Well, it does make a difference, though! I’m so proud of my Aspie friend for putting in the effort to make moderate amounts of eye contact. I know it doesn’t come naturally, but it really does help the person you’re talking to feel comfortable.

      1. Asperger Hare*

        Definitely. I have learned to fake it so much that I even got a job as a receptionist! I know that for most people, eye contact is pleasant and not exhausting and stressful, so I try to emulate neurotypical behaviour as much as I am able to.

        1. saffytaffy*

          Good for you! I hope you’re able to balance between emulating and being your own uncensored self when it’s comfortable for you.

    2. Anonicat*

      Same…except we just did a study about freckles in the iris and now I’m looking people in the actual eye and counting, instead of, you know, paying attention. I’m nerd-sniping myself with other people’s eyes!

  146. LostInTheStacks*

    This is more of an industry-specific issue than general clueless job advice, but I still have to sidestep it every few months. I’m getting a masters in public history (basically any kind of history that takes place outside a classroom–museums, conservation, archives, non-academic writing, etc). I’m lucky to be at a university with a really excellent union, so as a TA I get paid about $25/hour. My dad is thrilled about this, and seems to think it’s an indication that I should stay in academia and become a professor. As if adjuncts are really well-paid, or anyone would hire a public historian with no practical experience in the field, or if the ratio of graduating history PhDs to open academic positions wasn’t 9-to-1 or even higher…

    1. Tech Comm Geek*

      My mother is still cranky that I didn’t get my PhD in history and become a professor. She brought it up enouch that I developed a standard response: “Because I’m fond of eating and living indoors; these are entirely optional with a history PhD!”

  147. Triplestep*

    Slightly off topic, but I thought I’d mention that *I* am now the parent offering advice, and the ONLY advice I have offered is to read this blog! I even provided the link to the Cover Letter entry collection.

    Unfortunately my daughter did not read Alison’s advice, but instead opened the first example, and proceeded to write an intensely personal cover letter that was totally inappropriate for the job in question. So I went back and gave her links to the advice entries (“Read this first!”) with instructions to then read the examples and comments.

    Next advice (fingers crossed) will be to read the sections on preparing for an interview!

    1. OlympiasEpiriot*

      Yeah. My kid likes this site. I figured this was a good source of wide-ranging advice and experiences. I’m happy to share mine, but, hey, I’ve learned a lot on here, figured they could, too.

      1. Triplestep*

        Heh, reading more of the advice here from people’s parents, I wonder if my kids are looking at me the same way. “My mother wants me to read a blog to get advice on writing a good cover letter. A BLOG!”

    2. PantsOnFire*

      The cover letter section has been SO helpful to me. I only wish my parents had been able to give me those kinds of resources!

  148. Parcae*

    My mom’s job advice improved dramatically once I convinced her to start reading AAM. (Hi, Mom!)

  149. Allison Marie*

    When I graduated from college (2001), it was a terrible time for job hunting. Angry because I didn’t have a full time employment right away (though I worked a retail job in the meantime), my mother INSISTED the best way to apply for a job was going directly to an employer’s office and dropping off a resume (whether there was an opening or not). Unsurprisingly, this did not generate a job for me.

  150. PSB*

    This makes me wonder what common knowledge about looking for work will be hopelessly outdated by the time my son’s looking for a job, and what the new quirks will be. “Dad, nobody gets a job by applying on a website anymore. Jeez. Now you open UberJobs every morning and go to work wherever it tells you for that day.”

    1. Rusty Shackelford*

      “A resume? Are you serious? No one’s written a resume for the last 20 years, Mom.”

    2. saffytaffy*

      “Ugh, Dad told me to negotiate my salary in CURRENCY, when everybody knows since the apocalypse that fresh water and protein blocks are where it’s at.”

  151. The Claims Examiner*

    “You just have to get out there and pound the pavement.” said in the year 2009. What does that even mean in 2009?

    Also, “you’re not even trying”. A large chemical corporation and several coal and natural gas companies left the area the year I graduated from college. They were the main employers in the area, so I had to go apply to jobs fresh out of college with no experience and compete against people with 10+ years of experience trying to get literally any job to keep the lights on.

    No, walking around door to door with a resume in hand does not work in the city.

    1. Jo*

      I definitely was told to “pound the pavement” in 2014, and was also forced by my parents to actually do it. Yep, guess what I heard at every. single. place? “Apply online.” And my parents still don’t get it. Sheesh. No wonder I ran away to a foreign country to work! Guess how much control they can manage to exert on my from half a world away?

  152. ggg*

    My mom always wanted her kids to golf, because “business gets done on the golf course.” We never did. Good thing this has never come up for any of us.

    1. Falling Diphthong*

      In fairness, my brother-in-law learned to play golf because this happened a lot in his field. (Consulting.) He doesn’t do it for pleasure, but he can whack the ball around if called on professionally to do so.

      1. Triplestep*

        Yep, my sister-in-law, too. It’s just like that episode of Friends in which Rachel tries to take up smoking because important decisions are getting made without her on smoke breaks.

        1. ggg*

          I don’t think it’s *terrible* advice. But neither my parents, nor anyone we knew, ever did business on a golf course. It’s like they watched an episode of Knots Landing where it happened once.

          Little Brother did have to go fly fishing for work one time and wasn’t prepared for that either (although I heard it went fine).

    2. H.C.*

      Ha, the only golfing I’ve ever done is the miniature variety; I’m not sure how useful that’ll be in closing deals (“Cool, you got it past the windmill; why don’t we shake on this & get a soda at the concession booth?”)

      But yeah, my friends in finance have gotten similar advice from their folks (specifically, you gotta learn how to swing a club & hold your liquor.)

    3. JustaTech*

      A high school classmate of mine went to business camp one summer (yes really, it was the mid-90’s) and one of the afternoons was spent learning the basics of golf. Mostly what not to do (when to be quiet, where not to stand, etc). She said that it was fun and would probably be useful because that’s where you have off-the-record conversations.

    4. MashaKasha*

      I worked with a guy who joined the company’s golf league so he could network with the upper management. Then proceeded to habitually cheat at golf when playing on that league. He did make a name for himself with the upper management; just not the kind he had been going after.

  153. GreenDoor*

    My parents butted out. (Thanks mom and dad!) But not my grandparents.
    Grampas’ advice was that you just “go there and walk up to the foreman and tell him (yes, in 2015, assume it’s a Him in charge) you’re a good worker and you can start today.” Because there’s no such thing as an application process. Or building security. And of course, in any line of work where there’s a foreperson, it surely must be safe to just walk out onto the shop floor and of course, said supervisor can drop whatever they’re doing and hire you on the spot.

    My brother, at age 19, worked at a grocery store as a bagger and stocker for minimum wage. Announced to the family he was quitting to enlist in the Army. Gramma blew a gasket saying, “You can’t quit!! You’ll lose all your seniority!!” Nevermind that retail has so much turnover that seniority is irrelevant. Or that the military would teach him job skills and him tuition assistance so he could, perhaps, get a management degree and run the whole store. Nope. She kept insisting that he stay and keep his seniority and just “work your way up to manager.”

  154. GriefBacon*

    My parents insisted that my brothers and I study something we loved in college (as opposed to picking a major because it had good job prospects). They were paying for it, so fair enough. According to them, getting a good liberal arts education meant we could get a job doing pretty much anything after college! And also, internships were bad because only paid work mattered, so I wasn’t allowed to do any.

    So I studied comparative religion and American studies…and as it turned out, there were NO jobs to be had when I graduated in 2008. And that’s how I ended up with an unwanted career in retail. I’ve since escaped, but I feel like I wasted my all of my 20’s in retail, trying to avoid homelessness and living off food stamps, because my parents thought the only necessary qualifications for every job ever was “B.A. + ability to think critically and write.”

    My dad also regularly sends me job postings for things I’m not even remotely interested in, or super unqualified for — typically right after I’ve accepted a new job, or if I’m in the middle of a contract. Pretty sure I could be President of the USA, and he’d still be sending me job postings.

    1. Triplestep*

      I graduated high school in 1981, and I was told the same thing about college by my parents – major did not matter, just learn how to think and write, get a degree. I quit after two years then restarted at an architecture school, so somehow I figured things out on my own. However, this did not stop my mother from telling my *children* that they don’t need to have any idea in college of what they want to do professionally. They are keenly aware that well-meaning grandma is wrong.

      1. LadyKelvin*

        Yeah that was the advice I got from my parents when I graduated high school in 2005. To be fair, neither of my parents went to college, they both own their own businesses/worked in steel until it collapsed so they were just thrilled that any of us were going to college. I majored in biology and went on to get my masters and PhD and am now doing research but I had a plan from the start. My brother also got a degree in engineering and has had no trouble getting jobs. My sister couldn’t decide what to major it, got a degree in english because she likes reading, and had floundered since. I purposely picked the topic I got my PhD in knowing that the skills were in demand and there would be a job for me when I got out.

    2. Thlayli*

      OMG this is my pet peeve! I absolutely hate it when people insist that college is for learning whatever you are interested in. Like yeah, I enjoy learning about all sorts of things. But that is what hobbies are for. You want to study comparative religion, take an evening class. Learn whatever you want! Learning is fun.

      But absolutely 100% do NOT waste four years of your life and a heck of a lot of money (and in most countries get into a heck of a lot of debt) to get a degree in a subject that is utterly useless for getting a job! If you’re going to spend four years and a bunch of money on it, make it an investment in your future, not just a fun learning experience.

      1. Thlayli*

        We were actually talking about this today in work. Where I live is just slowly coming out of recession now and I swear every single person I know with an arts degree either did a different course afterwards or is unemployed.

      2. GriefBacon*

        I should say, if I could go back, I would absolutely still major in comparative religion and American studies. I really did gain great skills that I still fall back on now — I got a job in program evaluation because I talked about how my education trained me to make evidence-based arguments and talk about data in a qualitative way.

        But I do wish I would have spent time thinking about what I wanted to do after college, and preparing myself for that/getting some experience before I graduated. Or developed some marketable skills before graduating. There are a lot of things my degree would have been useful for (politics/policy, publishing, non-profits, education, social work, etc), but none of them without some sort of experience.

        1. Blue*

          This is really key. I work at a liberal arts college, and in my experience, major doesn’t really limit ability to find jobs *as long as the student has also built work experience in a particular field.* Music, Classics, Art History, whatever – if they get internships and student jobs that help them figure out what they want to do and gain relevant experience, they’re generally in fine shape, even if they’re pursuing work completely unrelated to their degree.

          Personally, I’m a “study what you love” advocate; I studied history in both college and grad school. My dad felt differently – he would only contribute to our education if we majored in something with a clear career path. He didn’t care about earning potential, just employability, so I double majored to satisfy him. But even though I don’t actually do history-related work now, the skills I developed studying history are far more important in my career than any skills I picked in my other major or my minor, both of which were “practical” choices. One of the reasons I’ve excelled in my job is a mastery of both details and the big picture and, more importantly, a strong sense of their relationship to each other. That’s a natural strength of mine, but it was dramatically enhanced by studying history.

          Admittedly, that wasn’t planned – I got lucky. If I could do it again, I would axe the business minor that I hated and have never used, minored in something fun (like Women’s Studies) and actually gotten professional experience while a student.

    3. PantsOnFire*

      This is one thing I’m grateful for my parents for discouraging. While I wish they’d also said “you should like your major/job at least a little bit” I did get a fairly pragmatic degree (with a professional license) from a state university. I have zero debt and even though I don’t like the field, it’s also not too hard to find a job. I wasted a lot of time in college being jealous of my high school classmates at top rated liberal arts schools though.

    4. Leah*

      Yeah I feel this. When I was in high school, back in 2007-2009, EVERYONE in my school – friends, then-boyfriend, and even some teachers! – told me I should NOT go to college if it’s to study something I don’t like, and if I did I’d forever regret it. My parents, however, struggled with money, which meant they could not afford anything other than a public (aka tuition-free) local college. Still, people kept trying to convince me that my parents were wrong and that I should try and do whatever it took to ~follow my dreams~ to be an illustrator. My mom worked VERY HARD to explain to me that even if I did manage to get a 100% scholarship, they still wouldn’t be able to afford the long-distance bus to and from college every day, since the course I wanted to take was an hour and a half away by bus. Not to mention that the market for illustrators where I live was and still is is either nonexistent or highly underpaid. It took some coaxing, because I was stubborn, impressionable, and didn’t want to listen to reason. Those were some very stressful times for her and my dad.

      In the end, the nail on the coffin for my dreamy teenage self was when I found out that a local artist that I followed couldn’t get a steady gig. She was – and still is – an amazing illustrator, and I thought “if she can’t do it, then I don’t stand a lick of a chance.” So I ended up going to a local, prestigious, free IT college that was just 20 minutes from where I lived and got a really good paid internship halfway through my studies, which propelled my entire career forward. Nowadays I’m well aware that “study what you love so you can ~follow your dreams~” isn’t exactly realistic when you’re living on hand-me-down clothes, and although I still don’t like IT all that much, with my current job I can pay all my bills, help my parents at home, and spend some money on things I like – like an illustration course, which I took in 2016 and absolutely loved.

      As a footnote: a friend of mine, who’s four years older than I am, ended up getting a 100% scholarship in fashion. She got her degree, but never managed to get a decent paying job with it. Her current salary is four times lower than mine. I really feel bad for her.

    5. somebody blonde*

      To be fair to your parents: your experience is partly the experience of graduating in a recession. Non-STEM majors don’t just have jobs land in their lap when they graduate nowadays, but it’s pretty true that for jobs that don’t require a specific degree, BA + ability to think critically and write is really what they’re looking for out of a degree. Also, if you’re going to major in anything not STEM, which university you go to and what jobs you do before you graduate matter a LOT more. I got a job basically right out of college even though my degree is in Art History because I went to a state university with a very good reputation and had jobs throughout high school and college.

  155. Can't Sit Still*

    My mother told me that if I acted like a lady, the men at my job would treat me like a lady. She was referring to sexual harassment. It doesn’t work that way, Mother.

      1. Yami Bakura*

        I realize that probably made me sound like a jerk. I didn’t mean to imply that I wished terrible things on your mother :(

  156. Radiant Peach*

    So it wasn’t MY mom but another clueless mom and also is for a fellowship and not a job who found and somehow was approved to join a Facebook group for a fellowship abroad I did my first year out of college. It read something like “my daughter is interested in this program for next year. She would like to be placed in a large city that is not too expensive. Please evaluate your experiences in the following areas no later than x/x/2017 in terms of affordability, things to do, safety, etc. and she will choose among them for her placement next year.”
    This for a highly competitive fellowship (which, being abroad, requires a high degree of independence) that had not even gotten to the acceptance stage for the next year yet! And she gave us HOMEWORK, a few people I knew said she messaged them privately with this assignment because she saw that they lived in cities her daughter was interested. The program also doesn’t allow fellows to choose areas, with no guarantee of the size of the city or town, which is something they make VERY clear to anyone who even expresses interest. I was pretty appalled.

    1. Hildegard Von Bingen*

      Wow. How on earth does anyone become THIS entitled? I feel sorry for her daughter – I’ll bet this woman did this without her knowledge.

  157. Sk*

    After a couple years at my first job, I saved up money and decided to take my full 10 days of PTO to go on an international vacation. My team was small and my boss and main coworker knew about this trip months in advance and assured me repeatedly that there would be sufficient coverage for me to be gone and unreachable for 10 days in a row.
    I had a great trip and brought back some snacks and souvenirs for the team, and all was well.
    Upon coming back my dad told me I should make sure to write my boss a thank you card for “letting” me take all of my contractually entitled vacation days.
    I broke out my stationery and actually started writing before realizing it just felt wrong. I was certainly grateful to be in a job that gave me PTO, but I couldn’t picture my 50 year old male similar-level coworker (or my father for that matter) writing a thank you card – he’d just take his vacation. So why should I be apologetic about using my benefits?

  158. H.C.*

    This is weird in the sense of modern work norms, but my parents were big proponents of “gifting up” to your bosses on holidays & special occasions. I’ve accepted this early on but have largely weaned myself off this trend since.

  159. Ladycrim*

    I once called a job applicant who was in her early 20s to schedule an interview. I shortly thereafter got a call from her father, asking what the odds were that she was going to get the job. He didn’t want her traveling for the interview unless she was pretty much guaranteed the position. (This was pre-Skype, when we did all interviews in person.) I was so boggled that I just passed him to the staff director, who told him the same thing I did: “We need to interview your daughter before we decide if she’s the one we’re going to hire.” (She did come for the interview, but was not hired.)

  160. Yami Bakura*

    My dad, who had worked in academia all his life, tried to get me to go into project management, sometimes softly, sometimes very explicitly. He was an experimental scientist, and had to have a rather large and expensive lab set up for specialized research. He admired the work that the outsourced project managers did, especially their systematic (in this case, waterfall b/c construction stuff) approach.

    He was well-meaning, and I think he wanted me to look for practical work that would always be there and always pay well… but he didn’t realize that there isn’t such a thing as “entry-level project manager.” Furthermore, I am violently allergic to paperwork and administrative work, so there’s that too.

    He had also wanted me to go into law school when I got into college, and was gloomy about picking up an Architecture minor, but relented when a) the law school glut hit the news (late 2009), and b) I showed him what we were doing in architecture, and he agreed that it was pretty cool.

    Thankfully, he realized that there was a huge employment problem for new PhDs when I got my BSc, so he supported my decision to go into engineering so that I could get an industry job more easily.

    There was also a lot of “use your common sense” from him and Mom when it came to workplace norms and “real-life” stuff, and a refusal to readily explain what exactly that “common sense” entailed, or explanation of it in terms of other concepts, when what I really needed were good examples of what to and what not to do. I think they figured I’d learn that stuff in school.

    That being said, in general, my Mom was more grounded about career stuff than my Dad, since she’d worked in admin her whole life. She got PO’d when he suggested sending multiple copies of the same email to somebody with corrections to mistakes in the first draft and any subsequent drafts.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents, but…

    1. Katie C.*

      I was a coder, and my mother wanted me to get some PM certification that was “big money!”

      1. My company didn’t use it, so they certainly weren’t going to pay for it.
      2. Um, I was a code monkey. Not my wheelhouse by far.
      3. Like you, I am horrific at paperwork. I have never had a piece of paperwork that was sent in on time in my entire life unless someone/something else was filing it for me.
      4. If big money was the concern… maybe she should have looked up how much coders made, because it was nothing to sneeze at.

      1. Yami Bakura*

        Coder fist bump! (Well, soon to be one, after my Masters is done this summer.)

        Plus, the whole thing about needing experience in non-PM roles to get higher PM certificates that would let one become a PM kinda makes things hard.

  161. Katie C.*

    My mother, a life-long government employee, insisted that the only job I should ever get was a government job. Oh, excuse me, a FEDERAL government job. Working any other job would lead to me starving in the streets.

    See, she had some… misconceptions about life outside of the government sector. She assumed that life in the private sector was some hellscape where people were laid off every other month, had no insurance, had no benefits, and were randomly not paid. She was shocked to learn that I not only out-earned her, but had better benefits and insurance, and I had never been cheated out of a paycheck.

    Now, to be fair, it was nearly impossible to get fired where she was… but did you really want to work in a group of people where it’s impossible that the only reason they’re still there is because no one wanted to fill out six months of paperwork to get rid of them?

    1. Leela*

      Oh lord that last bit! I taught English in Japan for a few years, a place where people really don’t get fired. It creates terrible environments full of not only people who shouldn’t be there, but people who should but whose morale is so brought down by working with a bunch of people who act like they’re just waiting at a bus station all day. I bet the security is nice but I learned quickly that I NEED to work somewhere that culls its workforce

    2. Yami Bakura*

      Plus the government has to have funding to give out even non-lifetime government jobs, not to mention pensions and insurance, so there’s that too. My uncle retired in 2010 or so from his state job, and is one of the last people to have a decently-funded pension. Pretty much everyone after him is gonna run into a stingier retirement plan.

  162. Leela*

    Sorry added this in the wrong place up top….

    My parents still push me hardcore to job search by walking around to buildings with an armload of cookie-cutter resumes that list every job I’ve ever had (even my high school laundromat job from over ten years ago. I’m a VFX artist now), shove it at the receptionist, ask to speak to the hiring manager right then and there and if they tell me s/he’s busy, say “no problem, I’ll wait” and then just awkwardly loiter in their lobby until I am presented with the hiring manager — or much more likely if I ever tried this, forcibly removed.

    Also, they want me to not even have the resumes in a folder because they want the hiring manager to see that I have them and they might “lose” me to someone else. Like anyone wants such a clueless, pushy employee!

    1. PantsOnFire*

      My parents suggested this to me too. I tried this a few summers in high school, with zero luck, until I was so desperate to stop having these awkward interactions I decided to see if I could do my job hunting online instead. I discovered Craigslist, etc, and actually started getting jobs. I wonder if this kind of behavior actually used to work??

  163. Farrah Sahara*

    My favourite one came from my mom, in the mid-1980s.

    She advised that I should never wear red lipstick or a red blouse to the office because “they are too sensual”.

    1. saffytaffy*

      I got this advice from well-meaning Chinese nationals when going to interviews in Shanghai.

    2. SandrineSmiles (France) - At work*

      I work as a receptionist and my boss told me red lipstick is perfect for me and makes me look more “awake” and “polished” .

      Oh my xD

  164. DG*

    I have a niche skillset and I was applying for a job at a really great place to work. Good benefits, nice flexibility, great mission statement, etc… I had gotten through the interviews and background checks and the hiring manager I was working with called to make me an offer. They gave a salary number and I said, “Oh that’s wonderful. But I was really hoping to be closer to X.” Where X was about 5% more. The hiring manager said, “Let me see what I can do.”

    I tell this story to my father as I’m waiting to hear back, nervous, but excited that they did offer me the job. My dad says to me, “Well, you asked for more money? You better hope they don’t just pull the offer entirely!” His theory was that you should never negotiate and you should just accept any job offer you’re given.

    I was terrified I had fucked up. But they came back the next day and agreed to the number I’d requested. So obviously I did something right. Negotiating is commonplace, dad!

  165. Sigh*

    Well qualified relative was applying to work in the dean’s office of a local college. Crazy older relative worked in the cafeteria of the college. Crazy older relative stalked the dean and did all sorts of “wonderful” things advocating for relative. When relative appealed to family to get crazy older relative to, was told that crazy older relative was helping to get her a job and to be grateful. Relative did not get job. Relative is in much lower paying, crappier job than she was on a road to because of allowing older crazy relative to torpedo her reputation in such a spectacular fashion and not being able to advocate for self at all. Relatives have no idea of what I do or where I work.

  166. Rainy*

    I know someone who sent his resume to his dad for comments, since his dad has his own company in the sector he wants to enter after college, and his dad sent it back with the only feedback being “Looks good but you should put it in this font”.

    The font was Comic Sans.

  167. Thlayli*

    My first job out of college was a graduate engineering role at a salary of €30,000 (which was at the upper end of graduate engineering salaries at the time). They also offered a bonus of €1500 if I finished the project on time. My Mam convinced me to negotiate and ask for a €15,000 bonus! Yes 6 months of salary! The guy actually just laughed at me on the phone. I took the job at the original offer.
    I have since realised that my mother, who worked all her life in the public sector, has some pretty crazy ideas about how much private sector workers earn. Apparently the grass is always greener on the other side.

  168. TellMeNow*

    My parent was HORRIFIED at my resume because of all the ‘job hopping’ that I did. Very concerned that I would not be seen as a serious, committed employee because I tended to change jobs every 3-4 years.

  169. Pollygrammer*

    “You should get your sister a job where you work!”

    I’ve heard this multiple times at every job I’ve had, and I can never actually tell them that my insane, entitled, flaky sister would be fired within a month and would probably tank my reputation.

  170. nnn*

    And then there’s my aunt and uncle who don’t understand what I do at all, so every time I see them, they say (a propos of nothing) “Don’t worry, you can always learn a trade.” Even though I’ve been constantly employed in my field in positions of increasing responsibility for nearly 20 years.

    Kind of mind-blowing that when faced with something they don’t understand, they think “My input is absolutely necessary here!”

    1. Rainy*

      At a family wedding, my fiancé’s aunt asked me what I’d studied in school, and when I told her, she said “well now dear, what are you going to do with that?”

      This was in my previous role, when I was PI of a large federal grant, and I stared at her for a second, as I have been out of school for several years now, and then said dryly “I am the head of a grant worth 60m and I employ over a hundred scientists. And that’s what I do with that.”

      Another fiancé aunt sitting nearby, a retired biologist who has done research all over the world, sporfled quietly into her wineglass and then later gave me a pair of very fancy earrings.

  171. Marie*

    In my first “real” post-college job (I worked full time in college as a waitress, which by my parents’ definition was not a “real” job; ugh), my employer had a generous paid leave policy. My folks were insistent that I should use as little of it as possible. Their theory being that if I was on vacation for a couple of weeks, my employer would realize they could “live without” me, and I would lose my job. I have worked for the same company for 20+ years, and when I took vacation last year they told me I was “playing with fire” and just been “lucky” so far.

    I also got lots of unhelpful clothing advice. The first ten years of my work was not in an office environment, but my mother kept buying me office appropriate clothing. There was no way I could/would wear silk blouses or suits. When I tried to explain that to her, she said if it was a “real” job I should be dressing that way, so what did I go to college for?

    Real vs. fake jobs: discuss. ;)

    1. LizM*

      Not a parent, but when I started with the federal government, I had an older coworker tell me that I shouldn’t request any leave until I’d built up the max to carry over from year to year (240 hours) and had gotten into “use or lose.” (It would take over 2 years to get to that point if I didn’t take any leave at all). He told me that managers wouldn’t take you seriously if used your leave as you earned it.

      Fortunately multiple other employees told me that he was flat out wrong, and that no one hit 240 hours until they’d been with the government for years and were earning more than 4 hours a pay period. He was horrified that I asked for 3 days off to attend my best friend’s wedding after I’d been working there for 6 months (my supervisor actually had to have a talk with him about how my use of leave wasn’t any of his business). I can’t imagine his reaction at the amount of time I took off when my son was born.

    2. ToodleLoo*

      I’m contract and we are all salary. We’re supposed to work 8 hours per day, M-F; office depending. So for a month, the working hours might be something like 184 hours. Often we are allocated maximum number of hours for the month, say 200. We’re paid for that 184 hours, if I work the extra 16 hours, I don’t get carry over hours to the next month or overtime, I get nothing.

      My coworker informed me that she works her maximum hours every month to show commitment to the job. Yeah, I’m not going to do that.

  172. Student*

    On rejections from job interviews:

    “Remember, they don’t know you well enough to hate you.”

    Gee, thanks, Mom. Words I will carry with me the rest of my life, though not for the reason she intended.

  173. anon anon*

    My dad once told me that I should really be including a picture of myself on my resume, along with several other pointers.

    The really weird part was that he told me this after fishing a draft of said resume out of the recycling bin. He handed it back to me with his notes included. I had not asked for his advice or even mentioned I was redrafting my resume.

  174. Ayah Setel*

    The only career advice my father gave his children was 1) No one is allowed to go law school (my father, mother, and both grandfathers were lawyers) and 2) we could do anything, be anything we wanted – as long as it was either a neurosurgeon, a top 10 tennis player, or a movie star.

  175. Karin*

    To provide some context … this was 35 years ago in a provincial city in New Zealand and I was 16 years old. My family was uneducated and poor, so university wasn’t an option for me and I was looking for a full-time job for when I finished high school. A new data facility had opened up in town (this was before I’d even touched a computer, they were very rare in 1980s NZ) and was offering well-paid traineeships in data processing and programming to smart school leavers. I sat and passed the aptitude test and was invited for an interview. I attended the interview wearing my school uniform. NO-ONE – parents, teachers, friends – had provided any career guidance or information on how to dress or how to behave at an interview. Obviously, I didn’t get the job … and I still cringe when I think about it. Happily, I eventually managed to put myself through university and have a satisfying career. But I still wonder how life might have unfolded, had I known what to wear to an interview …

  176. Delta Delta*

    Oh! I just remembered this.

    My husband received a rejection letter from a job. He was confused, as not only had he not applied for that job, but he also he’d never even heard of the company. He called to inquire. Turns out his mom applied for the job for him. By using a greeting card. That was emblazoned with the word “friendship” across the front.

  177. PantsOnFire*

    When I was a teenager summer job hunting my mom used to encourage me to lie to potential employers and figure the details out later. I never made up experience on paper, but I basically never said “no” to anything in interviews. One memorable instance of this backfiring was a cafe job that hired me to work weekday shifts when I already had a full-time weekday job. My mom advised me to say I had completely open availability, not mention my current job at all, and not to come clean until after I got the job. I was fired before my start date as soon as they called to get me scheduled and it turned out I couldn’t work any shift they needed.

    She also would encourage sales-y techniques (following up too much, etc) but luckily my social anxiety saved me from that one. Her family is all in sales and all work/have worked a billion jobs (in sales, but in all kinds of industries), so I think she was raised with a different attitude of what employers expect of candidates. I also was very inexperienced and took her advice literally, when there was probably some nuance to it I missed.

  178. Pennalynn Lott*

    After I was laid off from a high-level, six-figure tech sales job my dad suggested I go to work for Costco, instead of filing for unemployment while I job searched, “because they have good benefits.” When I pushed back with, “But, um, that’s *retail* and not even remotely related to my career and is, in fact, a huuuge step backward and would look worse on my resume than a few months of being unemployed,” my dad snapped back, “Well *I* would look favorably on any candidate who showed a predilection for hard work instead of just sitting around the house!”

    And each time after that (after I’d gotten another well-paying job in my industry) when I said anything about layoffs or company problems he jumped in with the same thing, “Go be a cashier for Costco!”

    I never could get him to understand that voluntarily taking an $80K/year pay cut was NOT a good career move so I finally had to say to him, “Pops, I will NEVER work in retail again. EVER. Please stop telling me that’s what I need to do.”

    I have no idea why he thinks being a cashier at Costco is better than all of the professional, white collar, high-paying jobs I’ve had. But, heck, this is the same man who, when told that I was going back to school to get a degree in accounting, sent me articles about how much money dog walkers make. Like, if I’m dead-set against working as a cashier then maybe I’d want to look into dog-walking instead of becoming a CPA. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    1. nnn*

      It’s boggling that he thinks Costco would hire someone who had been making six figures! I mean, I don’t know from Costco specifically, but in my job-hunting experience, prospective employers have been very reluctant to hire people whose experience or credentials they perceive to surpass the requirements of the job.

      1. Pennalynn Lott*

        INORITE?? Because Costco would be like, “OK, while we’re training you on how to use the registers and all the other stuff, you’re still looking for a job that pays multiples of this one. . . so we’ve pretty much wasted our time and money onboarding you.”

        1. Aixi*

          THIS! I worked a retail job part time for 3 months between finishing my PhD and starting my first academic job (cross country moves don’t come cheap). I obviously didn’t mention the PhD on the app, and I planned to just give regular notice when it was time to move on, which they wouldn’t have loved but would have been completely in the normal realm of part-time retail employees. Frankly I’m not proud of that but I needed the money and I wasn’t able to wait for grants, etc to go through.

          My mom was distraught, like almost in tears, that I wasn’t planning on doing a “SURPRISE! I have a doctorate and I’m leaving to be a professor!” reveal on my last day. She thought that they would be so impressed and amazed and proud of me. I had to explain to them that from their point of view they were losing an employee they’d just finished training, so no, gathering everyone together and doing a big braggy show about how educated I am and how I’m moving on to take an exponentially-higher-paying job I’ve secretly had all this time would not actually go over well.

          She also thinks that I need to remind everybody at my job that I have a doctorate. It’s a university. We all have doctorates.

    2. MashaKasha*

      Well, he might be the only one to look favorably at a candidate for that. I had that problem when I was working at my second job in the US, and had started looking for job#3. Because of how recently we’d arrived in the country, I had to include HomeCountry experience on my resume, which went something like this: Graduated with a CS degree, worked in software development for 4 years, had a baby, was told not to come back from maternity leave because they’d already hired a man as my replacement, worked as an admin assistant because we needed money, left admin assistant job for a technical translator job because it was more fun and more money, had another baby, left the country. It was in the 90s , when HomeCountry was going through a period of wild business growth and no regulations, and many companies had policies of not hiring women. Especially in my field. My former boss had changed jobs and tried to bring me in, because he valued my work. His employer said no the moment he heard my name. “Sorry, we do not hire women. Company policy.”

      So I put all of my experience on my resume, and started getting these calls from recruiters: “I don’t understand. You had a degree and four years experience. Why did you then go work as a secretary?” and they never called back. So much for showing predilection for hard work. Not even the fact that this was in another country with its own cultural quirks could make me employable after going outside of my field for two years. I ended up fudging that part of my resume; and removing it from the resume as soon as I’d been in the US long enough for me to be able to do so.

  179. SandrineSmiles (France) - At work*

    I was out of a job at some point and got an interview in a wedding shop. I was THRILLED. Working with wedding dresses all day? Hell yeah!

    Problem is, for some utterly bizarre reason my mom decided she did not approve of this, and I think I lived with her at the time. They called on the landline and she never told me, so I missed my chance. It’s been at least 10 years but I still shudder sometimes, because my career hasn’t been stellar since :( .

    1. Cynic*

      So sorry to hear your mum did that. She had no right to do that and I hope you told her so.
      My dad did similar stuff. I applied for an overseas job and the family printer broke down as luck would have it. This was years ago when applications were sent by snail mail. So dad offered to take the disk to his office and print it out my resume and cover letter. When he came home, I asked him for the print out and he said he’d already mailed it. Then he said he lost the disk at work so I had to rewrite other my resume from scratch for other job applications.

      A few months later I found the disk and guess what? My dad had edited my cover letter and resume to make me look as unprofessional as possible. He downgraded my work experience, changed job titles, added unnecessary information such as my birth date and marital status. When I confronted him, he basically said “Get over it. Conversation is over.”

      Despite that I got the job, but when he visited me overseas he told my employer that young people who work overseas are immoral, which offended several people in earshot because many of their kids were overseas. Then when my contract finished, he told as many people as possible that I was unemployable because I was lazy and wasted my time overseas instead of getting a real job. When I confronted him his excuse was “I can say what I like. It’s your choice to be angry about it. So you either be angry or take it in your stride like a rational adult.”

      I have minimal contact with him. Can’t complain about my career but sometimes I wonder what opportunities I missed out on because of his interference.

  180. Q.*

    Had a coworker whose mother came in to talk to the owners after she was fired. She was young, just past the ‘teen’ years, but it still seemed off. Oh, well.

  181. idigflowers*

    My mother told me that all I needed to know was how to type as my husband (I was single and it would be almost a decade and a half before I married) would take care of me. She was a young, struggling widow as had been her own mother.

  182. JanetM*

    Not precisely advice, but commentary: I work for a state university (staff, not faculty), so in some ways I’m a state employee, and have been for 24 years now. My mother-in-law still occasionally asks if I’ve considered getting a real (by which she means private sector) job.

  183. Peppermint Mocha*

    Oh Man! I wish I had seen this post yesterday, I have so many stories. The worst might be on my sister’s end though. She actually has to lie to them about her daily schedule because they started accusing her of being lazy and unprofessional once they found out that she rarely shows up to work before 9am. She works in an industry where this is normal, especially since she often works 12 hour days. I work MUCH fewer hours than my sister (I am lucky to have a job that promotes a healthy work/life balance) but my parents think I am better at my job for the sole reason that I’m always at work by 8am, which is absolutely absurd. Also, its none of their business. Let her boss decide when she should be in the office.

  184. Arjay*

    2004, I’m getting laid off from the company where I’d worked for 17 years. The acquiring company offered me a position at their HQ, at my same pay rate, in a much higher cost-of-living area 1500 miles away from my home and family. My mother was absolutely stunned when I turned it down. She came from a time when you worked for one company your entire life until you retired with a gold watch and a pension. I think I’d absorbed some of that since I had been there 17 years, but I wasn’t moving for them.

    She thought it was a mistake and advised me that I should go where my job went. Within 18 months, the new company folded and left everyone who had relocated unemployed in a strange place. I look back at that as one of the best decisions I ever made.

  185. Kali*

    My mom worked in a temp agency and set me up in my first job four days after my sixteenth birthday. She presented it as if I obviously would be unable to start working myself without this sort of help. I.e., things like “you need to say this in the interview so it sounds like you can do it”. She also told me to put her down as my reference for any other work.

    I’m no longer in contact with my mother and I’ve returned to education now – which I am acing! – but my confidence is still very shaken. I’ve never gotten a job which was only hiring one person, only those which are hiring a large number, which may have something to do with the fact that I rarely applied for any of the former.

  186. bookish*

    Yes. I missed a call to schedule an interview with a well-known company that my dad had once aspired to working for in his younger days. It was the morning of a long road trip, and as we were all trapped in a car together for 10 hours, I called back every hour trying to catch the interviewer on the phone. I cringe SO HARD when I think about that now, but at the time it was “being a persistent go-getter” or something. Yiiiiiikes. (If you’re wondering, yes, my dad is a baby boomer and I am a Millennial, and yes, he was (extremely depressingly) unemployed when I graduated and hit the job market in the very recession that caused the loss of his job, and yet he was mad that I wasn’t employed in a star job immediately like I wasn’t trying hard enough, and projected a lot of unemployment security on me.

  187. UK Nerd*

    My mother was always absolutely insistent that my long hair must be tied back for job interviews. I couldn’t understand why, as I think my face looks much nicer with my hair down, and I couldn’t see how the waist-length ponytail looked significantly more professional that my regular hairstyle. Plus I work in IT, where nobody really cares about your hair.

    Eventually I found out why. I have a tic, where I wind my hair round my fingers. My mother was convinced my hair needed to be tied back so that I wouldn’t do my tic in interviews.

    As soon as I heard that, I dropped the ponytail. I’m quite capable of leaving my hair alone when necessary, and funnily enough I’m less nervous when I’m wearing it in a style that I think makes me looks good.

  188. Kat*

    I happened to work at a company where one of my mom’s oldest friends also worked. Different departments, really large company, our work never intersected – but my mother NEVER stopped offering to call her friend to ask for raises, promotions, etc. As far as I know she never actually did it but I had to set a pretty firm boundary with her.

  189. Nellie*

    Nowhere near as outrageous as some of the advice indicated here, but my mom would frequently try to have friends/colleagues/friends of friends of hers put in a good word with barely tangential contacts at places I was interviewing or applying. She was trying to be helpful and had not actually job searched since the ’70s, so when I was younger in my career, some of it sounded like good advice, but upon submitting several questions to this blog I realized that her approach was not totally helpful. It wouldn’t make sense for a person I had never worked with (and sometimes did not actually know that well) to recommend me to someone professionally. This advice steered me toward the best guidance: https://www.askamanager.org/2010/04/how-to-use-someone-elses-contact-when.html

    It’s so hard for those of us new to the workplace and early in our careers to know how to make this “networking” thing work. I did a ton of informational interviews/coffees/phone calls with people in my current field but made it clear it was only about learning and getting general advice, not asking for a job (although I did notify those people when I applied at places they worked or had connections). Now that I’m more senior I’ve tried to pay it forward with informational interviews about both my field and job searching, but only maybe once did I have occasion to recommend someone I’d met through random contact.

  190. kible*

    Hmm, I think the worst/weirdest thing my mom said to me about work was, after I got a job in retail during the end of bad parts of the recession (2011), she congratulated me and immediately asked when I was getting a better job. I was also working freelance web dev at the time, which apparently also wasn’t good enough.

  191. Jemima Bond*

    My parents are mostly pretty ok but my mum keeps trying to encourage me to apply for other jobs in a slightly different area in the same government agency. The thing is, she is convinced I must find what I do terribly emotionally traumatic (it could be – think dealing with body parts or something) but it’s pure projection – because she would find it awfully difficult to cope with, ergo so must I. Actually I find it very interesting and fulfilling. And they take care of us with six-monthly psychological assessments to make sure we are doing ok.
    Point being, advice can be heavily biased by the preferences/point of view of the advice-giver – we must be careful to do what is right for us not what would be right for them. What is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander!

  192. Spider Wrangler*

    I was just out of high school and about to interview for a summer job at the local supermarket. I was putting up my super long hair when my mom suggested that I leave my hair down, or at least wait until I got there to tie it back, because my hair was (and I quote) “one of my best selling points.”
    Twenty years later, I still don’t know what makes less sense to me: styling your hair DURING a job interview, or the suggestion that somehow my pretty hair was gonna be enough to land me a job.

  193. Final Pam*

    Every time I’m in between jobs, my dad will tell me to “pound the pavement, hit the bricks” despite acknowledging that’s not how it works nowadays.

    I started as a contractor at my last job and was offered a full-time position. When it came time to negotiate salary, my dad tried to convince me to accept a starting offer below my contracting rate because I “was costing the company more money in benefits” (and while true, it’s not encouraging to hear when I’m trying to do what I can to avoid gendered pay gaps). He also thought I should accept an offer $20,000 below the average salary for the position.

    All job-related conversations now get one “I don’t want to talk about this. Let’s change the topic” before I hang up the phone.

  194. Irukandji*

    When getting ready for my first ever interview (a scholarship/internship for uni), I asked my Dad what I should read up on beforehand. He told me I didn’t need to prepare, and just to be myself. Even though I was only 17, I knew this was terrible advice!

  195. WhaleBiscuit*

    I live in a culture where parents are very, very *concerned* about their kids’ careers so there’s a never-ending stream of ‘advice’…

    Here goes:

    Applications:
    1. Apply for the same job multiple times because obviously job applications are like a lottery.
    2. Apply again immediately after you’ve been declined because, well, gumption?
    3. The typical walk-in / cold call / hand your resumes to people in the streets advice.
    4. Not really an advice, but I’ve seen parents tell their academically accomplished kids that they’re a shoe-in for any and all the jobs they’re applying for based solely on their academics. And obviously the employers are stupid to not hire them. It’s very unhelpful because the jobseeker then gets more and more frustrated when they don’t get job offers like immediately.
    5. Parents show up to interviews too and even muscle their way into sitting in / answering interview questions for their (adult) kids… Most of the time it’s not even the kid’s fault or intention to have their parent impose.

    On-The-Job:
    1. You *must* get a raise for every year you’ve worked with the company or it means your boss is cheating you / stealing your money.
    2. If you’re not constantly stressed / unhappy with your job, it means you’re doing it wrong (I really don’t know where this came from).
    3. If you take all / a lot of your leave days it means you’re lazy and / or your boss will fire you soon.
    4. You will be recognised solely on your hard work, so you shouldn’t ask for a raise or anything, but you’ll be automatically promoted / get a raise if you’re a good worker. So if you’re not progressing as quickly / earning as much as you’d like it means you a) suck at your job; or b) the employer is taking advantage of you. : /

    That’s all I can think of for now. Hope it’s not too off-base or repetitive. : P

  196. Wait, what?*

    Few weeks after I was laid off from my job, my mom told me to call the company that laid me off to see if they have any openings that I can apply.

  197. Unscheduled Walk-in*

    When I was 27 years old and was looking for a job after relocating back home, my parents would ask me multiple times a week why I wasn’t going to each of the offices that I applied with to follow up in person and ask to speak to the hiring manager on the spot. I would explain to them that nowadays that would only be detrimental to my application.

    I wanted to stand out for the right reasons, such as a resume and cover letter that speak to my previous accomplishments and how they relate to the needs of the company looking to hire for a specific role.

    Following up did help clinch the job offer I eventually took, but in a different way. One week after the interview, I crafted a thorough follow up email speaking to what I heard the company is looking for based on the interview and how I’ve approached similar challenges before and how concepts related to the activities the job role would fulfill contribute to the bottom line and the value proposition of the organization. They replied with a job offer that same day.

  198. Kadi*

    My father’s parting words as he hugged my good-bye on my first day moving into college were, “Do well. Get in a big company and keep your head low.” I think it was so common in his generation to believe the company will take care of you if you do this. Sadly two years later he was laid off just two months shy of completing his pension at his big company. He has a very, very different perspective now.

  199. NotBitter*

    My Dad worked in law enforcement as a dispatcher for several years, and he always made the job sound so interesting that, when open recruitment came up when I was 21, I decided to apply. This was the 80s, when group interviews were a tad more commonplace, and there were about 10 candidates, all in one room. After the first interview, which I passed with flying colours, the 10 had become 4, and we were all asked to return in two days.

    Well.

    Dear Old Dad had a bit of…a drinking problem, and got completely farschnikt the night before, and was still hungover when it was time for us to leave to the interview location. I missed my second interview, by 20 minutes, because Dad couldn’t get it together. The really ironic part is that the interviewer was one of his former co-workers, and really wanted me to get the job because I would be a “legacy”.

  200. Joanne*

    My mom and I are about the same size, clothing wise so I’ll occasionally borrow some clothes – shirts mostly. I once had to go to an interview with a suit jacket, and I was looking for mine. She let me borrow one – except it had shoulder pads and made me look like a child playing dress-up.

Comments are closed.