what weird things did you believe about work before you had a job?

by Alison Green on August 15, 2024

Inspired by yesterday’s account of the kid who thought her mom’s boss was a dog: What weird things did you believe about work as a kid, or even just before you started working?

Personally, I couldn’t understand why work would be tiring if you weren’t doing manual labor and used to be very skeptical of my long-suffering mother when she complained about being tired after work, and I also imagined that I would carry a briefcase every day (I have never owned a briefcase).

You may also like:
{ 954 comments }

{ 954 comments… read them below }

  1. Jonathan MacKay*

    This is an easy one, actually.

    I grew up thinking that ‘work’ was only ever in offices – it never occurred to me that the people behind the counter at Mcdonalds, the cashiers at the grocery store, or even my teachers were ‘working’.

    This lasted until I got a paper route.

    1. A perfectly normal-size space bird*

      I had the opposite belief, that the only real jobs are those outside of offices. Anyone who worked in an office did so because they failed (whatever magical thinking test my first grader brain conceived of) to have real jobs. That lasted until I did an unpaid internship in my mom’s office. To be fair, she only had herself to blame for that weird belief instilled in me.

    2. pagooey*

      When I was very little, I thought this too! My dad worked construction; my granddad was a postal carrier. I knew they did these things…but somehow only my grandma’s job, in the budget office of a local university, was a real JOB job. We’d go to pick her up after work, sometimes, and I had no higher aspirations than a cubicle of my very own. Hers was festooned with my crayoned drawings, which added to my sense of glamourous importance about the whole thing. It didn’t really matter (or even occur to me) what she did in there all day. But I coveted her decorative cup full of pens and pencils with my whole heart.

    3. Suzie*

      I 100% believed that EVERYONE who worked an office/white collar job got paid more than EVERYONE who did a blue collar/non office job. Like, the lowliest boot boy in an office got paid more than the most highly experienced plumber.

      I would have made different choices if I had understood the reality of this. I think I could have made an excellent tradesperson, and seriously considered retraining as a boiler engineer except that then I had kids instead and now have a couple of hands-off online side hustles.

  2. Synonymous*

    I had to do a school project in 5th grade on my family tree with professions. I remember being so excited to tell my classmates that my dad was a budget analyst.

    1. Synonymous*

      I also thought grocery store check-out workers had the best job in the world. You can imagine my excitement when they rolled out self check-out!

      1. Kes*

        When I was a kid I wanted to be a librarian because I liked reading and thought shelving books looked fun. Then later I realized a substantial part of it is public-facing customer service and changed my thoughts on what I wanted to do lol

        2. Slinky*

          I’m a librarian. You would be shocked how many adult humans still think that my job is just sitting around and reading books all day. I wish!

          1. Cindy*

            I had a part-time job at my local library when I was a high school senior. I loved that job so much – bringing order to written materials (this was a long time ago). I love my current job but which I had gone the librarian route. Kudos to all librarians!!

          2. Rex Libris*

            …and that we’re all volunteers, and are shocked that we have master’s degrees, etc. etc.

          3. Jojo*

            I was a book store manager, one of the questions I always asked during interviews was, “what do you think you’ll be doing if you get the job.” I’d say at least 25% of people responded that they would read. It shocked me every time I heard it.

            1. Irish Teacher.*

              That explains why people have occasionally told me “you should work in a bookshop/a library since you love reading.” I always took bookshop work to be retail which…I wouldn’t have any particular skills for.

          4. Star Trek Nutcase*

            This is similar to those who can’t understand why I don’t make my artistic endeavors my business. Few understand that making it a business would involve so much non-artistic stuff (sales, bookkeeping, taxes, etc). And putting customer conditions and timing would change my following my muse. TBH as a teen, I too thought being a librarian would involve gobs of reading.

            1. goddessoftransitory*

              Same as assuming a person who is good at/enjoys cooking should open a restaurant! Running a business is a completely different skill set from cooking on its own.

        3. Annie*

          I wanted to be a librarian because the thought of scanning things with the code reader!!!!! There was nothing cooler in my eyes.

          1. AnotherOne*

            In middle school and high school, I volunteered at my local library. I did a lot of shelving and helping with story hour.

            But sometimes…sometimes…I got to help with checking out books and I loved it. Scan. Scan. Scan.

            So much fun.

            1. Emailz*

              My mom is a librarian so there was days as young as 7 or 8 that she’d leave me at the front desk (she works in a back office and isn’t directly customer facing) to “work” with the other librarians checking books in and out. Absolute DREAM. And everyone thought it was the cutest thing. One lady gave me a dollar as thanks for helping and I was over the moon.
              The biggest downside with this system was I learned how to override fines and proceeded to never return a library book on time.

            2. Cafe au Lait*

              My parents brought my (then five years old) daughter to visit me at work a couple years ago. I saved all the book drop’s returns for her visit, and she was in 7th heaven scanning books in with me.

              Sadly her life’s goal have moved on from “working in a library with Mom.”

            3. Max*

              You would’ve loved the volunteering I did the summer after freshman year of college. The library system was changing where the barcodes were placed so I got to sit there scanning books, printing out new barcodes, and sticking them on in the right place.

              1. BikeWalkBarb*

                I had a high school gig for a while putting the new magnetic strips into the inside of the book covers, among other tasks. I’m realizing I now truly don’t remember why. Did I have a full class period labeled “Library Helper?” Whatever, as a lifelong devourer of books it was fun being surrounded by soooo many, and getting to immediately check out something I wanted when it was returned before it got reshelved and someone else checked it out.

            4. Caffeine Monkey*

              I’m old enough that, when I had a Saturday job at my local library, it was little paper tickets that I put inside the patron’s little yellow cardboard folder and then stashed alphabetically under the desk.

              And, oh, the best part. That glorious KER-THUNK when I stamped the return date in the book.

              One wonderful day, I was handed a box of warm soapy water, a cloth, and a pile of hardback books with dirty plastic covers, and told to clean them all.

              God, I loved that Saturday job.

              1. coffee*

                The little paper list showing your return date, in a little envelope inside the book! Ah, nostalgia. (Although I love being able to extend a loan online.)

          2. Mad Harry Crewe*

            I had this plastic ring-toss game and I used the stakes as card scanners on my library books. Imagine my delight when I got to volunteer at my middle school library and they had one of the pen style scanners.

            I’m so sad they’ve gone to the full-width barcode scanners now – or at my library, you just put the book down on the pad and it scans the chip. Much more efficient, but doesn’t tickle my brain the same way.

        5. Not a Librarian*

          I really wanted to be a librarian as a child because I was obsessed with the huge date stamp they used to let you know when your book was due. I was sad when I discovered many years later they don’t even use those anymore. Computers ruin all the fun.

          1. ReallyBadPerson*

            We still use those at my library. They aren’t on every book, just the older ones, but people LOVE them!

        6. pagooey*

          I was convinced the librarians LIVED IN the library! Since one parent or the other was forever hustling me out of there (two grocery bags was NOT ENOUGH, ma!), I could imagine no greater privilege than…retreating to a little cot in the stacks, I guess.

      2. profe*

        My dad worked at the post office for a few years and I thought putting the mail in the little boxes was the most satisfying task in the world. I was blissfully unaware that he hated his job lol

        1. Sarah*

          That’s funny! My husband is a mail carrier, and he loves his job.

          Before starting with the post office, he worked an office job for several years. He wasn’t suited for that life – he felt restless sitting at a desk most of the day, and he didn’t really enjoy being surrounded by the noise and chattiness of co-workers.

          Now he spends most of his day walking around just doing his thing, and enjoys it more than working a desk job.

          I’m a desk job kind of gal, though sometimes I envy the health benefits he has gained from all that walking around. (His daily step count is somewhere around 28K. I am…significantly less than that.)

      3. Pippi*

        My dream job as a kid was to become a grocery store cashier. I’m happy to say I achieved that dream in high school, and I loved that job.

        1. Uranus Wars*

          I used to set dinner trays (TV trays) up in my grandparents living room as a kid and clean out their pantry to play cashier. They had one table with a stain that was my “scanner”. It was my favorite game. I was an only child but never got to use those skills – I went ride into food service through college and after.

        2. TriviaJunkie*

          This is my 7yo’s current dream job. We are known to the staff at Lidl because he always asks to help push the items across the scanner. I just tell him it’s a perfectly good job, but doesn’t pay well. Kid is undeterred, till checker is the dream. Suffice to say the staff both love and are baffled by him

          1. allathian*

            When my son was that age, our local Lidl installed self-checkouts. For a couple years, he did all the scanning because it was so much fun. When I go shopping with him he still usually does the scanning while I pack. (Cashiers aren’t expected to pack your shopping here.)

            He has plenty of time to change his mind and many people start with retail jobs, like I did.

            I’m grateful that my parents raised me to believe that you shouldn’t judge people’s worth by the job they do.

          2. Arrietty*

            Lidl pays better than a lot of the jobs I’ve had! I only earn slightly more per hour now.

      4. FricketyFrack*

        I was really excited to be a cashier when I was in high school because I also thought it seemed so cool as a kid. And then I got about 5 minutes of training, they told me nothing about how to spot theft, and then marked my register as being $200 short when someone tag swapped a DVD player on my second day of work, and told me if I had a register shortage again, I’d be fired. Needless to say, my dreams were crushed pretty quickly. I worked that job just long enough to save up for my Spanish class trip and then bounced.

      5. Annie*

        It is a popular anecdote in my family that I wanted to be a cashier as a child because I wanted to press all the buttons on the register. The kicker is I didn’t know the right term for them so I used to tell people I wanted to be a cash register when I grew up.

    2. umami*

      I thought it was cool that my dad was an ‘internal auditor’ even though I had no idea what that meant. I just knew he wore 3-piece suits and polished his shoes every night, and I thought that was so neat.

      1. NoMoreFirstTimeCommenter*

        My dad was a doctor, and that wasn’t particularly cool. After all, there was another kid in my class whose parent was a doctor, so there was nothing special about that. But I had one classmate whose dad was a tank truck driver, and that was cool. So much cooler than my dad. Another classmate’s dad was a fisherman. Also cool, because I hadn’t known that they exist outside old books. But no, it was real – it was year 199something and someone actually makes a living by fishing all day! Cool! Much cooler than a boring doctor.

        1. MikeM_inMD*

          My first job out of college was working in the office of a high school. I got to know one of the kids a little because he was frequently late for school because he went out for the morning on his uncle’s boat. His uncle was a commercial fisherman. The kid’s life ambition was to be one, too, and was aiming to drop out and get his GED when he was old enough. He was smart enough to take enough math and basic business classes to (hopefully) get by on that dream.

  3. ChurchOfDietCoke*

    I definitely thought all women wore suits and high heels and all men wore suits and ties to ‘go to work’. I have been in the workplace for 25 years and never worn a suit or high heels!

    1. ScruffyInternHerder*

      And on the opposite end of this, I expected “Jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots” even as an engineer because my Dad wore that! I’ve only worn that combination while on jobsites, which is not my homebase!

      1. Dinwar*

        Interesting. In geology there’s a thing where the higher you get in the field, the more frequently you wear jeans, flannel, and hiking boots. Undergrads give presentations in suits, grad students in semi-formal garb, professors in business casual, but the ones that REALLY know their stuff are showing up to international conferences with multi-billion dollar companies in ripped jeans, flannel shirts, the hat (you’ve gotta have the hat), and are most likely still covered in dust. Even in my non-academic career, about as formal as any geologist will get is khakis and a polo, and they usually look uncomfortable in them!

        My parents always told me “Dress for the job you want.” And when I dressed like a geologist they always told me to dress nicer. Made for all kinds of amusement growing up!

        1. your name here*

          Truth! We were just talking today about “That old homeless-looking guy, that hangs out in the vicinity of the Geol building. Oh you mean Prof. Rocks? He’s the department head…

        2. geochem*

          I switched from a chemistry department to a geology department… the variety of outfits I see everyday in the geo building is WILD. And yep our most respected emeritus wears a hat inside LOL

        4. Jelizabug*

          My husband has his undergrad in Geology. His daily uniform is cargo pants and a t-shirt or polo, and he has his “adventure hat” which he always wears when doing outdoorsy stuff. That includes mowing the yard and going to swim parties. Gotta love geologists! :)

          1. Dinwar*

            The Los Angeles natural history museum has a wall dedicated to paleontology field equipment. The Hat is the centerpiece, along with rock hammers, Write In Rain field books, and the like. I remember going there with my wife when it opened. Everyone else was looking at it as, well, museum pieces. My wife looked at me and said “When we get home ALL that crap gets OFF my coffee table!!” Which…Yeah, I needed to put that away. It’s one reason I love her.

            For those unfamiliar…this actually matters. The most realistic thing in the Indiana Jones movies is him chasing his hat. I’ve personally gone through worse to save my hat, and have the scars to prove it. The thing is, rocks don’t generally appear in settings with air conditioning. You absolutely need a good hat to keep your brain from literally frying inside your skull. But more than that…It’s about being Us instead of Them. Us has been through Field Camp (a rite of passage every geologist I’ve ever spoken with has gone through). Us understands how fractures in a road cut relate to continental movement. Us has hiked five miles after running out of water on a broken leg because the outcrop was significant. Us has used the GOOD mixing bowls to separate the amber from the quartz grains. Us has a hand lens, and a few rock hammers (pointy for hard stuff, chisel for sedimentary), and a favorite silicate mineral (sillimanite for me, though celestite comes close), and The Hat.

        5. Lime green Pacer?*

          I grew up in a city that was chock-a-block with geologists and geophysicisists. My father-in-law was a professional geologist. They were definitely dressing in suits.

          Of course, this was back when those crazy IT guys wore coloured dress shirts, or white dress shirts with short sleeves. Such iconoclasts!

          1. Dinwar*

            I will admit that some do. I remember once seeing a shawl a geologist left in her cubicle. My first thought was “We’re going to break this poor person.” At the time I had multiple chemical burns from the (non-contaminated) soil I’d be pulling microfossils from, and was negotiating a cease-fire on an artillery training range, where said geologist was going to sample. Turned out to be one of the best people I’ve ever worked with. Just goes to show, you never know, you know?

            That said….Field geology in particular takes a special kind of person. You have to be a polymath to even start, you have to have the survival skills of Les Stroud, you probably know a few James Bond/Michael Weston tricks (safety vest plus hard hat plus clip board gets you nearly anywhere for ten minutes), and you need to be able to look at the harshest environments humans can create and go “That looks like a fun place to spend August.” I’ve been blown up 1.5 times and have been told, with pure sincerity, “Well, you’re young, eventually you’ll get some good stories.” (And to be fair…by Hel, that guy had some stories!) Pride of Trace and Trail, Jack London termed it. And while someone who’s endured that CAN wear a suit, they don’t NEED to wear one.

    2. azvlr*

      In 2nd grade, we were making Christmas presents for our parents (public school in the 70’s – geez!) For the dads, we were making a tie holder. Once my dad was out of Catholic school, he never wore a tie if he could get away with it. I remember crying because my dad wouldn’t be able to enjoy the present. And being pissed that apparently a the only real dads were straight out of Sally, Dick, and Jane.

        1. Anon in Aotearoa*

          I totally made ashtrays for my parents when I was at school. Beautiful ones, with glass in the bottom. Neither of my parents smoked.

      2. Serious silly putty*

        My dad was SAH by the time I was in school, and he wasn’t into sports.
        Our school had a little Xmas store where volunteers would help kids buy presents for their families, and it was so hard! “Would he like this football shaped soap on a rope?” No, no he would not. “Toy baseball bat?” “(Cheap) tie?” No, definitely not.
        (I was saved by a coffee mug that said “World’s Greatest Dad”. He WAS a dad and he DID like coffee!)

        1. Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk*

          The “World’s #4 Dad” mug that Tracy Jordan’s kids gave him on 30 Rock is still probably the only-on-TV item I want most.

      3. Observer*

        And being pissed that apparently a the only real dads were straight out of Sally, Dick, and Jane.

        LOL!

        It’s not for nothing that one of the biggest complaints against those readers was not even the faulty theory they were designed for, but that they were sooooo far from the experience if *vast* swathes of the population but were presented as THE norm. Kids can get into fantasy, fairy tales and the like. Because they know that no one thinks that it has any actual relation to them, so it’s just fun to imagine. But reading about “normal life” that is a couple of light years away from the way you live? Doesn’t work very well…

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          In her collection In Other Worlds, Margaret Atwood says she was always far more creeped out by the Dick and Jane books than the hardcore sci-fi lying around the family home.

    3. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      My first office job and I had never heard of dress codes. I learned when I wore a baby blue cordroy one piece jumpsuit with large white zippers.

        1. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

          I wish that I still had it because no one believes that such a thing could exist. :)

    4. Retail Dragon*

      I wanted to be a detective when I was little because I thought they all wore deerstalker hats and matching capes (yes, like Sherlock) and went around examining everything with a magnifying glass. My six-year-old brain could conceive of no cooler outfit.

  4. The Coolest Clown Around*

    When I was a kid, my dad (a professor) would come home and complain about a day full of meetings, to which I would always respond, “That sounds fun! Didn’t you become a teacher so you could talk to lots of people?” Now that I’m an adult… that is NOT how I feel about meetings haha.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      Gosh that makes sense though! As a kid you’re probably thinking LUCKY, how many darn playdates are you getting per day?? New friends all the time???

  5. my cat is prettier than me*

    When I was in school, I thought work would be less stressful because there would be no homework. I would leave for the day and not have to do anything/think about it! Oh how wrong I was.

      1. my cat is prettier than me*

        With my last job and current job, I’ve found it impossible to stop thinking about work after hours, on the weekend, when I’m sick, and when I’m on vacation. It’s definitely A Problem.

        1. WeirdChemist*

          Having been in your shoes in the past, it really is A Problem! I didn’t realize how much that stress/anxiety was weighing me down until I was in a much better situation.

          I notice that you said that you’re “thinking” about work when you’re off, not that you’re expected to be completing work tasks off-hours. That suggests to me that this might be you taking on more stress than you need to be as opposed to pressure from your boss to do this (unless I’m off base and it’s just a matter of wording).

          Personally, I found that making my to-do list for tomorrow before I leave work helps to keep me from ruminating on the work stress that keeps bouncing around my brain. And if anything from work pops up in my brain while I’m home I write it in the notes app on my phone. All of this tells my brain “relax, it’s written down, you don’t have to keep bringing it up” which helped me a lot!

          Also, if these sorts of thought are becoming intrusive/problematic to your day-to-day life, seeking professional help might be worth it!

          1. my cat is prettier than me*

            You’re 100% right, I’m putting the pressure on myself. I had the same issue growing up. I hated missing school or getting bad grades even though my parents only expected me to do my best. I definitely need to make an appointment with my therapist.

          2. Former auditor*

            In a particularly stressful job, I was having trouble falling asleep. I would think about all the tasks that still needed to be done. It had been suggested when this happened, I should write a list. One night I decided I would give it a try. I wrote continously for a little over an hour–but I was able to sleep after that.

            1. BikeWalkBarb*

              One night years ago when the work hamster wheel was circling in my brain I got up and wrote in my journal. But instead of writing my to-do list I wrote down everything I had done that day. Everything, from home to work and back again. I had made my children lunches for school and written cute notes to put in the bags. I had moved projects along. I had done X, Y, and Z.

              I wrote pages and at the end of it realized I had done more than enough to consider it a day of accomplishment. That stopped the hamster wheel and left me with such a good feeling to go to sleep with.

        2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          For me the solution was to go freelance that way if I think about it too much I can just go and work on it.

      2. Zumilla*

        I couldn’t believe how much time I had on my hands after I graduated and went to work. No homework!

        1. Orv*

          Same! For me college was one prolonged exercise in guilt because there was always SOMETHING I was supposed to be doing.

        2. PropJoe*

          My girlfriend was stokes to graduate college in part because no more homework meant less interference with tv watching.

        3. I'm the Queen*

          Me too! During college I had two jobs on top of homework and commuting. Once I graduated I dropped my second job and moved so I “just” went to work and home. I had so much time! I literally sat and stared at the wall the first few days wondering what to do. I got caught up on so much reading!

      3. amoeba*

        Yeah, I do love that about working! Another reason, WFH isn’t for me, haha.
        Thinking… occasionally, but not constantly. And that’s actually fine, as long as I’m not required to actually do anything about it.

      4. ecnaseener*

        It’s definitely true for me! (I say this not to flex on people but to give them hope that it is possible and as glorious as it sounds!) I can’t help but mention it once in a while to my sister, who became a teacher straight out of grad school and as such has literally never experienced the no-homework life.

        1. Ivan Vorpatril*

          I mean, it depends? As a teacher, I rarely take stuff home, but I designed how I teach and grade partially around making sure I didn’t need to do that often, and a lot of the things I do take home are more fun stuff, like organizing things for the gaming club.

      5. Ally McBeal*

        Yeah, I agree. I’ve set up very firm work-life boundaries and only check my email after hours if I’ve been told explicitly I need to keep an eye on things for a certain project. Granted, my career advancement is slower than people who are willing to work around the clock, but in college I dreamed of the days of going home for the night and leaving my work behind, and I’m proud that my elder-millennial recession trauma hasn’t overridden the desire to fulfill that dream.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      My work materials cannot leave the job site, most of the work cannot be done from home, and we’re not expected to work beyond 4 hours, so yes?

        1. EverthingisFine*

          Thank you for clarifying because I was about to ask you how I could apply to this amazing four-hour job with no work at home!

          1. Dust Bunny*

            I have a former coworker who now works in . . . basically crime-scene cleanup. They have some pretty serious benefits, for obvious reasons.

            1. Polaris*

              Non sarcastic comment because it has been impressed upon me during a podcast how, um, dark, that profession is:

              Mental health and professional therapy included, I hope?

          2. RPOhno*

            You’d just rotate to support outside the hot zone rather than go home. Surprisingly, it ends up being a dehydration issue at least as often as it’s a hazmat issue. Even lightweight tyvek suits are hot and awkward…

      2. Love me, love my cat*

        Ha. I did have a coworker with this schedule. For the rest of us it was a 40 hr week, tho.

      3. I Would Rather Be Eating Dumplings*

        Mine is similar! One of the things I like about it. I still worry and think about things at home sometimes but it’s not the same.

    3. ursula*

      I carried this weirdly far into my life! I remember being in undergrad papers/exam period and feeling like nobody had ever been as busy or stressed as I was. I kept thinking I couldn’t wait until I got a job and all I had to do was answer emails or whatever. (It turns out law is essentially being in papers/exam mode for the rest of your life. Also I did NOT understand what professional email culture is like lol)

    4. WeirdChemist*

      I recently moved to a new job that is really good about respecting work-life balance and now I do actually have this! I work my hours, close my computer, and don’t think about work until I start the next morning.

      It’s crazy not being kept up all night worrying about work! I actually had to discover hobbies because I actually have time to do them! It’s been truly incredible

      1. Orv*

        I thought once you became an Adult and took a job you only cared about Serious Adult Things and abandoned all the old hobbies you used to enjoy.

        In hindsight I think this is because nearly all the adults I knew as a kid were parents, and once you’re a parent your kids are sort of your only hobby.

        2. Spooz*

          Not true of all parents! I’m a SAHM but my husband works full time and enjoys cooperative board games, amateur astronomy, and research into medieval church practices and architecture. He’s not doing all of them every week, but merely thinking about them as active hobbies that he does when time allows is a totally different perspective than thinking that he doesn’t have enough time to work on them as much as he would like because of the kids. It’s a mindset.

          Likewise, I am a pregnant, homeschooling SAHM but I have hobbies! I also enjoy cooperative board games, research into WW2 civilian life, and I am writing and illustrating a picture book. I have been working on this 48-page book for three years, in a sense, because I keep pausing it Cuz Life – but I still regard it as something I am working on even if I haven’t spent time on it for months. Again, it’s a mindset.

          I find it really sad when parents write off everything they enjoy because they feel they have to in order to be good parents. The other day my daughter asked me if I would work on my book painting while she watched. We had a great time. It’s good for kids to see their parents as people with interests. I used to not want kids because I thought you weren’t allowed to do anything you liked or have any friends because my parents had no friends. My kids love our friends!

          Sorry, guess that touched a nerve there :)

    5. Audrey Puffins*

      On the one hand, I absolutely do not envy kids because when I close my laptop and leave my office, I am done for the day *and* I get paid for it. But when it is my working hours, I am TERRIBLY aware that everything I do has consequences that matter. I think it balances out as less stressful on the whole for me as a person, but that doesn’t mean the stress is less. The *duration* is less but the *intensity* is more. But I get paid for it, sooo…..

    6. AliceInSpreadsheetland*

      I think this one depends on the job! For me it has been like this and it’s amazing. No longer am I getting home from a day of classes with even more work to do, or stressed out on my weekends because I could be working on x or y assignment. I leave work at work and it doesn’t bother me outside of my hours. I don’t even have Teams on my phone. My job/office/manager are all really good though about work-life balance and separation and I think that’s what makes the difference in the end.

    7. Kelsi*

      For me, this is true. I limped through school with undiagnosed ADHD and homework was the worst–I couldn’t force myself to focus and do it most of the time, assuming I even a. remembered that we had homework, b. remembered what it was, and c. remembered to bring it home and then back to school if it was completed. My stress levels were always at max because the entire school year was that feeling of “you know you should be doing something but you can’t, so you don’t do fun things either because you should be doing the responsible thing, and instead just end up frozen with panic.”

      Even when my job is stressful, even when I can’t mentally “check out” at the end of the day, it’s still a million times less stressful for me than school was.

    8. Alex*

      Yeah I would say that is how it turned out for me. School is WAY more stressful than work IME. I guess it depends on how you feel about school and what kind of work you do (and how you feel about it).

  6. Audrey Puffins*

    I thought work was all very serious business, carried out in very serious offices, by very serious business people.

    Two days ago, I had to fish a sunglasses lens out of a toilet for a co-worker who was feeling too fragile after a long weekend to do it themselves.

    1. GoryDetails*

      I had the same idea – very serious, everyone focused on work all the time. When I got my first full-time job (small junior college computer center) I discovered that “down time” was a thing, and that it was OK to spend time in between batch jobs on our IBM System-3 recounting the entire plots of “Young Frankenstein” and “Star Wars”.

      1. NerdyPrettyThings*

        I discovered downtime 11 years into my education career when I moved from the classroom to management. I actually told my boss that I didn’t think I had enough to do, because I sometimes had nothing to do without working ahead. Luckily she been a teacher, too, so she understood the mental adjustment.

    2. Busy Middle Manager*

      Me too! I feel like Melrose Place (D&D advertising) gave me this very false impression of corporate roles, it was all so important and serious, and it made such an imprint on my brain as a teen!

      I actually wished I worked somewhere like this instead of what corporate really is like, hunting people down to make them do basic tasks, arguing with people about how basic things are not huge projects, getting told pay disparities between people who are MIA all day and people who do two jobs’ worth of work are OK..

    3. Turquoisecow*

      Same. My first boss at my first full time job often went off on long tangents about his personal life or telling me jokes or the plots to movies I hadn’t seen (and encouraging me to see them) and asking me about myself – while he was training me. I kept expecting some other higher up to come and tell us to shut up and get back to work, and I’d often react with something like “okay so what does THIS button do?”

    4. anytime anywhere*

      100%. My first job was at McDonald’s and I was so surprised to find that people had a sense of humor and joked at work and that sometimes you just stood around because there were no customers and there was nothing to do. Then I thought maybe that was just fast food, so when I got my first office job I tried to be super serious and I found out people thought I was mad all the time. Turns out they expected me to like smile and laugh at jokes. Oh, silly little me.

  7. Anons*

    I spent a good chunk of my life working in food service and then for a university, so when I switched to the corporate world, I was a bit surprised that it’s just as likely that half your coworkers are dating/sleeping with/exes with each other as it is with the BOH/FOH in the restaurant biz. Don’t know why I thought otherwise, but still makes me glad I’ve never dated where I worked. Too much chance for drama.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      LOL I do remember working in retail while getting my degree AFTER working in medical offices through high school, and my coworkers were like UGH can’t wait to graduate and get my real job and get away from this drama!! Didn’t have the heart to tell them plenty of “real jobs” are ridiculously dramatic in all kinds of ways

    3. Kelsi*

      It’s always wild to hear that about other people’s offices. The particular demographic in my office makes this pretty much a non-issue (people tend to come to work here after they’ve been in the field for a long time so it heavily skews over-30, plus the field is female dominated so my office is mostly women, and at present the only queer person I know about here besides myself is a gay man, so there’s just not a lot of people with compatible orientations). But from everything I hear from other folks, this is pretty unusual, lol.

      (And of course, we have plenty of non-dating drama, although luckily we have pretty good leadership that handles it appropriately when it arises)

    4. PropJoe*

      At a former employer, I somehow managed to accidentally find myself in a position where I was tapped into the rumor mill.

      I think it was because I interacted with departments throughout the organization, and would hear the hot goss from admin assistants, staff, supervisors, etc.

      I’m glad that’s in the past because I don’t want to know who is cheating on their spouses with each other, or who is meeting up for casual sex in the supply room, or who goes to the park at lunch to snort cocaine, or any one of a variety of things.

      1. Reluctant Mezzo*

        I actually adored it when I was in that position because as a writer, the plots are just handed to me (though I was always very careful to disguise the characters). Turns out that year-end and trying to find the thieves for the Wizard-King before the Wizard-King executes me aren’t that far apart.

      2. aunttora*

        Ha! I remember when I was leaving a job as a paralegal for a (locally) semi-famous attorney. He was mostly famous for being difficult to work with. A co-worker and I took the new hire out to lunch to have an informal conversation about “things”. She was kind of uncomfortable, and finally asked if the rumors were true that I was sleeping with the attorney. Both co-worker and I absolutely BURST into laughter. NOTHING could have been less true about our ‘relationship’. To this day I have no idea how that rumor could ever have gotten started, but I did briefly enjoy the idea that other people thought I was more interesting than I was.

    5. Ally McBeal*

      This is so true. I waited tables throughout college and then (thanks, 2008 recession!) survived on temp jobs for 3-4 years before landing something permanent. I started privately calling myself “the sl-tty temp” because I developed a tendency to hook up with or date someone at many of those temp jobs. That said, I lived in a huge city full of young 20-something professionals who had that same mindset, so I wasn’t an outlier. I haven’t dated anyone I’ve met at any of my permanent jobs since then, and most of those jobs have had very different environments to the ones I temped at so hookups would be rare if not frowned upon.

    6. GingerNinja*

      I remember being shocked – SHOCKED! – when a friend’s first job out of college, working at a Very Big Bank’s national HQ in a downtown and everything was … less “professional” and more “Melrose Place.” Every week, my jaw dropped at hearing how Serious Real Adults Who Made Business Decisions were having sex on conference room tables, sabotaging careers because they didn’t like someone, calling employees’ spouses to rat out affairs, … All. The. Drama.

      It was my first hint that maybe all adults didn’t have it all together.

  8. Possum's mom*

    As a kid I believed that factories were places where the workers had to stand in one spot all day and couldn’t move , or else they got in trouble and were set on “fire”.

    1. Snudence Prooter*

      I believed that too! I thought a long conveyor belt brought you a car or something and then you tightened one bolt and it would go down the belt and someone would tighten another, and so on. Maybe for really big, really heavy things there might be a train track with hundreds of chained together cars. I think I got that detail from growing up on Pittsburgh and seeing all the equipment from the steel mills.

      1. Lenora Rose*

        Lots of cartoons show those conveyor belt ideas. Similar to how desk work is shown as involving big stack of papers you pull off a stack, then stamp once, then put on another stack… and yet somehow this is important enough there are whole rooms of people doing nothing else.

        1. Zephy*

          In the abstract, that basically IS my desk job and I’m one of six people in a room doing that. Cartoons aren’t too far off, in that respect. I don’t have a literal, physical stack of papers or a stamp, but before computers, I might well have. These days it’s all computer-based. But “open a file, do these specific things to it, then close it and move on to the next one” *is* the view-from-3o,000-feet of my day-to-day.

        2. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

          Or the opening office scenes in The Apartment with endless rows of people sitting at desks with adding machines and papers and then jumping up and fleeing as soon as a bell rang.

    2. Maestro Petrini*

      Yes! I thought “being fired” was where they burn you at the stake if you are bad at your job. Definitely wanted to be a kid forever.

    3. umami*

      This reminds me that I thought those signs along the road saying ‘Speed checked by radar’ meant someone was literally always there shooting a radar from that spot at every car. I thought that would be a cool job.

    4. rosy maple moth*

      Yes! “Fired” is a terrifying phrase for kids. My dad told my mom that my uncle got fired from the pub where he was working, and I thought he meant the pub burned down. I was very confused when we drove past it a couple days later and it was still there. To be fair, I also thought that “firemen” set things on fire. Glad we’re saying “firefighters” now– as well as being non-gendered it’s less confusing!

      2. A nonny mouse*

        My (very young) daughter thinks that firefighters fight fires—like punch them. She refuses to believe that they put them out.

    5. Prudence Snooter*

      Off topic but this reminds me of what I thought kindergarten would be like when I was in preschool. Since it was a higher level than preschool I assumed it must be boring and rigorous in some way. I imagined that the only thing you were allowed to do at recess was quietly run around in a small circle with your peers. I thought this despite the fact that my best friend was in kindergarten and we played together at recess every day.

      1. Industry Behemoth*

        I know a career teacher who eventually switched to teaching first graders. Her students were accustomed to kindergarten being only half a day, and were always asking is it time to go home yet.

    7. Armchair Analyst*

      Yes. I asked my son at age 5 if he knew what “getting fired” was.
      He replied he thought it was when your boss shoots you, like with a gun.
      I clarified that it was when your boss said you’re not allowed to work there anymore.
      My son eagerly asked if then your boss would shoot you, after that.

    8. Festively Dressed Earl*

      The first letter Alison answers next week will be “My company flambés employees who fail PIPs. Is this legal?”

  9. [insert witty username here]*

    This is somewhat related but I NEVER thought I’d be in an office job or in a corporate setting. I thought you had to be more math-focused and I didn’t even consider any sort of business major in college. I went to school for elementary education but realized senior year that was NOT what I wanted to to but needed to graduate. Never taught a day in my life. I’ve been doing project control (budget management) for nearly 20 years now and am completely on-the-job/self taught. I’m making way more money than I ever thought I would and couldn’t imagine NOT having a flexible, WFH/hybrid, office job. *shrugs* go figure!

    1. Cubicles & Chimeras*

      I had similar thoughts. Swore I’d never work in an office because it sounded soul sucking and I cared more about being passionate about my work and office work is inherently boring. Plus you’d be stuck in a sad, sad cubicle working your sad, sad job like you see on TV.

      Turns out I can be very passionate about excel and data. And I now have opinions that cubicles are superior to open concept work stations.

      1. AliceInSpreadsheetland*

        Same! When I was a kid “office jobs” were made to seem like the most awful, soul-crushing and boring thing ever. But turns out some offices are really cool, WFH is a thing now, and also after my job is over I can be as cool and weird and non-boring as I want. And anyone who judges people doing office jobs as boring or ‘mere paper pushers’ is probably really immature.

      2. Kelsi*

        Haha same! I thought I was going to have a career in the arts.

        Turns out I have a passion for data and coding, and trying to monetize my skills in the arts ruined them for me. I’m much happier doing my little spreadsheets in my little cubicle, then going home to make whatever art I want in my free time.

        1. Jessica Ganschen*

          Yes! For me, admin work isn’t something that I ever pictured myself being passionate about, but it’s something that I’m good at and that pays for my yarn for crocheting and the electricity for my laptop to write my poetry.

      3. [insert witty username here]*

        omgosh cubes are SO superior to open concept!!!

        and yes, I’m also passionate about excel and I keep learning more and more – it’s so great!

      4. goddessoftransitory*

        People being passionate about data is why we have [fill in scientific advancement.]

      5. I Have RBF*

        And I now have opinions that cubicles are superior to open concept work stations.

        There are studies that agree with you. One study showed that open plan offices have LESS face to face conversations and collaboration. They literally hung cameras on people and recorded the amount of interaction before open plan and after – empirical data, not subjective reporting.

        Yes, I have a looooot of data on this. My home computer has several years worth of files about it. But nobody in management at these companies reads studies other than what the interior designers feed them to convince them that “everyone loves it and it makes your workplace cool/trendy/successful/collaborative/blah blah blah.”

    2. Rosyglasses*

      I’m the same! I had a gazillion different majors in college – all creative or poli/sci – before finally going with elementary education. I just couldn’t imagine doing something boring in life like all the other business majors. Cut to today, where I have been in executive Operations roles for the better part of my work-life and only taught children for about 5 years; now I just teach adults – over, and over, and over again.

    3. a clockwork lemon*

      I thought the same thing re: math! I knew that *some* jobs were writing heavy but thought that all those jobs required you to be A Writer(TM). 17 year old me would laugh and laugh if I could go back in time and tell her that I would someday work in finance and the majority of my office job would be “read stuff, write about it, then talk to people about what you’ve read and written.”

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I was convinced that math was boring and I was terrible at it throughout elementary school (because surely you’re only good at something if you’re fast at it, right?), despite my dad telling me over and over again that there was more to math than computation.

        It turns out there is a lot more to math than computation, my dad was right that I would be good at it, and it’s not too boring to do as a job.

    4. What's in a name?*

      The “making more money than I ever thought I would” is true for me. I’m currently making more than my mom made by the end of her career, an amount she was so happy about and proud to have reached! (Even by the standards circa 2004, her # was a modest amount, low-mid 5 figures, but still such an accomplishment to someone who started working in the 1960s.) What I didn’t know is just how small it would feel in comparison to expenses and the cost of living.

      1. Turquoisecow*

        When I got the offer letter for my first full time office job in 2008 I was blown away by how much money it was.

        Few years later, moving to my own apartment, it quickly went from “wow,” to “it’s okay,” to “I think I’m underpaid?”

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          Reminds me of the Sarah’s Scribbles where she gets her first paycheck and is gloating; then the last panel is her eating Ramen and saying “that was way less money than I thought it was.”

        2. pagooey*

          I remember receiving my first full-time office job paycheck, circa 1995. I think after taxes it was about $800, and I sat in my cubicle holding it and trembling with awe to think there would be ANOTHER ONE OF THESE IN TWO WEEKS. And then again, two weeks after THAT!

      2. [insert witty username here]*

        hey, being a career woman in the 60s was no easy feat, so mad kudos to your mom.

        for our generation, it’s amazing how on paper, we can feel like “we’ve made it!! we rock!!” and then inflation is like “hold my beer…..”

        *sad trombone noise*

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Sometimes I look back at my middle-class childhood and I’m like, “How the hell did my parents afford children on one salary? Were we actually rich…?”

          (No, education, housing and childcare was affordable, so the middle-class lifestyle was more than just a pipe dream.)

    5. The OG Sleepless*

      I barely knew anybody who worked at a desk in an office when I was a kid. My dad was a farmer, my mom was a teacher, and most of my relatives were also either farmers or teachers. I had an uncle who was an engineer, but all I really knew about that was that he always lived in towns that had paper mills. I lived in a small town so I knew store owners, doctors, and so forth. I knew there were jobs where people sat at desks all day because I saw them on TV, but I couldn’t imagine what they did. Not surprisingly, I don’t have a desk job, and I’m still a little unclear on what that is like.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        IME, there’s a lot of time spent reading AAM between answering emails and short spurts of actual productivity.

  10. Tammy 2*

    I definitely thought briefcases would be a bigger part of my life, and I used to pretend my lunchbox was a briefcase.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      I think they probably were before cloud storage. My dad had one and he is not the kind of guy who would have if he hadn’t needed it.

      1. Ama*

        Yes, my dad was a CPA and in the early days of his career (80s through mid 90s) he definitely had a series of nice work bags and nice folders that held legal pads, a calculator, pens, etc. for when he had to do site visits to his clients. (And then 3.5″ disks for a while when that was the primary mode of transportation for large client files.)

        I was given a nice padded folder like that (with my name printed on it) when I received an academic award my senior year of high school and I thought it meant I was an adult now, lol. By the time I left college we had USB drives and other than meeting notes I never did any actual work on paper.

    2. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      Yes! I thought that was a normal office necessity when I was a kid and by the time I was in college EVERYONE had a day planner portfolio and I thought that I’d need one of those too.

    3. kiri*

      Me too! I pulled my mom’s old clarinet out of the closet at age 6ish and would carry the case around like a briefcase.

    4. Kes*

      Yes, I remember my dad’s briefcase that he used to take to work when I was growing up. Never used one myself. By the time he retired he was also using a backpack.

    5. Andrew*

      right? I bought a briefcase in my 20s even though I was pursuing an acting career. For some reason I equated any kind of work with needing a briefcase. It collected dust (although I truly loved it)

    6. Grad School Attempt 2*

      I also expected to carry a briefcase! (Grew up in the 1990s; my dad was a software engineer and brought one to work every day. My mom, a psychologist, never carried one, so I don’t know why I thought they were essential.)

      I had a black plastic briefcase as a kid that I used to carry my toys around in. A few years ago, when my dad was getting rid of his long-unused leather briefcase, I took it for the sentimental value. I have never once used it, but maybe someday I’ll get the opportunity!

    7. Miss Chanandler Bong*

      I did too. My dad is a lawyer and carries a briefcase with legal files.

      When I worked in an office, I carried a backpack with my laptop, lol. Just like at school.

    8. 1LFTW*

      The only time I ever had a briefcase was in high school — because I was on the debate team. Haven’t used it since.

      1. H3llifIknow*

        OMG me too!! I had absolute STACKS of index card with “evidence” on them in there! Go NFL’ers!

    9. AnneC*

      Oh yes, I fully assumed carrying a briefcase was what you did once you “graduated” from backpacks, which were clearly for kids unless you were camping. My brother and I also figured adults kept mysterious, fun things in briefcases; at one point he inherited one of my dad’s old briefcases and used it to store rare baseball cards and bottle rockets. XD

      1. MigraineMonth*

        My dad was a commuter cyclist, so he always used a backpack.

        I do too, and now that I’m approaching 40 people have finally stopped assuming that means I’m in college and/or high school (!).

        1. Tammy 2*

          My spouse and I were once having a picnic near a group of where one man was going on and on about how silly backpacks look if you’re wearing a suit and we thought it was so funny that “No one cares about your messenger bag, Chad.” is now one of our regular bits.

    10. Rock Prof*

      My dad bought me a briefcase-style satchel when I got my degree. He used one everyday, but I don’t think I ever used it though it was very sweet.

  11. Lex Talionis*

    When I was young I thought you got a job and you had that same job for the rest of your life. (Father was a fire fighter and indeed only had one job for 40 years)

    1. Dr. KMnO4*

      I had the same thought! My mom worked for UPS for her entire career (she retired at age 55 with 30 years of service), my aunt was a medical receptionist/transcriptionist for the same two doctors for 30+ years, my dad bought a small business from a friend and stuck with that for 30 years…it just seemed like all the adults I knew did the same job for life.

    2. Zephy*

      To be fair, this used to be a lot more true. My in-laws just retired about five minutes ago from 40-year careers in medicine. So, it does still occasionally happen that way, but largely only for people who started working in the 80s, anymore.

        1. Vio*

          I wonder if it’s that companies show less loyalty to their employees (and thus get less in return) or that the employees have just become more aware of how little loyalty they get back from the company.

    3. anytime anywhere*

      Same! My dad started working at a farm equipment dealer part time when he was 16 (he did school half days and worked half days- whatever that program was called). He will FINALLY retire this year at the age of 70. His attitude towards his kids being “job hoppers” now totally amuses me because that’s just not how the work world works anymore.

    4. A large cage of birds*

      Yup. I fully went into career type jobs expecting this. I’d still like to do that ultimately, but so far they’ve all become untenable at some point.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I wouldn’t set your heart on this; most of my career growth has come from switching jobs. I have a relative who has stuck with the same company for over 10 years, and unfortunately I think it’s really hurt his earning potential.

    5. JadziaSnax*

      I also thought this bc my dad also had the same job for 40 years (lawyer). At his retirement party I pointed out that in my at-that-time ten years in the working world I’d already changed jobs three times.

    6. goddessoftransitory*

      I too assumed you took one of the handful of jobs I’d heard about–for girls it was teacher or nurse–and stayed in that job forever.

    8. Angus Macdonald, Child Detective*

      I’ve met one person in my life who really exemplified this. He did a year at a company while he was at uni, working on a software project. After uni he went back to that same company and project and worked there on that single project his entire life until he retired in his 60’s!

  12. KHB*

    When I was a kid, I thought that my dad was paying his direct reports’ salaries out of his own personal salary. I could never quite figure out how that was supposed to work – I had a rough idea of how much he made, and of how much a “good salary” was, and of how many direct reports he had, and there obviously wasn’t enough money to go around.

    Much more recently – right up until the moment I got my current job, actually – I thought that employers would just tell you how much they were going to pay you, and that it would be a fair and equitable amount. Maybe that doesn’t count as a “weird thing.” Honestly, I still think the salary-negotiation system we have is the actual “weird thing.”

    1. Watry*

      Your last sentence is one of the things I actually like about working in government–the pay rate is the pay rate. You might get some extra for experience or seniority if you’re transferring, but that’s also structured.

      2. E*

        Yup, same here (in state govt at a public university) and it’s one of the things that drew me to the job. Transparency about salaries. I’m an older millennial woman (36) and have been working full-time since I was 22 in a variety of industries, and I could never bring myself to negotiate. I always needed a job too desperately to do anything that I felt could jeopardize the offer I’d received.

      3. SadGov*

        Just to offer an alternative perspective: As a career woman in her 30s, government job for 8 years, salary transparency is great but the other symptom of government is chronic underpayment. so you’ll know your salary, and your coworkers’, but you’ll also know who hired in at the higher salary band, and government more frequently refuses anything like merit based raises during financial hardship, and there’s a healthy dose of “We don’t have any money to do that and we can’t give you a raise because of the salary band we would have to give everyone a raise”.

        But maybe my workplace is problematic and not a good example?

        source: municipal government.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          My government organization doesn’t do merit-based raises. Everyone’s salary is based on role + longevity. You can get promoted/transferred into a different role, though. The base salary for a role is also regularly increased as a result of union negotiation/COL adjustments/market competitiveness.

          In my role, you start below market rate, but after a few years of guaranteed increases you surpass it.

    2. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

      I feel like the fixed salary approach makes sense when there’s a fixed set of job duties, and the negotiation approach when there’s your nominal job description and there’s what you actually do. Where different people with the same job title and description bring wildly different skills to the table, wear different hats, and are valued different amounts according to how well their different hats fit company needs at any given time. Like, “How much would it hurt if they left, how hard would it be to replace them and get that combination of skills again?”

      My job is very much a “Well, technically we’re all software engineers, but some people can write good documentation and some can’t; some can pitch in when the DBA or sysadmin is out and others can only do their own job; some can design and offer technical training, and others can lead meetings; some can do their own project management but not anyone else’s; some need someone else doing project management for them; some can do their own project management and also step in to make sure other people’s projects stay on track; some are good at seeing the big picture but not at finishing projects; some are detail-oriented but no good at strategy; some have a lot of product knowledge and others have none…” situation where you have a lot of autonomy on what you work on, and it’s incredibly subjective how much value you’re bringing to the table.

      My boss had a very real conversation with me last year that went, “I’m not sure whether we should fire this engineer or not, because on the one hand, his projects aren’t getting done, but on the other, I know his teaching skills contribute so much to other people’s projects that if we lose him, we might lose overall productivity on the team. Even if we replaced him with someone who could get their own work done.”

      And I was like, “Well, I know we’re used to everyone doing their own project management, but I think this person just needs someone to do his project management for him, and then his work will get done. Which, yes, costs someone else more time, but overall I think it’s a win.”

      This kind of thing is how salary conversations get complicated, in my experience.

      1. KHB*

        But how much can a job applicant – who, by definition, does not work for this employer yet – be reasonably expected to know about how their various skills will be used in their day-to-day work?

        You’ve given a reasonable argument for having a salary structure that’s more nuanced than “everybody in the same role with the same number of years of experience gets paid the exact same.” But that doesn’t mean that one of the inputs into that salary structure needs to (or even should) be “ask job candidates what they think they should be paid, when they don’t even necessarily have a complete picture of what the job looks like or how well they’ll be able to do it.”

        1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

          Well, at the hiring stage, both sides are making decisions based on very incomplete information: the company doesn’t even know for sure if the person *can* do the job, and the employee doesn’t know if they’re going to hate the job and want to quit immediately or not. Both sides have to make decisions anyway, based on the incomplete information they have: whether to make/accept the offer, and what salary to offer/ask.

          And one of the most important pieces of information the employee has is “What will it take to get me to agree to take this offer?”

          Ultimately, the most important thing you, the company, are paying the candidate for at the offer stage is signing the offer and showing up to work. For that, you’re competing with the candidate’s BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement), which may be staying where they are, or accepting a different offer.

          How much extra the company would need to offer for the candidate to choose them over other options will be higher or lower depending on a lot of factors, like location, in-office vs. remote, the company mission, the exact job details, etc. Not to mention other traditional benefits. The exact calculus of all those factors is per-employee, not per-title.

          Likewise, how much extra a company is willing to pay a candidate to get them to accept the offer over the candidate’s other alternatives depends on how much the employee impressed the company at the interview stage, how many other candidates the company has lined up, how desperate the company is to fill the position, etc.

          Sometimes the employee says, “I’m going to turn down this offer for one with a higher salary, or remote work, or something.” Now the company discovers they’re definitely going to lose that candidate if they don’t suddenly discover some flexibility. If the company has 6 other promising candidates in the pipeline, it’s going to be, “Thanks anyway, good luck in the other job.” If the company has no one else in the hiring pipeline and it’s proving hard to find someone, and the position is badly needed, the company might realize they need to flex on something if they want to fill the position in a reasonable timeframe. That could be salary, remote work, PTO, or any other component.

          If a candidate is employed and reasonably happy with their current job when they’re searching, their current salary is going to play a role in their BATNA. I have had a number of phone screens end at the salary discussion because I didn’t hate my job and hadn’t found anything good enough to make me willing to take a pay cut to leave, and the company I was talking with couldn’t match my current salary. And the reason they couldn’t match my current salary was because I’ve had bosses who’ve noticed that I produce a ton of value based on my ability to supply a bunch of the optional skills I listed in my previous comment, and who’ve thus gone to bat for me at raise time. In my field, 3 years of experience with a ton of optional and adjacent skills, the ability to pick up new skills quickly, plus a lot of initiative, beats 18 years of experience and a very limited profile.

          I’ve also been in the reverse situation, where I hated my current job so much I was willing to take a pay cut if I had to…but I was well paid and could afford to be picky while I shopped around. So I was able to hold out until I had competing offers from two companies that both really really wanted me. If I’d been unemployed, I would have had to prioritize getting money sooner, and I would have accepted a lower offer. As it was, both companies had to up their initial offer if they wanted me to choose them. A lot of factors went into that negotiation, like “Do I have to move across the country?” “Does the hiring manager sound like someone I can’t stand?” “Do I really want to do devops engineering all day long?” If I hadn’t had two offers, I might have ended up with the annoying manager across the country doing less interesting work. If I hadn’t had two offers, the one company would never have flexed on remote and the other company might not have flexed on salary. If I hadn’t had hard-to-find niche skills and a good reputation in my field, neither company would have flexed anyway; they would have moved on to the next candidate. The company I ended up turning down contacted me six months later to see if I would consider them again, that’s how much they wanted me.

          So that’s where I think it becomes very individual and snowflake-like on both sides of the table, and negotiation on salary makes as much sense as negotiation on any other point.

          I’m not denying that many reprehensible factors like racism and sexism go into setting salary expectations. But I advocate for greater transparency and other DEI efforts, not one-size-fits-all. One size rarely fits all.

  13. s*

    When we asked my five-year-old nephew what his dad did at work, he said, “He paints pictures and checks out money.” My brother-in-law worked at the Federal Reserve (and was fairly well-compensated), so I guess the second part was kind of correct.

    1. Ashley*

      My sister made a new friend at school and she came over for dinner. The friend was asked about her parents occupations. Her response, “my dad sells drugs”.
      He was a pharmaceutical rep so she was completely accurate.

      1. Sweet 'N Low*

        I have a friend who’s a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and when people ask what he does for a living he matter-of-factly says, “I’m a drug dealer,” and then waits for them to question it before explaining.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        When Officer Friendly from the D.A.R.E. program visited my school, he tried to get all the 1st graders in the class to sign a contract promising to never use drugs. I absolutely refused, since my mom and dad gave me drugs sometimes and they made me feel better.

        (I then went home and confronted my mom about her drinking problem, since I’d seen her drink a glass of wine a couple of weeks before. She tried to explain that occasional drinking was normal did not make her an alcoholic, and I sobbed, “That’s what they said an alcoholic would say!”)

        1. Csethiro Ceredin*

          That seems really inappropriate of good ol’ Officer Friendly.

          When I joined Brownies they made me sign a paper saying I’d never touch alcohol for my whole life. I was all worried about it and my parents told me it was ok and nothing bad would happen to me if I wanted to try wine or something later in life. This blew my small mind, that the police wouldn’t drag me away because I was reneging on a signed contract.

        2. Mother of Corgis*

          I did something similar as a child. I scolded my mom for drinking a soda while driving, because its wrong to drink and drive! D.A.R.E people never bothered to explain to us that they meant alcohol and not all drinks in general.

        3. Rock Prof*

          My 7 year old just got really upset at his dad and I the other week because we were out of espresso and had to stop and get more. He was accusing us of being addicted and told us that needing drugs to get through the day was bad. Maybe we over explained how sometimes if I don’t have coffee, I can get headaches and feel groggy for the day.

    2. Turquoisecow*

      I knew my dad’s job title – purchasing manager, for most of my childhood – but I don’t think I would have been able to explain that to anyone who asked, especially since he worked for a chemical company and so was mostly purchasing chemicals.

      For a while he worked for a flavors and fragrances company and that was great because I could say he buys the stuff that makes goldfish taste good.

    3. irianamistifi*

      When I was in 2nd grade, we had just moved to a new state and my mom had a new job that I guess she wasn’t enjoying very much. I didn’t understand much of what she did in the day to day, but she complained about it all the time.

      When the principal had me to her office to get to know me, she asked what my parents did. And I said, “Oh, my dad uses a calculator and my mom works in a snake pit.” And I said it like that was the best thing ever, because I love animals and in my mind, working with snakes sounds so cool.

      The principal had a good laugh at that and when she finally met my mom at parent-teacher night, she apparently told my mom she might want to select her words a little more carefully for over-literal kids.

      1. 1LFTW*

        As a sometimes overly literal adult, I might honestly have asked if your mother was a handler at a zoo or something.

        1. irianamistifi*

          Right!?! But no, she was just a VP-level IT worker who had to deal with office politics. She always said she hated that kind of thing, but she did go into actual local politics. She said she hated that too, but I think she secretly enjoyed it.

      2. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        Oh, that’s awesome. I feel like we should have a thread for “What did you think your parents did for a living before you were old enough to understand?”

        My youngest sister had a bring-your-parent-to-school day in kindergarten, in which the kids were asked to draw a picture of their parent at work and present it to the rest of the class. My dad was rather bemused when my my sister presented a picture of him cooking. He could not cook. Cooking was something women in my very traditional family did. He worked in accounting and finance. But he didn’t want to embarrass her, so he just nodded and smiled and played along.

        That evening, nobody in my family could figure out where on earth my little sister got the cooking idea from…until I remembered that the previous summer, my dad’s job had had a community fundraising event on a Saturday. He was put in charge of grilling and selling burgers to the public (i.e., traditionally manly cooking that he knew how to do). That day, my mom took all us kids to “go see Dad at work.” We older ones understood that this was a one-off, which is why it was Saturday, and that Dad normally sat at a desk and used a calculator to fill out forms, but that’s when we learned the youngest had not grasped the difference. Dad made burgers for a living–the only logical conclusion!

        1. Csethiro Ceredin*

          I genuinely thought my dad sat in a white lab coat and THOUGHT OF IDEAS all day and then his team of technologists in their lab made the ideas into (unspecified) things. And then they all experimented on the things and made notes.

          He studied/monitored the sun for the government, so heaven knows what I thought he was inventing. Also I don’t think he has worn a white lab coat in his life.

    4. Roscoe da Cat*

      When I was little, I spent the day in my father’s office and when my mother asked “What does Daddy do all day?” I replied, “He colors!” because he had spent the day playing with me.

      He was head of a major research library…

  14. Falling Diphthong*

    When we got Jonny Quest to watch with our kids, my husband and I were embarrassed to realize how much of our youthful idea of “what a scientist does all day” had been formed by this early exposure.

    Dr. Quest lives on a private island, where he does cool research into all the branches of science using many beakers. The government regularly drops by to ask for his help figuring out tricky science problems, flying him around the world with his family so they can solve science questions while fighting bad guys.

    We did figure the private island was a bit much to hope for.

    1. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

      Also that scientists had cool bodyguard/pilots. I figured that only senior scientists needed Race Bannons on the payroll.

    2. Snow Globe*

      My idea of office work was formed by shows like Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart. Everybody is friends and they just sit around talking and joking most of the day. And bosses are always nice people.

      1. Kelsi*

        Haha, I feel like I got the opposite message from similar-era shows (before my time but I watched a lot of Nick at Nite)—bosses were mean and scary and you would have to have them over for dinner and make everything impossibly perfect or you would be doomed forever.

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          Oh, that weird “boss over for dinner” thing! That always seemed so strange to me; to my knowledge my parents never did any such thing. The last time I saw it was on Mad Men.

      2. Turquoisecow*

        I watched a Mary Tyler Moore episode recently and was kind of surprised by how little actual work was depicted. I know she was a producer but I don’t know what she actually DiD.

        At least Bob Newhart you saw him conducting therapy sessions between coworker banter.

        (Two of my favorite shows as a kid, thanks to Nick at Nite).

        1. MsM*

          To be fair, my dad was also a producer when I was little, and I still don’t entirely know what that entailed.

        2. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

          I know, especially since they had a hard deadline for the news. There was always time to chat with Mr. Grant and Murray and entertain anyone who happened to drop by. The Happy Homemaker, SueAnne seemed to be the only one who took her work seriously.

    3. MadtownMaven*

      The alternative, which I grew up with, is “Science Hippies,” like those Ze Frank refers to on his True Facts YouTube channel!

    4. Nonny*

      It wasn’t until I was assisting with photoshoots in a university lab that I realized most chemistry experiments weren’t using bright boldly colored liquids like you see in stock photos. And it was super cringy to watch the chemistry professor and the art Director talk circles around each other about academically accurate photos versus eye-catching marketing images. Doh.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        The terrific movie review site “And You Call Yourself A Scientist!” calls this trope out a lot–she even calls it “Vials With Various Colored Fluids!”

      2. Bay*

        We do very occasionally have multicolored cool-looking science stuff in labs. And when it occurs we all take a million pictures of it and show everyone we’re allowed to show because it’s so exciting when it’s photogenic. If I had variously colored liquids in beakers in my workplace my camera roll would be full, no resistance

    5. goddessoftransitory*

      Ahhh, TV/movie science! I also enjoy the trope that the “Professor/Doctor” character is instantly and deeply familiar with any and every branch of not only hard science, but archeology, linguistics, what have you. That’s why the same person can both read ancient inscriptions and do particle physics, depending on plot requirements.

  15. AndersonDarling*

    Growing up in the 80’s and watching the sitcoms of the time, I thought that work was where you setup dates. Everyone was single and they had dates every night. And you would set those dates with a few hours notice, “I’ll pick you up at 7,” and that was doable. Because women would have a closet of fancy clothes ready for a night out. And all anyone talked about at work was gossip about relationships.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      I’m similar! I didn’t quite realize that TV shows weren’t reflective of real life so I thought coworkers would be my main pool for friendships/dating when I got a job.

      I am friends with a few of my coworkers now, but I also have many friends I’ve never worked with! (And I’ve never dated a coworker.)

      1. Two-Faced Big-Haired Food Critic*

        I used to watch the CBS Sunday night lineup with my parents, which included Alice (Mel’s Diner) and The Jeffersons. My mom told me more than once, “When you get a job, you cannot talk to your boss the way Florence talks to George, or the way the waitresses talk to Mel. But also, if you get to be a manager or supervisor, don’t act like Mel, and if you ever have home help, don’t act like George!”

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        I ended up marrying a coworker (and we still work together at a different job!) but that was definitely the exception!

    2. Lana Kane*

      For me it wasn’t dates, but that you always had to invite the boss over to dinner. I remember seeing a lot of that on Bewitched, especially!

    3. Miss Muffet*

      Reminds me of the meme that says something like, “I thought day-to-night looks would be a bigger part of my life” (since that’s such a staple of women’s magazines)

      1. Lily Rowan*

        I was just going to say that!

        Not ONCE did I take off my blouse and just wear my suit jacket out to the club.

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        I like the one that goes something like “I thought being a grownup would involve a lot more ice cream.”

  16. chocolatelab*

    Coming from a family of small business owners, I was under the impression that the *only* work was starting a business. I distinctly remember telling a cousin “Doing anything else is just to stay busy until you start your business.”

    1. Paint N Drip*

      That is SO interesting to me. In my larger family it was very much the opposite, you end up opening a business if you can’t be a good employee and that business probably won’t go well but it will be a job at least (That was my great-grandfather’s lot in life, and it was not a successful situation nor a good family memory)
      I realize now for me, I have a lot of entrepreneurial interest but absolutely no confidence.

      1. chocolatelab*

        I’ve heard perspective from more than one person! It was such a shock to hear the first time; it’s just so different from what I grew up knowing. Maybe partly because both sets of my grandparents were immigrants. I’ve read some interesting research suggesting a strong connection between immigrant struggle and entrepreneurship. Or, perhaps, there weren’t great options for immigrants back when my grandparents arrived. So their children all saw it as a noble, putting-food-on-the-table thing.

        2. ampersand*

          That’s actually very logical—it makes sense to me!

          I have to ask, do you own your own business or did you go a different route?

        3. MigraineMonth*

          Are you referring to the “immigrant advantage”? The concept that immigrants are much more likely to start businesses because the people who risk moving to another country seeking opportunity are also the type of people who will risk (and put the work into) starting a new business?

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            Due to prejudice they also often cannot get good jobs outside their community, which means opening their own business to make a living.

  17. Fluffy Orange Menace*

    As a person born without a circadian rhythm, I thought I’m the chosen one for shift work. Turned out if whoever is rostering is malicious enough with nonsensical shifts, no one can do it for long.

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      to be fair, if you can get a job with a designated shift at night, say m-f 10pm to 7 am, you are much better than if you have random night shifts

      1. Nonanon*

        This is true to a certain extent; my partner works the same consistent night shift, but he’s also adjusted his sleep schedule to sleep all day even on his days off. This is great! This is exactly what you should do! Except when you can’t. One of his coworkers is a single parent who CONSISTENTLY gets the worst of everything (because, y’know, sometimes you work your 12-hour shift, drop the kid off at school, and only get a few hours of sleep until you need to pick them up and get ready for your next shift; GOD FORBID you or your kid has something else going on, like a doctor appointment, soccer game, or needing to run an errand). IMO (and plenty of people can have different experiences than my observation!) the overall “American Style System” is still designed for a 1950s nuclear family, and day shift, night shift, and variable shifts all get hit by this.

    1. Spooz*

      Oh my goodness, yes. That you just had to find your “passion” and then you’d be thrilled to work until you died. If you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. If you don’t adore your job, it’s because YOU failed to find the right job for your “passion”.

  19. Higher Ed Drama*

    I thought a 401K had something to do with $401,000 (and not a tax code). Like, when you retire that’s the amount you get in your retirement account.

    2. Bean Counter Extraordinaire*

      (Teachers have 403b instead of 401k I believe?)
      If that was the case, I should have stuck with my original career aspiration of being a teacher. No idea what I’d do retiring with 403 billion dollars, but I’d sure figure something out!

    3. FaerieBear*

      I also thought this until recently (I live in Canada so our retirement savings has a different name)

  20. Paint N Drip*

    I thought every job had a uniform, and if you didn’t have a uniform it wasn’t a job. It blew my mind that the person teaching me how to draw or planting flowers or playing an instrument would be potentially working (work is stressful and hard, right? jobs suck, right?)
    My mom wore scrubs = job.
    My dad wore the same outfit (a la S.Jobs) every day plus a badge = job.
    People working at restaurants, coffee shops, etc. wearing a polo shirt or whatever = job. My babysitter was a local grandma who also watched other kids like me, but she was just hanging out in her house playing with kids = not a job.
    Eventually got to school and teachers all wore different grown-up clothes and seemed to just read, talk about dinosaurs, make crafts, hang out with kids, etc. = not a job.
    Construction dudes actively doing construction work = not a job (just boys playing in the dirt? IDK what I was thinking)

  21. human-woman*

    In first grade, our teacher asked the class if we know how our parents get their money. I, a smarty pants, raised my hand, and the teacher called on me. “The bank!” Teacher: “Yes, but where does the money *come from*? How do they *make* the money?” Me: *blank stare, tiny voice* “The…bank?” I had no idea work and money were related. Money comes from the bank, work is just one of the many things grownups do in mysterious grownup-land.

    2. Cat Tree*

      It’s interesting. For convenience, I basically never use cash. I also rarely handle checks; I have direct deposit and bills are on auto-pay. I often don’t even use a physical credit card because I’ll buy through an app or website linked to my card.

      It’s weird to teach my 3 year-old about money when it’s so abstract. From her view, when we get McDonald’s I just drive up to the window and they give me the food. She definitely is learning a bit money, but the process is a lot different than 40 years ago.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        My 8-year-old nibling has his own debit card. It makes perfect sense but still feels wrong somehow.

        1. allathian*

          My son also has one. He got his this spring, just before his 15th birthday. I was shocked when I realized that our bank could’ve issued him with one when he was 6! I know mine is a culture that values early independence, but 6 is a bit young…

          Kids can’t get their first bus ticket until they’re 7, but if they have a ticket, they can use public transit on their own, and many do. Our son was 10 when he decided that he wanted to quit after-school daycare and come home instead on the bus (he’s an introvert and preferred to be home on his own rather than hang out with his friends after school). We were happy to save the money and let him.

          I also get paid by direct deposit and most of my bills are on auto-pay. None of our local banks issue checks any more, they aren’t considered legal tender. The only exception is traveller’s checks, but most stores don’t accept those either, and it’s usually cheaper and you get a better exchange rate if you just pay by credit card when you travel.

    3. Buni*

      I still get this teaching kids now, except the first answer is ‘their card!’ (because practically everything’s contactless here) and then the ones who think they’re being *really* smart go ‘uh no, the bank ACTUALLY!’

    5. Blue Skies*

      Oh my goodness – I remember once when I was IDK, maybe seven or eight, so it would have been circa 1970, I remember after leaving the grocery store and my mom was a bit stressed because it was “ the end of the month” and my dad had not been paid yet. Anyway, I understood that my mom needed more money so I had the absolute perfect solution. I remember confidently telling her to “just write a check.” I can remember the entire exchange so clearly for several reasons. My mother gave me an ironic smile. Then,when we got home, she proceeded to tell what I had said to my dad. Later she regaled her friends and our family. I knew there was a punch line that the adults understood that was completely over my head. I would ponder that from time to time until finally, one day, many years later, the light turned on. LOL

      1. allathian*

        I liked the kid who when asked what the system of checks and balances means answered “You have to keep a balance in your account to write checks.”

      2. N C Kiddle*

        Cash machines didn’t really become a thing where I lived until I was in my teens, and my mum would pretend she was playing a slot machine every time she drew money out. I understood this was one of her many unfunny jokes, but my little brother sincerely believed she was really lucky on this type of machine.

  22. Falling Diphthong*

    When my daughter was small, I recall a discussion with her friends in which it became evident that the only thing they had absorbed about their parents’ offices was that there was free hot chocolate. You could just go make some any time the urge struck.

    2. icanreadthehandwriting*

      My kiddo believed for the longest time that all I did at work was spin on my spinny chair and eat chocolate croissants. It was difficult to convince him that this was what *he* got to do when he visited, but they wouldn’t let me do it all the time…

    3. Somewhere in Texas*

      My office has free hot cocoa (and coffee), and on the rare cold days this brings me such joy!

    4. I don't work in this van*

      My dad’s office had, among other things, a candy store. I thought he sat around eating candy all day and watching the Simpsons (tbh, I have very little proof that he wasn’t doing that).

    5. Buni*

      okay but the first Proper Job I had post-uni did have the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted…

    6. Ruby*

      The thing my daughter remembers most about “Take Your Kids to Work Day” is the coin-operated candy vending machine.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I feel like the “Take Your Kids to Work Day” activities may undermine the point of the day, which was originally to give kids (daughters) an idea what offices/workplaces were like. Now it’s, “Here’s your mom’s office, it has a bouncy castle and dolls to play with!”

        1. Parakeet*

          My dad was (still is) an actuary, and he put me at a table and gave me columns of numbers to add while he worked on the computer. 8 year-old me thought this was great. I also liked that we went out for lunch, and that his office was very high up in a very tall building and I could see so much out the window. I did not, however, like or understand the Polish Reverse calculator. Much easier to just add without a calculator at all.

    7. Rock Prof*

      The cafeteria at my school, which I rarely go to, is always the highlight of my son’s trips into campus with me. Apparently they have the best pizza and chicken he’s ever had?

  23. Night Shift Confusion*

    As a child, I had a long argument with a cousin about how strange it was that she knew when her dad would be home from work. My dad was a doctor who worked a sporadic schedule (nights and holidays paid more), and I thought that was standard somehow. I took a lot of convincing and my parents were VERY amused when they heard about it.

  24. KaciHall*

    I grew up thinking absolutely everyone went to work with their parents. My stepdad and mom owned a small screenprinting business and I was helping fold shirts by the time I was in school. My dad was head mechanic at a couple bowling alleys and I used to hang out in the back (or up front when the counter person would just hand me tokens so I could “test” the arcade for them. Some days I went to my grandpa’s trophy shop.

    I was VERY confused when no one else in my class mentioned spending the summer with their parents at work, but didn’t really understand how weird it was until I started working.

    1. Kelsi*

      Haha yeah my mom was an elementary school teacher. I grew up in that school. “What do you mean, you’re not intimately familiar with your parents’ workplaces?” (Dad was a copier repairman, so he mostly only went to the office to pick up parts and go on to the next call, which I assumed as a kid was the reason why I didn’t spend time there)

    2. Kay*

      Same here! Not every day, but I have fond memories of hanging out in my dad’s (doctor) office. Coloring while sitting at his BIG desk, playing Barbies in the stairwell… I didn’t go in patient areas, but I loved going to the cafeteria after Dad dealt with whatever he was called in for. And the nurses and PAs were super nice!

    3. allathian*

      My parents were marine biologists and when we lived at a research station, my sister and I (both in elementary school) were frequent visitors to the lab, we even had our own key to the front door! Obviously other people’s offices and lab spaces were off limits. We were good kids and never did anything stupid in the lab, and we didn’t go there when they dealt with chemicals that needed PPE, but for me the coolest thing ever was switching on the autoclave and helping my dad in the darkroom when he developed monochrome photos. (He still has some pure silver that he extracted from the developing and/or fixing fluids.)

  25. Bird Lady*

    I have two things:

    1. My parents told me I needed to address my managers the same way that I addressed my teachers. My manager at the retail store I worked at during high school eventually shouted, “Stop calling me Mrs. X. My name is Michelle!”

    2. I really thought that selecting a job I was passionate about and cared about was the right solution. It ended in massive burnout and health issues. Turns out a regular email job is what I need to be happy and maintain work/life balance!

    1. Rogue Librarian*

      Oh my goodness yes to #2. High school drilled finding my “passion” into me! The burnout and mental health issues were so bad when I found myself caring too deeply about the work and the mission that I couldn’t leave it behind when I went home. Working in a new industry doing work I’m good at and enjoy? So much better than working for a cause I’m passionate about.

    2. Pokemon Go To The Polls*

      When I worked at TJMaxx in the early-mid 2000s, you DID address managers as Ms/Mrs/Mr LastName which was a bit strange. I imagine they’ve stopped that now but who knows.

    3. Turquoisecow*

      When I got my first part time job as a teen I was surprised that the boss was like “hi I’m Joanne” and not “hi I’m Ms. Smith” or whatever. I was in high school, I did not grow up in the very formal South, but kids did not call grownups by their first name.

      Actually my first grade teacher was young and it was her first year teaching at my school (maybe ever?) and some of the boys in my class were *determined* to learn her first name. They did, somehow, or made an educated guess? and called her that in class and she was fuming mad. Made them stay after school. For only like five minutes because their parents were picking them up. They came out crying and she explained to the parents why they’d had “detention,” and the moms were all like “yep, you did the right thing, they should know better.” I guess that whole experience stuck with me.

    4. ReallyBadPerson*

      Ugh, yes, “finding your passion” has wrecked so many people’s idea of work. Most of the world’s jobs are just jobs. If you’re lucky, they will cover your expenses, allow you to save, and maybe have some money to play with.

    5. Dancing Otter*

      Re point 2, my high school guidance office was all about, “Find out what you’re good at.”

      As a straight A student, I did not find this useful. Nor did being /able/ to do something well mean that I /wanted/ to do it.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        THIS. I’m good at a lot of things that I absolutely don’t want to depend on for my livelihood.

      1. Chirpy*

        In 2005, at my first full-time job (office) I made $11/hr (no benefits, I don’t think I ever got a raise in the 4 years I worked there) and rent was $400 per month. It was, at the time, just barely a living wage. Adjusted for inflation, this is apparently $17.72/hr and $644/mo in today’s money.

        I currently make $17.50/hr (retail, with 10 years experience) and rent is $1100/month. A living wage for a single person with no dependents is around $20-25/hr in my area…

        Meanwhile, my dad made $25/hr AT HIS SUMMER PART TIME UNION FACTORY JOB IN COLLEGE IN THE 1970S. He made $50k/yr in the 1990s (when he’d been at his office job about 10 years), and while I don’t know what my mom made, if we assume slightly above minimum wage, that’s another $15k. $65k in 1995 is like $134k today. I’m having trouble finding entry level office jobs to apply to that pay $40k, which is what I, a single person with no dependents, needs to live comfortably. Not even live well, just enough to be able to save *anything at all*.

    3. Fluffy Orange Menace*

      Being a person born in a communist country, it was the norm that if you have a job, you will be given a house to own by your work place. my grandparents received approx 1.5 houses per person their life time, parents too. Admittedly none are quite like JK Rowling’s personal mansions, so I’ve been told that this is why capitalism is superior.

      1. Chirpy*

        I mean, my understanding of communism was that it wasn’t great to live under, but at least they got the guaranteed housing part right.

        Because the “possibility” of owning a mansion “if you work hard enough” * just is not working out for me.

        *terms and conditions apply, mainly requires being a well-connected white male from a rich enough family, and/or spectacularly good luck and the right opportunities

        1. Spooz*

          I heard once that the difference between voters’ thought process in America and the UK is that in America people look at the person at the top and imagine it might be them one day, and in the UK people look at the person at the bottom and imagine it might be them one day.

          I don’t think it’s true (and the UK is certainly becoming more “American” in that sense) but it was a neat way to think about why people often vote for policies that don’t immediately personally benefit them.

    4. Hotdog not dog*

      yeah, I also thought that if you worked full time and did a reasonably good job, you could afford a house and raise a family on a single income. Boy, did I ever miss the mark on that!

      1. Enough*

        That used to be true. Father made $36,000 a year. Stay at home wife, owned a 3000 SF house, had 5 children. At one time 2 of us were in college at the same time. My mother would just write my sister and I checks when the tuition bill came due to cover that and all our costs for the quarter. Of course this was in 1975.

        1. Fluffy Orange Menace*

          Not sure if this would be true for me if I were working at 1975, being a not-male queer person of colour and all.

          1. Take me back to the 1950s*

            You’re right, things are much better these days. Now we’re all equally unable to adequately house ourselves and support our families…

        2. Chirpy*

          Yeah, in 1975, I’m sure I’d be struggling to get a bank to let me have a credit card, being a single woman and all. Also, I think my parents’ college tuition in the 1970s was something like $900 a year, including room and board.

  27. Analytic Methodologist*

    As someone who always loved the process and science of making forecasts about the future more than subject matter areas (such as banking, tech, geo-focused political studies, retail, etc.) I thought that managers and directors had a secret base of knowledge for anticipating the future and making competitive decisions that they kept hidden for themselves until the professional world as a whole formally deemed you “worthy” enough and “inducted” you into the professional world as a peer.

    It wasn’t until I was giving a conference talk about predicting competitor moves to executives from companies like Coca Cola, Target, etc. where they were taking copious notes and asking me lots of questions that it hit me that there is no secret base of knowledge, and the presentation marked my transition from a net consumer to net creator of knowledge and that the whole time I was assuming that my take on these issues was obvious and something that anyone can do.

    1. Rosyglasses*

      I feel similarly in that I always thought people in manager or leadership roles had simply learned enough to be really good at their jobs and have other people want to follow their amazing ideas. Turns out that usually everyone is winging it and there are definitely people in leadership who have absolutely no clue about anything but are really good at talking like they do.

      1. Silver Robin*

        That everyone is winging it is something I keep having to learn and relearn. I am gobsmacked every time, haha. I thought that jobs required you to be really good at your task, no mistakes, and that there was this like “secret base of knowledge” that is given to you at standardized intervals.

        nope, nobody knows wtf is happening and perfection is not required! We are all just trying to figure it out as we go, though I do still think competency requirements could be stricter sometimes…

    2. Joielle*

      Agreed! At one point I worked for my state legislature and part of my job was taking legislators’ ideas and crafting them into actual bill language so they could be passed into law. I distinctly remember my first day at that job, suddenly realizing that all the laws in existence are just words written by people like me. And literally by me in some cases. Wild!

      1. 1LFTW*

        Both my parents had jobs like yours, and I definitely bragged to my friends that both of them wrote laws. Thing is, both of them worked in regulatory fields, so none of the laws they wrote involved cool stuff like hauling bad guys off to jail like on TV, so my friends were unimpressed.

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          Actually, I bet a greedy malefactor or two *did* get hauled to the hoosegow thanks to your folks’ work!

    3. anotherfan*

      nice to see another person confused about why something “obvious (to me) and something that anyone can do” apparently isn’t so obvious and that, oddly enough, everybody can’t do your job! For years, I figured anybody off the street could do my job. Turns out even people hired to do my job sometimes take years to figure it out.

    4. goddessoftransitory*

      That’s like Anne Lamott’s book Operating Instructions, which was a journal she kept for her son’s first year. She said she kept waiting for the real parents to come home and tell her what to do.

  28. Quinton the Cat*

    Whenever I asked my dad what he did as a child, he would tell me “photocopying” (he was a mid-level manager at a large bank). I thought that most office jobs involved standing around the printer copying reams upon reams of paper and dropping them into the secure shredding bins, day-in and day-out.

    1. Bart*

      My dad always told me his job was “pushing papers.” I usually told people who asked that he worked at Company X and left it at that. Turns out he was a pretty high level manager at Company X.

    2. Jiminy Cricket*

      My dad always said, “Pushing pencils around.” Turns out he worked in intelligence, but I still have no idea what he did all day.

  29. CanIretireyet*

    My parents were factory workers so they always had the week between Christmas and New Year off and were able to take 2 – 3 week vacations in the summer. I thought that was the norm. When I started my first office job, I was gobsmacked to realize that they didn’t shut down during the xmas holidays and the 2 – 3 week summer vacation were not a thing.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      Hunh. I honestly would not have thought you could do that in a factory job, either. I know my brother used to get upset because our dad had my birthday, which is on a major US holiday, off but not his (although in retrospect I wonder why Dad didn’t take that day off. I don’t think his employer was that strict).

      1. Polaris*

        Re-tooling shutdowns frequently happen in the timeframes mentioned (Christmas to New Year, and then mid-summer). I know this due to where I live :)

        1. Clisby*

          Oh, yeah, my father was plant engineer at a paper mill, and they had shutdowns like that. It didn’t give him any extra time off – since he was the head engineer, he had to work longer hours during shutdowns – but the regular hourly workers just fielded a skeleton crew.

      2. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

        I worked in a factory for awhile and we regularly closed down over the holidays and near the end of quarters if things weren’t going well. It was a budget thing. You had to use your PTO or go unpaid. Sometimes they did maintenance, but quite often it was just a shut down.

        1. Phony Genius*

          Yes, also for reconfiguration to make the new model year’s product. When I first heard about this when I was young, I thought that the employees who did the service work during the factory shutdown missed out on vacation.

    2. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

      My parents were both in education, so yeah, it was definitely a shock to the system to only get 10 days vacation and I think my first real job had 7 holidays

    4. A Significant Tree*

      I didn’t have any basis for thinking this but it was still a shock when I realized that Work didn’t honor any sort of winter, spring, or summer breaks. I mean, some types of work do but not the kind of job I had just started and career I was in.

      That said, I spent over a decade working at a large company with multiple factories and one of the big benefits was paid time off between Christmas and New Years due to annual factory shut downs. I miss that flexibility.

    5. allathian*

      I was all of X years old when I realized how privileged I was to take long summer vacations more or less for granted. Sure, when I worked paycheck to paycheck and when I worked PT as a college student, a week of vacation with neither work nor college was a luxury. Lots of people have precarious working conditions even here and need to work multiple jobs, so even if they earn vacation they’ll use the time to work elsewhere. I’ve been lucky enough to have 4 or 5 weeks off every summer for as long as I’ve had a full-time job.

      My parents were scientists and rarely took all the vacation time they were entitled to, especially because summer was their busy season and they were dependent on grants. They would usually take some time off when a big paper they’d worked on was published or a busy research period completed.

  30. a clockwork lemon*

    I assumed that working in fields/institutions with a certain degree of prestige meant that the people employed would be, like, the smartest people in the world and super competent like all their TV counterparts. Last week I got pulled into a 30 minute call because a colleague of mine couldn’t figure out how to copy and paste a link from a browser into a word document. 80% of our job is editing word documents.

    1. Rosyglasses*

      100% – I just posted a couple comments above almost this exact same thing. Turns out networking, having connections, and being a smooth talker account for most of the reason many folks are in management or in high powered roles.

      1. a clockwork lemon*

        I was in my late 20s before I fully appreciated exactly WHY my parents spent so much time with me as a kid driving home the point that nobody cares how smart you are if you’re also an asshole. I was a very good student but in the real world my main value-add is being able to get a bunch of people who hate each other to do something they don’t want to do with minimal bitching.

        1. AFac*

          My father was your kind of person. He was a mediocre student who graduated during an engineering boom. He then stayed with the same company for 30+ years because he had a talent for middle management.

          I didn’t know what he did for years because his work was very confidential. Now I’m in a role that has middle management components and I wish I knew more about how he did it.

    2. Industry Behemoth*

      Yes. When I broke into one of the BigCompanies in my industry, I assumed these companies hired only the best and the brightest.

      I discovered that even when I’d known nothing about the industry, I was still 1000 times better than peers who’d been in it for years or even decades. Many of them either had boss/management protectors, or were simply never pushed beyond their competence levels.

    3. Turquoisecow*

      Teachers: it’s VERY important that you learn to communicate and write well even if you plan to go into business because COMMUNICATION is important.

      My coworkers: *sending emails so full of typos and confusion that I have no idea what they’re saying *

    4. Emmy Noether*

      I had a similar realization mid-twenties when I realized that all those people you went to school with – also the goofy ones and the ones that don’t listen and never do their homework, the ones that blather nonsense all day, and the ones that did zero work on the group project – you find them all again in the working world. Some find their interests and their groove and get good, but a lot never do.

  31. Mags*

    Before I first started working at a national lab, my mother sent me an article titled something like “10 things you should NEVER wear to work”. it was things like backpacks and messenger bags (an attaché is preferred), open toed shoes (peep toe heels acceptable only on Fridays), and jeans (never!) were on the list. I think if I worked at an old-school law firm, it would have been good advice, but working in research and field work… let’s just say I haven’t worn anything besides jeans in nearly 10 years.

    1. amoeba*

      Hah, well, open-toed shoes are actually a big no (in our labs) though! To be fair, so are heels, definitely including peep toe heels on Fridays.

      1. Missa Brevis*

        Our lab only has the rule that shoes must be closed-toe and non-absorbent, so I know a number of people who wear heeled boots or wedges, and I don’t know how their feet aren’t killing them by the end of the day.

    2. Contract negotiator*

      As someone who spent 10 years doing research and fieldwork, have you tried those hiking pants from the outdoorsy brands? They dry supper fast, and are much cooler on a hot day than denim. Some of them are designed to be sexy rather than practical, but the practical ones are great.

    3. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      The backpack thing makes me think of this video that cerculated awhile back. This girl is saying if you use a backpack for work you don’t have a real job or aren’t grown up yet. And then it cuts to someone who says Do you know who else uses backpacks for work? Lawyers, doctors, teachers….

      1. Kelsi*

        Sorry TikTok girl, I’m not gonna fuck up my hands and shoulders carrying a briefcase/messenger bag because you think my job isn’t professional enough. Lol.

    4. LabManagerPerson*

      As a fellow national lab worker, I can say that my current “work uniform” of a button-down dress shirt and khakis puts me above the 90th percentile for dressiness. (I’m male and clueless about clothing, so when I got a manager gig and felt I should step up a notch from polos and khakis, I couldn’t find anything with long sleeves that looked comfortable and appropriate until I got all the way to dress shirts. No matter that such clothing is enough above mean that it goes right past “professionally serious” and into “kind of a quirky.”) Most of the people I manage wear jeans and t-shirts most days, my boss generally wears short sleeves, and I’ve hardly ever seen anyone carrying a bag that didn’t go over one or more shoulders.

    5. 1-800-BrownCow*

      My mom was horrified when I started in my career that I wore pants to work every day and not a dress or skirt. While I’m an office employee (engineer), my entire career I’ve worked in manufacturing and going out on the production floor around machinery has always been standard. My mom didn’t believe me at first that I couldn’t wear a skirt or dress onto the manufacturing floor for safety reasons, until my dad (who also worked as an engineer at a manufacturing facility) told her I was right.

      1. Ari Flynn*

        My father is an aerospace engineer. Every so often, a new manager comes in and proclaims that engineer is a white-collar job, and they should be wearing dress shirts and ties! Then Dad and his coworkers arrange to take them on a “tour of the plant”, paying special attention to the test cells, which are large concrete bunkers where turbofan (jet) engines are run under ‘adverse conditions’ until they disintegrate. The operator is protected by a 6″ pane of bulletproof glass.

        Somehow, no one ever brings up neckties a second time.

    6. Lake (they/them)*

      I work in a lab and cannot seem to get it through my parents heads that no, I should not be wearing a suit and heels…

  32. SimonTheGreyWarden*

    My dad had to travel a lot for business when I was a kid, so I thought if you worked in an office you got to travel a lot (I also thought dad was travelling to glamorous locations when it was really flying in to other cities, spending a night and day, and flying home, so no matter where he went he never had a chance to do anything). From watching both my parents I thought that you had a uniform you wore to work, basically the same things every day, which made sense to my child brain because I went to a school where we wore uniforms as well.

    1. SimonTheGreyWarden*

      To add onto the uniform part, my mom was a real estate agent and wore a lot of dark colored skirts/pants suit sets and my dad worked in an office and always wore a suit and tie.

    2. Kuddel Daddeldu*

      That!
      I travel a lot for work (I’ve worked on all the continents at some point), and at many destinations I get to see the insides of taxis, hotel rooms, and ships, but rarely daylight much less anything touristy.
      There are also trips where I have some time off, sure, but that’s the minority.

  33. Sanibel Island*

    I never understood why my mom would be irritated if either I didn’t take the frozen chicken/beef/pork chops out in time when she got home, or she had to stop on the way home from work. As an adult that often comes home to a spouse that does not cook…I’m so sorry, mom <3 I'm sure she's laughing at my misfortune in the afterlife now.

      1. Annie*

        Maybe first try having Siri/Alexa/Other Technology Thing tell the spouse EXACTLY when it must happen? E.g. “Hey Siri, remind Spouse at 3:15 on Tuesday to put the frozen whatever in the refrigerator.”

        Yes, this can be a power/not-my-job thing, but it can also be part of a larger executive function deficit.

  34. dulcinea47*

    For starters, I thought that all adults were competent and professional (tho I wouldn’t have used those words at the time). hahahaha….. ugh.

    3. Who knows*

      Yeah… I thought in order to have a job you had to be good at it. Turns out there are a lot of people (including big shots like doctors and presidents) who are bad at their jobs.

    4. Silver Robin*

      just replied above with the same!

      on the one hand, perfection is not actually expected, which is nice to know.

      on the other…how, pray tell, HOW do you not know how to do your job???

    5. Bast*

      Yes! And my young brain saw not much of a difference between the 18 year old Walmart cashier and the 50 year old math teacher– they were all older, so they ALL must be mature and know everything there is to know. Granted, the 18 year old seemed a bit “cooler” to me at 7/8/9, but clearly as an adult they must be just as competent and knowledgeable as any other adult, right?

      And then I was 18. I knew enough then to know there was so much I didn’t know. There was no magic spell where I “knew” things just because I was officially an adult.

    6. Union Rep*

      Same. Structurally, my job exists because profit comes from capital skimming labor’s excess production as profit. Day to day, my job exists because nobody on either side can be f***ing normal, let alone competent or professional.

    7. Packaged Frozen Lemon Zest*

      The larger the group of folks, the more likely it is that a given trait will exist in a normal distribution, including workplace skill – the majority of people really are just clustered around average at their jobs, and for every one that’s above average, there’s one that’s below.

  35. Fluffy Orange Menace*

    Another one. I thought everyone would get a cubical. How naive of me, one day I might get a chair of my own that’s not going to be stolen the moment I stood up.

    1. Rosyglasses*

      With your username – I totally thought I could identify with my cat that likes to steal the chair as soon as I got up and realized sadly that that was probably not what you were referring to!

  36. Jane Gloriana Villanueva*

    When I was 3-6 years old, my father was an elected official in my home city. I “knew” this, in that my mom and I would visit him in his office at City Hall on occasion, and I had been “part” of his campaigns by holding signs and giving out bumper stickers with our name on them, attending a lot of bean supper fundraisers, etc. I didn’t understand the “ran a race” connection to the job, though. There were 3 elections during this time; one when I was 3, one at 5 (Dad won both, which made sense to me, because he ran a lot for exercise, and the guy he was racing was much older), and one when I was 6 for a higher regional office, which he woke me up to tell me he lost. He seemed really sad about it and I was sad for him, but it made sense to me because even though his challenger was much closer in age this time, my dad was recovering from a major knee injury. (It wasn’t from exercise; he had fallen from the ladder while painting the second floor of our house.) I didn’t understand until he had to get a new job that January, but evidently the family had thought I was following along pretty well while it was all happening!

    3. Martin Blackwood*

      I love how you put “knew” in quotation marks, thats perfect. Everything was getting filtered through a lotta kid logic

      1. Jane Gloriana Villanueva*

        Thanks to all for these nice responses!

        Martin, “Filtered” is the exact word for it. We had all these events to go to and yet I never got to see the race on race day. What was up with that? Haha.

  37. Mobie's Mom*

    I grew up in a very rural area, on a dairy farm, where many of my classmates in my small school were also from farming families. To be honest, although I was a voracious reader, I was probably in middle school before I could even conceive of any job beyond teacher, nurse, secretary. (“Farmer” wasn’t a job – that was just how our family lived! And to be honest, “farmer” is so much more than a job that it really shouldn’t even be listed in the same category as salaried/paid work.) Even today as a middle-aged person, it always amazes me to realize just how many different jobs there are out there! Like, how do people even know that “budget analyst” is even an option?! Or, like, “conservation officer”? Or “medical records specialist”?!

    But yeah, as a kid, I blithely thought there were only about 3-5 jobs that people ever did, I couldn’t imagine there were more!

  38. FakeEleanor*

    I thought getting into arguments at work was the most serious, grown-up thing one could do. My parents talked about work a lot when I was growing up, but when I was very young the only stories I really understood, and the only ones that stood out in my memory, were the ones about getting into fights over this and that. In reality I don’t think big fights were an everyday occurrence for them, but that’s what stuck as a kid.

    In kindergarten we set up a very involved game of “pizza parlor” that probably lasted a week or two. I remember coming home one day and proudly telling my parents that I “got into a fight at work,” as though that made me a real, serious grown up with a serious job.

    …I’ve had to un-learn some things about professionalism and how people treat each other and expect to be treated in a work setting. At least by the time I reached adulthood I’d figured out that I should never expect to be genuinely yelled at, or allow myself to genuinely yell at anyone, in a workplace.

    1. Kuddel Daddeldu*

      I yelled at coworkers exactly once.
      It was “Electrical fire! Power off the computer NOW and get out!” – people still tried to argue but had a look at my face and complied, mostly without too much delay.
      We lost a few PCs and monitors but nothing more that day.

  39. toolegittoresign*

    I thought that work eventually got easy. Like that executives just got to go to martini lunches and meetings but could otherwise just do whatever they wanted. I didn’t realize that the higher up you were, more responsibilities and pressure came with it.

    1. BellaStella*

      Hahahahaha not on the team I am on now. I mean I have one stair missing and a lead doing what they want and lack of accountability … yeah this is tough.

      1. toolegittoresign*

        Ah, well, yeah… the flip side of that is that the people who do pass everything off to others and goof off all day are jerks make everyone else’s lives miserable. It’s less “I’ve made it!” and more “I’ve lost all morals and ethics!”

  40. Jane Bingley*

    My mom worked as an early childhood educator when I was young and I went to her daycare. I used to laugh at the kids who thought she lived at daycare; I knew very well she went home at the end of the day with me!

    This somehow did not stop me from being shocked to learn that my kindergarten teacher didn’t live at the school.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      I remember seeing my kindergarten teacher at Western Sizzlin’ with her (fiance, I think) and being amazed that she didn’t eat at school, too.

    2. kiri*

      We went on a middle school band field trip every year, and one of the highlights was the video the band teachers made that played at the beginning of the trip to tell us all the rules! One year they filmed a segment in the band room in their pajamas, all saying good night to each other and going into the instrument storage closets to “go to bed” lol

    3. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      My mom was an elementary school teacher in the same city/school district we lived so she would often see students when she was out… the look of absolute horror on their little faces when she was at the restaurant or grocery store — like they didn’t realize teachers were allowed out of school, or they thought she had followed them there to check up on their homework.

    4. I edit everything*

      I, an adult, ran into my favorite elementary school teacher (kindergarten and fifth grade) at a mutual friend’s party, and even then it was a little weird to see her.

    5. Everyone is a teacher*

      My parents were teachers so I knew they didn’t live at school. Most of their friends were teachers. Almost everyone else I knew had a job I recognized from my own life…mailman, nurse, librarian, doctor. I had no clue what people in “business” did.

  41. NotSmartUKAnon*

    I thought that everyone in the UK worked in London and they all wore grey suits and took the train and then the Tube to work and they all worked in The City in Very Important Jobs.

    I was baffled, therefore, to realise that my parents neither wore suits (Dad was an aircraft dispatcher, Mum was a teacher) nor worked in London because we lived in Newcastle, which is the entire opposite end of the country.

    1. bamcheeks*

      Until I was about 8 I thought London was roughly where Newcastle was, because I knew my dad had strong family connections with Scotland and was from London, so I reasoned that London must be up near the Scottish border. I have a very good sense of direction, so I also figured that when we drove out of our village THIS way to go and see my grandma in London, that was going north, and when we drove out of our village THAT way to go and see my grandma in Grimsby, that must be going south. Blew my mind when someone bought me a children’s atlas and I discovered I had to reverse everything I knew.

  42. Taxman’s Daughter*

    My dad worked for the IRS (tax collection agency for those of you outside the US), and I apparently told my stepmother one of the first times that she met my dad that, “My dad is the guy that if you don’t pay your taxes comes to your house and hauls you mercilessly off to jail.” I don’t remember this but it stuck with her and she joked with me about it many times.

    I now know that my dad actually spent a lot of time trying to help people who got in over their heads with their taxes so they could get out of tax debt and felt strongly about helping people out. Also, he didn’t have the authorization to throw anyone in jail.

    1. Betty Indiana*

      Haha my mom worked for the IRS and WAS that guy who came into your house looking for you if you didn’t pay your taxes.

  43. Our Business Is Rejoicing*

    My father co-owned a small business with my uncle, and my mom used to do payroll on our dining room table. When I was a kid, I pretty much assumed I could just get a part-time job there whenever I wanted one. But other than those three, the company had about 30 employees, in sales and tech (the company sold business machines, and eventually, computers–first Apple dealer in our town). Not exactly skills I had, so, uh, no, and there was no push for me to join “the family business.”

  44. Kowalski! Options!*

    That it was normal for dads to refuse to talk about their jobs! My dad was in a defence-related job during the Cold War and for obvious reasons, couldn’t discuss what he actually did. Instead, he’d say, “I chase women, read papers and break computers.” At his retirement party, we found out that everyone in his team had agreed to tell their kids that!

    It made it super-awkward a few years back when I had to apply for a secret security clearance…and had to list who he worked for and what his job title was. I had no idea! I had to call one of his former coworkers (also retired) to get the details.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      I also thought this!! My dad kinda hated his job and worked long hours so didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about work. Then my bestie’s dad was retired (from the military, so he didn’t want to discuss that with us), and then second bestie’s dad was a defense guy too. Just assumed Moms chat about their work but dads don’t LOL

    2. Problem!*

      Same! I grew up in the DC suburbs so most people’s parents either worked for government agencies or defense contractors so no one could talk about what they did for work. We never had career day at school because turnout was super low because no one could tell us what they did. Thought it was totally normal for adults to either make up some outlandish lie about what they do or simply refuse to say anything.

    3. Skippy*

      My dad hated his job (he liked the engineering work, just not the bean-counters). It wasn’t until I met my husband and he found out what my dad did and found YouTube videos about it that I understood how interesting it really was.

  45. SnookidyBoo*

    My parents raised me with ‘work with 100% of your effort, give it your all and go above and beyond in everything’ kind of mentality.

    My first job out of high school was a cashier at a gift shop inside a swanky hotel. Minimum wage, part time. In the eight months I worked there the manager:

    – worked me up to 50 hours per week (but gave me no benefits)
    – kept me scheduled about 12 – 14 days in a row without a break
    – called me in on my days off
    – would routinely ignore the ‘minimum two people per shift’ and made me work alone for eight hours without a bathroom break (the store was supposed to be 24 hours because it was in a hotel)
    – would use her employees as free babysitters by leaving her kids in the store with us, and a bunch of other stuff that was sketchy

    I never realized I was being mistreated because ‘the boss is always right’ and she’s the manager, so she must know what she’s doing. One morning on my shift I literally broke down and started sobbing on the sale floor and quit right there. Soon after the entire store was shut down, the manager was fired and the CEO had to fly in to clean up the mess she had made.

    I had nightmares for years after that job.

    I wish school would teach young people that the work place is like a relationship – there has to be respect on both ends for it work and if you are being mistreated you can walk away.

    1. M2RB*

      Yes, same here. Gotta do what the boss or senior coworkers tell you to do, no questions asked, no matter what. Hello burnout/exhaustion.

    2. CommanderBanana*

      ^^ My parents also are horrible workaholics, and have burned down their entire lives and all their relationships on the altar of Work, and it took many years for me to unlearn those habits, and to learn that:
      1. workplaces do not care about you
      2. a few days after you leave, no one at your workplace will remember or notice you’re gone
      3. working hard and being good at your job does not necessarily translate to being promoted or paid better
      4. as a woman and a religious minority, I have to work twice as hard to go half as a far and will routinely have to work with people who hate me.

    3. Adrienne*

      God, hard agree. As an autistic teenager working retail, I internalized so many wildly unhealthy attitudes about work. Bad bosses are a kind of abusive relationship that can set some real shitty patterns when’re you’re a young.

  46. Freddy*

    I had no idea how rude people could be. My first job, I was 14, and at lunch one day an older coworker (over 40 at least) made a comment that my soup looked really good. I jokingly offered to let her try some. She got so angry she nearly lost her mind, and then so did I, out of pure shock. She was from another country so maybe it was a cultural thing, but dang.

    A year later working in a grocery store, the first time a customer snapped at me for no reason, I was stunned once again.

  47. Who knows*

    I thought adults who wore “business” clothing were dressing that way purely by choice, because those were the (boring) clothes they liked to wear. I didn’t know companies literally had dress codes.

    1. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      Oh same! I thought my dad just liked suits. In a way, I think he does… but he never mentioned that it wasn’t optional.

    2. DisneyChannelThis*

      I was in my 30s when my father retired from working and threw out most his clothes. I was blown away to discover he doesn’t like formal wear. Growing up that’s all I ever saw him in! Now he dresses like he’s going to mow the lawn everyday, cutoff jeans and t shirts. In retrospect I realized he showed up to soccer games in a longsleeve button down and a tie because he was rushing over from work, and it was too expensive to have just a weekend wardrobe vs a work one.

    3. Freddy*

      I think you were partly right. I don’t think it would have crossed anyone’s mind to dress any other way at the time.

    4. 1LFTW*

      Yup. I thought my mother enjoyed wearing nylons and my father enjoyed wearing ties. I can’t remember how old I was when I mentioned this “fact” to my mother, but I do know it took her awhile to stop laughing.

  48. SnickersKat*

    I wanted to be a judge when I was a kid. How awesome would that be just to be able to tell people who was right and who was wrong all day long and hit a gavel? I definitely felt I knew better about what was fair when I was a kid, especially when it came to parental rules or if my brother got something I didn’t get (looking back we were definitely treated fairly by our parents).

    I was so upset the day I learned you have to be a lawyer first before becoming a judge. I didn’t want to have to do that! Again, one more unfairness in the world. Who came up with this crazy plan that you actually had to understand the law before you could make a judgement about it?!?

    (I suspect I wouldn’t have made a good judge.)

    1. Ms. Eleanous*

      When I was little — from watching Perry Mason (on M-F),
      Hearing the judges announce ‘We will reconvene at 10 am tomorrow.’, I thought what a great job! you don’t have to go to work until 10 o’clock.

      (I might have hated school a bit less if it had started later.)

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I loved how Perry was consulted on every single branch/area of law, even though he was a criminal defense attorney. I kept waiting for him to say “stop asking me about making out your will! That’s NOT what I do!”

    2. judicial qualifications*

      Is that actually a legal requirement? It’s not required for Supreme Court justices. I like to think if they had a non-lawyer (an artist?) on the bench, their decisions might better reflect ordinary people’s lives.

      1. 1LFTW*

        Anyone who works for poverty wages and can’t afford to live anywhere that’s not heavily polluted.

    3. Industry Behemoth*

      Being a judge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Judges have a lot of power, but even they have to deal with cases and things they don’t want to deal with.

      I saw a judge withdraw from a case, and I was convinced the real reason was they’d had their fill of the nut-case plaintiffs.

      Another time I worked on a lawsuit that got so convoluted, I nicknamed it a “Hydra.” It lasted long enough that the original judge retired during its course. I joked that they had to retire to get away from us. :-)

    4. Possum's mom*

      Oh, you’ve made me recall the cringe-worthy remark I made to our gym coach who was substituting for my science teacher one day. I was surprised , upon entering the classroom , to see him sitting at her desk and said (*gulp*),” I didn’t know you could teach, I thought you only do sports stuff”. Had no idea that he would have gone to college for a teaching degree?

  49. Golden*

    Not me, but a visiting priest at my church said that as a child he wanted to be a priest when he grew up because he thought you only had to work one day a week (Sunday). I think he figured out pretty quickly that that wasn’t the case, but was still happy with his career choice.

  50. Contract negotiator*

    When I was ~8, I would sometimes stay in my dad’s office after school. He was a lawyer helping underpaid workers, but all I knew was that his work involved “contracts” which means if someone signs something they have to abide by that promise. So I got me some crayons and spent months writing contracts along the lines of “you owe us $100000000000000000000000000……” (with as many 0s as could fit in a page and tried to trick him into signing them. The real innovation was when I realized I could fit bigger numbers on the page by saying “you owe us $111111111111111111111111111111…”. I never became a gazillionaire, but at least I understand how contracts work now.

    1. Contract negotiator*

      In case you were wondering, we planned to spend every cent of that gazillion dollars on candy.

      1. Rosyglasses*

        I love this – I remember as a kid thinking adults had such interesting conversations and would try to mimic the tone and cadence of what I heard but to ask for very important things, like a puppy or going to Dairy Queen.

    2. Ana R*

      I fully did not understand the concept of enforceable contracts when I was a kid and thought you’d get in trouble for not doing anything you signed a paper saying you’d do. So I would write contracts to myself saying I would achieve a certain goal in a certain amount of time and then stress about what would happen to me if I didn’t, because I had signed a contract!

      I became a lawyer and now I understand the basics of contracts

  51. kiri*

    My mom was a high school teacher, and when I was really little I envisioned her teaching uniform as a mortarboard and robes, standing at a podium with a long pointer, teaching similarly attired students. (She did not leave the house in this outfit so I’m not sure when I thought she changed.)

    3. misspiggy*

      Me too – there was a picture of my mother in mortarboard and gown on her graduation, and I assumed that was what she wore for her teaching job.

  52. Alex*

    This wasn’t me, but one of the kiddos I used to nanny for.

    Every day when I would arrive, we would say bye-bye to mommy and daddy as they left for work (they carpooled so left together).

    One day when the kiddo was about 2 (and I’d been working there since she was a tiny infant), it was the end of the day and I was getting ready to leave. She blurts out “Alex is going to work!”

    I mean, it makes sense. Whenever she said bye-bye to mommy and daddy, it was because they were going to work, so when she says bye-bye to Alex, Alex must be going to work, too!

  53. Farm Life*

    I grew up in a rural area; my father and both grandfathers were farmers. A lot of my friends’ dads were farmers. I didn’t get the joke about giving dads another necktie for Father’s Day because I didn’t know any grown men who wore neckties to work. They mostly wore the same clip-on tie as needed to go to church/wedding/funeral — no need for numerous neckties! (Even the male teachers I had didn’t wear ties – that I recall.)

  54. archangelsgirl*

    I’m the same… worked in the fields all through high school and couldn’t understand why my teacher was tired.

    But now I’m a teacher so…

  55. Maple*

    When I was small, I decided I wanted to be a dentist! Purely because my childhood dentist’s office was closed Fridays, so surely being a dentist meant you never had to work Fridays ever. Period.

    Also, my dentist had a big box of really cool little toys (think sticky hands and parachute army men) to give to kids after their cleanings, and if *I* became a dentist, I’d get to have the whole box to myself!

    (Honestly though, I’d still be thrilled with those toys lol)

    1. Butterfly Counter*

      I wanted to be a dentist because, when we went through a rich neighborhood on a hay ride with my Girl Scouts, a friend pointed at a gorgeous house and said, “My dentist lives there.” It was so fancy!

      I never became a dentist and my house is nowhere near as fancy, thank goodness!

    2. A large cage of birds*

      OMG my my dentist had that too! A big cardboard treasure box just full of fun stuff!

  56. Rose*

    I thought when you qualified as a lawyer you just picked between a Merc and a Beemer as your car of choice, and you never did your own typing ever again. Wrong on both counts.

  57. 80s kid*

    I thought it was normally to have your kids come in and help you with all kinds of random administrative tasks especially filing for yourself and your parents colleagues who didn’t have kids to help them.
    The amount of things that I filed that I now realize was highly confidential information is amazing.

    2. I strive to Excel*

      I occasionally went to work with my mom. Who is in the medical field. On quiet days she’d bring me or my siblings in and we’d hang out in the nurse’s breakroom (luckily the nurses were both incredibly sweet and also good sports about it). But sometimes she’d have to work down in the room with the filing cabinets. I remember this in particular because they had the style of filing cabinets that are on tracks and you spin the wheel on the end to move them around. I liked it there because I loved spinning the wheels and moving all the cabinets.

      In retrospect I’m pretty sure that was the patient record room. Luckily I was not a nosy 6 year old.

      1. Industry Behemoth*

        OT, but with those spinner file cabinets I had to remember to look before I spun. To make sure nobody was in the section with the moving cabinet!

  58. Anon4This*

    My parents both owned successful small businesses and I had somehow naively thought that larger workplaces didn’t have office politics. It took all of four hours on my first job after college for me to realize that wasn’t the case.

  59. Madame Desmortes*

    My father, who worked as a professor in higher ed (he’s retired now), went up for tenure when I was quite young. It led to a lot of tension and arguments between my parents — not that those were rare in any case, but they definitely ramped up.

    I did not understand what was going on, nor did they explain it to me. I heard “ten-year” when they said “tenure” and thought it meant that my dad was up for a ten-year contract. Which to child-me of course felt like forever! So I wasn’t really that far off.

  60. Rogue Librarian*

    Since school is supposed to prepare you for the “real world” and work, I fully assumed that whatever job I chose would have assignments similar to homework and not like..the due-outs that I’m now used to. The fact that I cannot do Page 109 #s 1-73 odd of my calculus homework and get paid for it is still upsetting to me.

    I also had a parent that worked in retirement plan management–specifically managing a pension fund for retirees. My child-like understanding of a pension is “When I decide to quit working, I’ll keep getting paid my same salary forever as a thank you”. So imagine my dismay when my first job did not offer a pension plan and instead a normal 401k situation. ANd then another 180 when I got a job with a pension had had to learn that I had to contribute money to that pension plan and it wasn’t just a pot of money at the end of my working rainbow. Rough blows to my retirement plans those first few jobs…

    1. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      It took me a few years into adulthood to really figure this out: I thought retirement plans (either pension or 401k) were a requirement for any employer of any size (in the U.S.) — mandatory! — and that the principal amount that a person contributes would stay safe like a savings account, and it was only the interest or investment income that might get bigger or smaller depending on the market. So if I contribute $100 to my 401k, that money was safe, but the stock market goes up and I have a value of $150. I thought only the $50 gain could be lost in a market crash.

  61. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

    I thought coworkers and bosses are meant to be friends. My dad was the boss and he was always talking about going to lunches with his team. He also talked about his former bosses as friends who also helped him get his next job, and there was a boss who would dress up as Santa and visit our house. He’s remained friends with a lot of them long after he retired. I knew my dad’s employees kids — even their grandkids at this point.

    My mom was a primary school teacher and the teachers would all get together after school for happy hours or go to each other’s houses for parties during the summer. I thought that was just how it was supposed to be.

    1. GDUB*

      My dad’s coworkers and their wives were my parents’ best friends. I knew them my whole life!

  62. fidget spinner*

    I thought authors were famous like actors and wouldn’t care to receive my fan mail. Even as I got older and finally emailed my favorite authors I felt like a celebrity when I got a response. I imagined being on the Ellen show because an author emailed me back. I also probably thought they had body guards

      1. anonymouse*

        A lot of adults seem to still think this! And I can tell you from personal experience they couldn’t be more wrong :(

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          In Anne Lamott’s writing guide, Bird By Bird, she talks about how she cleaned houses and gave tennis lessons until after her fourth book was published: her students listened politely while mentally BMW shoppping.

    2. merida*

      I totally assumed that too! Authors were (and are) basically celebs to me. It wasn’t until I worked in publishing and heard authors say how much reader letters/emails meant to them that I started to understand. Authors are people, too – they’re talented, under-paid people who get so happy to hear that their work matters to someone. Everyone should write to their fav authors more often <3

  63. umami*

    I thought being someone who was constantly in meetings was the gold standard and would be really cool/impressive.

    1. lin*

      At my org, our internal culture is such that the more meetings you are in the higher up / more important you are. So you weren’t wrong, in some cases more meetings is the gold standard!

      For us, this is mainly because the higher up you are, the more decisions and actions you need to coordinate with other departments, therefore the more meetings you are in with them talking about stuff which you then assign out to others to do independently.

  64. Not so International*

    My dad worked at a large tech company when I was growing up in the 80s/90s/early 00s and frequently traveled internationally as part of his job. Up until I was in high school, I thought that “having a job” meant that you went to Japan, Germany, Hong Kong, Australia, etc, every month. My mom didn’t work, there was no way she could have with my dad’s travel schedule, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to. Eventually I realized that my teachers didn’t have that kind of travel schedule, but it wasn’t really until I got my first job that it sunk in that not all jobs were like that. I am still disappointed by this.

  65. Prudence Snooter*

    Whenever I imagined myself as a middle-aged professional, even when I was in my early 20s on the ’00s, I couldn’t picture myself wearing anything other than the same 1980s officewear my mom wore. Suit jackets in pastel colors with rolled-up sleeves, long flowy skirts, “pumps,” etc.

  66. Mystery lady*

    I overheard my five year old daughter tell my three year old son “work is fun because you get to look out the window and there’s bobble heads” after visiting my husband’s office.

  67. A Simple Narwhal*

    Movies and tv made me think that cube farms were sad and depressing. After years of open offices and hot desking, the idea of a little room that is all yours with full height walls closed in on 3.5 sides sounds incredible. (Though working from my home office sounds even better!)

    1. Roland*

      I did open office for a number of years and cubes sound depressing! I didn’tind open office, though hot desking sounds bad. Now I primarily wfh so it’s essentially hot desking when I go into the office and it isnindeed annoying. But I didn’t mind being near people.

  68. Introvert girl*

    I just didn’t get why my parents were tired all the time. As a child of parents from communist countries I was thought that I just needed to work hard and get a masters degree and I would make it. I started my first job having no idea about nepotism and that if you do your job well you get to do other people’s job too.

  69. Casual Observer*

    When I was young, my mom worked for the government in an office environment. The odd time she’d pick me up from school and bring me back to the office with her if she had to work later than usual. Usually she’d just set me up at her desk to complete homework or color or something, but sometimes she’d give me ‘errands’ to do, like take deliver folders to her coworkers or photocopy a piece of paper she needed. For the longest time, I couldn’t wait until I grew up and got a job so that I could assign errands to people and have them do things for me while I sat at my desk acting important. I am now a grownup and sadly, I have to run my own errands and don’t get to just sit at my desk all day. Ha!

  70. Kris*

    I loved visiting my dad’s office when I was a kid in the early 70s. He was a residential real estate lawyer, and his office had a cabinet of drawers full of blank forms. There was also a mail slot in the corridor. I loved sitting at the conference table and filling out forms with made up stuff, then hanging around in the hall waiting to see a piece of mail flying down the tube from an upper floor. It made me think that office = FUN!

  71. Sunflower*

    I thought all office buildings have a full service cafeteria since that’s common in tv shows and movies. The fact that my first office job had one hammered in that fact. I have since realized having a cook on-sight a rare privilege. Some offices don’t even have a break room!

    1. Junior Assistant Peon*

      I had jobs with full cafeterias early in my career at big-company HQ campuses. Didn’t realize how fortunate I was to have them at the time. Once in a blue moon I’ll visit or interview at a place with a full cafeteria, but it’s rare to see them today.

  72. Badmin*

    I took annual salary quite literally. I thought that people/my parents got paid annually, as in they get their salary in one payment for the year and had to figure out budgeting and making it last throughout the year!

    1. Ally McBeal*

      I’ve only worked at one job that paid monthly instead of biweekly or weekly, and it was VERY disorienting. That job was the one that paid me enough that I could pay my monthly rent in one lump sum rather than giving half of the rent out of each biweekly paycheck (I was subletting at the time and giving my rent to my roommate who was on the lease), but having so much of that monthly paycheck still going to rent was a shock. This was also before I had a credit card so I really did need to figure out how to budget for the following 4-4.5 weeks. Can’t imagine having to do that for a full YEAR.

      1. Manders*

        I’ve only been paid monthly for the last 23 years and it’s still a struggle at the end of the month (OK, last 2 weeks of the month!).

    2. WS*

      I worked for a while in a grain farming area and everyone put all their purchases on an account all year then paid it all off when they got paid for their crop, once a year. So you weren’t completely wrong – the whole area ran on that once a year payment!

  73. Martin Blackwood*

    My work has a casual dress code, but if i ever work in a place that has business casual code i am inevitably going to pull from my memories of my childhood and buy a bunch of plaid/checkered button ups, just like what my dad wore for his mine management job. 90% of them were plaid, i dont think he had many solid colour ones.

    1. Bread Crimes*

      This is, in fact, what I wear to work. What can I say? I like plaid.

      (It’s also the case that I can’t easily any work-appropriate shirts that both fit me comfortably and don’t have a lot of frippery I dislike except in… plaid. Occasionally checks. So it’s a darn good thing I do in fact like plaid.)

  74. EMP*

    When I was little a friend’s dad worked at Texas Instruments, a massive, global, technology manufacturing company. But at some point he gave our classroom got a bunch of TI branded rulers, likely some kind of conference swag they had too much of, and so for many years I thought he worked at a ruler factory.

  75. DawnShadow*

    When I was a small child in the 70s my grandparents, who owned and ran a roofing company, had a home office. One day, I don’t know where my grandmother was but my cousin and I decided to snoop through their paperwork. We found invoices for jobs that ran to $1000 dollars, and were stunned. Grandma and Grandpa are RICH!!! We were sure they were multimillionaires because they were just raking in the money from these invoices every day.

    Paying their workers? Paying wholesale for shingles/nails? Buying and maintaining trucks? Paying taxes? Never even crossed our minds. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever even thought about the fact that they had to buy everything in that home office from the papers to the typewriter to the separate phone line.

    1. Green great dragon*

      Even as an older child, I read of salaries of £20 or £30,000 and really couldn’t fathom what you would do with all that money. Sweets are only a few pence. A t-shirt was less than £10. My parents grew a lot of our own vegetables.

      In due course I learnt about taxes and rent.

  76. Katie*

    I am an accountant. My daughter believed my job was to count things. She asked me several times what I counted for the day.

  77. MissGirl*

    I definitely overestimated how much “fun” pushing buttons for a job would be. The cashiers at the grocery store mad it look so cool.

  78. amoeba*

    When I started uni, I was still convinced that studying science would mean if you were smart, it would be the normal career path to stay in academia, become a professor, and go on to win a Nobel prize (only half joking about the last one). Industry was boring and you didn’t do real science. Well, I was quickly disillusioned when I learned that at least in my field, you need to be ridiculously good and lucky for that, like, top 1% of all the smart people. Luckily, I also learned that industry does in fact have cool R&D as well!

    1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      Well, plenty of science departments push that narrative pretty hard. Leave academia at any point, for any reason? Shame! Failure! Getting out was one of the best decisions I ever made.

      1. amoeba*

        Not so much where I was, actually – it wasn’t even considered an option for us “normal people”! But then I’m also in a country that pretty proud of their fancy pharma industry (which can be almost as exclusive as academia, but different story, haha!)

        1. amoeba*

          And I did actually love academia and really enjoyed my time there! But quite happy to be working with them from the other side now :)

  79. Not The Earliest Bird*

    My elementary school was very small and very old. We didn’t have a cafeteria, just a multipurpose room that we ate in. It didn’t have a kitchen, every meal was sent over from the district office. I thought the idea of a cafeteria where they actually cooked food was mindblowing. Occasionally my Mom would take us to her office (in the City), and we would get lunch in the cafeteria. It had a soft-serve ice cream machine, and you could get your own ice cream. It was amazing. Dad’s office didn’t have a full blown cafeteria, just a lunch room, so that wasn’t as exciting- but his assistant did have a drawer full of candy.

    1. kiri*

      lol this reminded me that I went to an elementary school that was just one floor, and the idea of stairs in a school building felt very grown-up and imposing. When I started sixth grade and moved up to the middle school (which had two whole floors), I lay awake until very late at night, anxious and excited to walk up and down stairs at school.

      1. 1LFTW*

        Same! My elementary school had one floor, my middle school had two, and my high school had three. In elementary school I believed that this was some sort of obvious, natural progression because of course the *big kids* got to have more floors.

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        Me too! I’d read books like “Up the Down Staircase” and be blown away at the idea of STORIES in a school building!

    2. Junior Assistant Peon*

      My elementary school also had one of those multi-purpose gym/cafeteria/auditorium rooms. I was under the impression that the words “gym” and “auditorium” were interchangeable synonyms until I was embarrassingly old!

    3. N C Kiddle*

      In my primary school, we ate lunch in the same hall we used for assembly and PE. There were no cooking facilities and everyone either brought a packed lunch or went home at lunchtime. There was a small room next to the hall that was called “the canteen”, which I think had been a kitchen at some earlier point, but all we ever used it for was watching educational videos.

  80. Kate*

    I thought your commute time was paid time. Quite a shock when I learned that wasn’t the case.

    To this day, I resent any time I have to spend commuting and try to do it as little as possible!

  81. Wilmet Forsyth*

    When I was four or five years old, I learned that the people on TV were not just saying whatever came into their heads, the way I did when I played; instead, they had written scripts that they had to learn and follow. I started to assume that all jobs came with scripts, and I thought the store clerks, my kindergarten teacher, and the nurses at the hospital when I had my tonsils out were all reciting lines every day at work.
    As a College instructor, I sometimes received announcements to read to my class, and I would always think, “Finally! Someone’s sent me my script!”

    1. Possum's mom*

      I remember the first time I realized background music was coordinated with the actors and their scripted emotions. Mom had “Days of Our Lives” on and the lady was crying to her friend about her husband’s death while ” …memories light the corners of your mind, misty watercolors memories…” and I thought it was amazing that someone on the show decided to play a sad song for that poor woman! Eight was an enlightening year for me.

  82. Long time lurker*

    For context, I was a very advanced reader from an early age and my parents let me read whatever I wanted. Which led to situations like this one. I was probably about 8, and my mom was a stay at home mom and my Dad had worked at the same company for his whole career. I had read a book, probably for middle schoolers, where the protagonist’s parents got divorced and her Dad got a new job and moved away. So in my head getting a new job = getting divorced. Dad was up for a promotion but wasn’t sure if he was going to get it, so he was talking to Mom about maybe looking for a new job and I freaked out, because I thought that meant they would have to get divorced and he would move away. It look them a bit of figuring out to find out why I was so upset about the idea of Dad looking for a new job!

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      AWW Thats so cute! I can just see the puzzled looks on your parents face with you crying that you don’t want dad to get a new job.

    2. Phoenix*

      Aww… I had a similar moment around the same age, although sort of opposite. I read a book where the protagonist’s parents fight all the time, which ultimately led them to get divorced. I was like “but don’t everyone’s parents fight all the time? Mine do, and they’re not getting divorced!” (They eventually separated… and got back together… and separated again… and got back together again.)

  83. Dawn*

    My father was a shift worker, and his shifts varied wildly: I assumed this was completely normal and everyone worked 12 hour days some weeks, 12 hour nights other weeks, and occasionally did a week or two of 8 hour days (but those were unusual.)

    I also assumed that when he earned double time for working on a statutory holiday, or triple time for working on a holiday weekend, that was the law, and everyone who worked on holidays got that.

    1. WS*

      In some places that is the law! My dad was not a shift worker, but many dads where I grew up were, and my mum was, too. So we all knew that you had to be quiet when you went to somebody else’s house unless they said it was okay to make noise, because there was probably an adult trying to sleep.

  84. They Call Me Patricia*

    As a child, I had no concept of having to apply for a job. I thought you simply decided what you wanted to be and where you wanted to work, then you just…went out and did it. “Getting a job” meant showing up at whatever workplace (hospital, office, school, etc.) you wanted to be part of, and they’d take you on board.

    1. Zephy*

      To hear some of our grandparents tell it, this is how it used to be. And that’s probably true of some places at some times, just, you know, not so much the Western world in the last ~60 years.

      1. Pocket Mouse*

        I’m an elder Millennial and, living in the US, did indeed get one job (my first out of college!) that way. That job was full of bees, unsurprisingly.

  85. Angry bird*

    We watched The Office as a family. My dad had tried to start it sooner, but had been unable to continue because it hit too close to home as an office worker himself. He was able to get over that and we continued watching The Office for years as it aired. One year my dad’s office had a holiday party that included family members, so we all went. One of the coworkers was talking about former coworkers they had had throughout the years, and mentioned a long-time boss. All of the staff chimed in about his ice breakers, games, and little sketches. This seemed familiar to all the other family members, and like the primary thing everyone remembered about the ex-boss. It was very clear to us that my dad had deliberately never mentioned this because we’d make the connection that this person was indeed a real life Michael Scott.

      1. Angry bird*

        Oof. The covid superstore season was especially rough for me. I understand why they had to include covid as a show about a superstore, anything else would dishonor the actual people working in these stores, but as an essential worker, watching a covid season written by a virtual writers room did wasnt great for my fragile mental state at that time lol

    2. SurlyAF*

      I have a flashback to an old nightmare boss every time I watch the dentist named Crentist scene. Yes, the man actually asked me to open my mouth after I had called in due to side effects from minor oral surgery.

  86. Grumpy rat*

    I thought having company picnics with family sack races was going to be a much bigger part of working life than it is. I blame all those 80s/90s shows where somehow the outcome of the family sack race would determine who got promoted.

    1. Bast*

      Yes! I thought “bring your child to work day” and “family fun days” would be a way more frequent occurrence.

    2. BikeWalkBarb*

      My dad worked his way up to become an executive for a lumber/timber company that did have company picnics with games: sack races, 3-legged races, probably others. They had food, a sno-cone making thing, so much good stuff! At Christmas they threw a holiday party. The kids all got a token indicating what age we were and then went to the table with gifts for that age group, which is how I got a tennis racket I definitely didn’t need since we lived out in the country and I had nowhere to play but I could bounce a tennis ball against the side of the garage for hours.

      Once upon a time, PFI (Potlatch Forests Inc.), once upon a time.

  87. bamcheeks*

    Not me, but when my daughter was 3 she saw me go off on my bike every morning and arrive home on my bike, and she was shocked one day when I took her to the office where I worked. We did a little bit of investigation and it turned out she assumed I was just cycling around all day whilst she was at nursery.

    1. bamcheeks*

      I still mentally think that if someone is more senior to me, they ought to be older than me. For most of my twenties that was true, but as you get into your thirties and forties people are much more distributed over the seniority scale, but my brain still goes, “you’re senior to me, you’re probably 4-5 years older than me. I didn’t really realise I did this until I was looking at my grandboss’s LinkedIn and based on her university dates she was probably a year or two younger than me, and I was instinctively soooo indignant.

      1. kicking-k*

        When I was a graduate trainee, my young boss thought this too. I was actually the same age as she was, but I’d done a Master’s and worked for a couple of years before doing the traineeship. I was getting married and it transpired she had been thinking I was young for it as I must be fresh out of college! It seems silly now because I was only about four years older than she thought, which now seems like nothing.

      2. Junior Assistant Peon*

        When I was 25, I had a baby-faced coworker who could have passed for a high school kid. I assumed he was about 21-22 and I was pretty informal in my interactions with him, and was mortified to discover he was actually about 30 and at my grandboss’s level.

        1. kicking-k*

          I had a colleague like this too. He eventually dealt with it by growing a beard. But he still looked pretty much like a university student, just with a beard.

      3. Problem!*

        I recently had a major medical procedure done and I was shocked that my doctor was the same age as me. Doctors are supposed to be old! I’m not nearly old enough to have peers who have done all that schooling right?!

        1. 1LFTW*

          This is so relatable. My psychiatrist is about my age, and when I did my intake session, part of my brain spent wrapping my head around that fact.

    2. rosy maple moth*

      Similarly, when my brother was 3 he knew our dad took the El train to work, so whenever he’d see a train he’d scream “Daddy’s on that train!” because work=riding around on trains all day.

    3. bamcheeks*

      Oh I’ve just remembered another one from my daughter! We’re a two-mum family, and nothing is work, so she was very familiar with the concept of mummies working. At some point she was telling me that she’d been playing families with another boy at nursery, and she said matter-of-factedly that she’d had to explain to him that daddies didn’t go to work, mummies did. I was like, wait, daddies go to work too. She stopped and stared at me. She’d only ever seen dads outside work, in the context of them looking after her friends or picking her friends up from nursery, so the idea that they also went to work blew her mind.

  88. D.C. Paralegal*

    When I was 4 or 5, I tended to take most things literally. So I thought getting fired meant that if you were bad at your job, you were taken out of the building and set on fire as a punishment.

    1. Bast*

      I think they are diamonds in the rough. If we’re talking about middle managers, you have a good deal of decent but burned out people just trying to get through the day. If we’re talking higher up on the totem pole, they get harder to find.

    3. kicking-k*

      I’ve had two really great bosses, including the one I have now. I’ve also had a few awful ones… and several nondescripts.

  91. Feen*

    I was astounded to learn about paid days off when I was a young teen – you still got PAID? and you weren’t even AT YOUR JOB? Wow!

  92. Bast*

    When I was younger, “work” was synonymous with “tons of meetings” in my mind, so whenever someone mentioned “working” my mind went to sitting in a business suit around a table, having a serious discussion about business-y stuff (whatever that meant) that lasted basically all day. Granted, some jobs are basically like this, but a good deal are not.

    I also thought that being a cashier was the coolest thing. The thought process was that I could have fun playing with the register all day and scanning items and somehow GET PAID FOR IT! *gasp* Seemed like a dream at age 5. At 18, I learned it was far from it.

    1. Bast*

      Oh and another shocker to me — most people do not LOVE their job., and even if you do, there will be parts you don’t like. The majority of people, though, are pretty meh about their jobs. Some may like it somewhat. Some absolutely hate it but need to pay bills. Thanks to the whole “If you do something you love you’ll never have to work a day in your life” and the idea that if you were “doing the right job” you wouldn’t ever feel unhappy or dissatisfied.

  93. Steve-o*

    Not sure this counts as weird but I thought HR was there to guide your career, push for promotions for you, and tell you how to get promoted. Like the magic HR fairy would drop down one day and just promote you for doing such a great job and they would also come tell you how to improve things.

  94. Cat Lady*

    I thought people that worked were “adults” then I got my first job in a law office as a research assistant- was shocked that same type behaviors that I saw in middle and highschool continued (gossiping, petty grievances, clicks etc). learned that behavior as a child isn’t childish – its human behavior that most people learn to hide better as they get older

    2. Finn*

      Similar for me, though I’m not working in law. But I thought that if you have a job and earn money, you’re an adult (and you’re old and you know a lot and are responsible and so on). Turns out that getting a job did not turn me into that adult responsible knowledgeable person, and neither did it do so for my coworkers.
      I guess I at least got the part about people working to earn money correct.

  95. Busy Middle Manager*

    Growing up in the 80s/90s, I got a really compressed view of time when it came to getting promotions. I remember in particular an episode of Melrose Place where Heather Locklear/Amanda Woodward (a president or VP at an advertising firm with many people under her) said “I have over five years’ experience” like it was a mic drop moment, in a meeting. I’m not sure why it stuck in my head, partially because it annoyed me that she needed to add the “over” part but also because it gave me the idea that I could technically be an executive by 27! Similar thing in Wall Street where Charlie Sheen is apartment hunting after only like a year in the job.

    Now as an adult, we consider five years’ experience as “only” five years’ experience in most cases and pretty close to entry level.

    Another misconception I had was that everyone was busy doing work that I came to realize was all automated way before coding and AI. I thought offices were filled with people typing data into systems and printing reports and basically doing really routine stuff. Only after starting in corporate a bit over 20 years ago did I realize that those sort of jobs were rare; most people were solving problems, even at a low level. My idea of work was from the 70s or before!

    so much confusion at my first job. I thought I’d be handed a stack of folders with information to enter into a system or something (which honestly sounded kind of easy) but freaked out when I was given a tiny stack of only the most problematic customers to deal with.

  96. Prudence Snooter*

    When I was really young, like 4, I remember my mom telling me that my dad had been “fired” (he had been a local radio morning show host and his show got cancelled). I have a vivid memory of imagining my dad surrounded by a circle of men in suits who shot fire at him with ghostbuster-type devices. I was really worried he’d been burned.

    Don’t worry about my dad though! That firing inspired him to pursue his passion for meteorology and he went on to have a great career as a TV weather guy.

  97. Pink Hard Hat*

    Maybe not strictly applicable but a cute story – as a little kid, I think my grandma told me that that both mothers and teachers had eyes in the back of their head, so you’d better behave. That story worked out real well for my mom who was also a teacher – double backwards surveillance!

  98. Summer Employee*

    This is a serious one, but: I had no idea you could protest anything inappropriate that happened at work. When I worked a summer retail job, a manager sexually harassed me, and all I thought was, “He’s the manager. If I complain, he’ll fire me.” I didn’t know there was anyone higher up than him or even that there were laws against what he was doing. I’d just go home crying and thinking I had to put up with it.

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      I was the same, as I was brought up by a mother who ingrained in me the notion that Daring to Challenge Authority (mostly hers, but teachers and bosses as well) was a worse sin than Pope murder.

      1. Vio*

        Yeah that one can backfire really badly if the authority isn’t actually trustworthy. I wound up with a strong rebellious streak after finally realising that not all authority should be obeyed and so went to the opposite extreme instead. I think I finally found a healthy balance eventually, but still bear the scars.

  99. Microwaved Anchovies*

    Off topic, but related. My work recently did an ice breaker where you had to explain your job as if you were explaining it to a 5-year-old. It was pretty funny and very helpful as I was a new employee with absolutely no background in anything anyone did (Federal Finance, Budget, Performance Management, Cost Analysis, and Auditing). 10 out of 10 would recommend if anyone is ever looking for an ice breaker that isn’t “what kind of ice cream are you?”

  100. Anon for this*

    I thought you didn’t have to pay taxes until you turned 18. So I thought if you had an after-school job as a teen, you weren’t paying any income taxes.

    My brother recently told me that some of our older cousins laughed at him when he was little because when they asked what our dad did for a living, he said, “Oh, he works.” They laughed, and he said, “That’s what it is! It’s called going to work!”

    I also thought that all my bosses would always be at least as educated as I was. When I (with master’s in hand) got my first office job and eventually learned that my boss only had a semester and a half of college (like Tony Soprano), I was sooo offended. (I later got over it.)

    1. Allllllllllllllllllllllllllllly*

      You’re not entirely wrong about teens not paying taxes; in the US, there is a threshold and if you make less than a certain amount, your earnings are not subject to Federal Withholding. Between a combination of low wages and low hours, most (not all) teens fall below that threshold and don’t pay federal income tax on their earnings from after-school jobs.

  101. Former Teacher*

    My brother wanted to be a garbage man when he grew up because he thought they only worked one day a week. I had to explain to him that they only came to our house once a week – they went to other houses on the other days. He is almost 10 years older than me.

    1. N C Kiddle*

      That was a famous joke when I was young. The other version was wanting to be a school crossing patrol attendant, because they don’t start working until they’re in their 60s.

  102. Liz*

    As a child, I made no connection between work and money. I thought work was just a thing people went to, a bit like school, where they had to sit and create things. (I associated “work” with producing a thing on paper, because that was what school looked like, and dad was an engineer, so he also produced drawings and reports.) I was not aware work was about earning money – I thought people just did those things because they were expected to and money came from the cash machine – which I thought was just disturbed on a basis of trust and everybody just took what they needed.

  103. Delta Delta*

    Both of my parents were teachers when I was a kid, so having parents go to work was normal for me. A new family moved into our neighborhood, and the mom stayed home with the kids while dad worked outside the home. One day we were waiting for the school bus and one of the children in the new family said to me, “your mom has a job because she doesn’t love you.” Yikes.

      1. Zephy*

        There is certainly a segment of the stay-at-home parent population that has contempt for working mothers, so it is possible the kid either heard something along those lines or applied Child Logic to more innocuous information (e.g., SAHM explaining that some mommies go to work and including the phrase “I love you” in the course of explaining why she doesn’t, because a child that young really doesn’t need to get into mommy’s personal philosophies around childrearing and family roles – “my mommy loves me and she doesn’t go to work, Delta’s mommy goes to work, ergo Delta’s mommy doesn’t love them”).

  104. Emily*

    When I was in kindergarten I was positive my teacher lived at the school. It never occurred to me that she had any life at all outside of her job.

  105. Ladybug*

    I grew up watching soap operas with my mother, and the characters with “business” jobs (looking at you, The Young & The Restless) were always coming and going, taking long lunches and sipping cocktails, and still had time to sneak off to do nefarious things. Imagine my supreme disappointment when I eventually learned that most business jobs required being in the same small spaces every day -and- also didn’t include daily cocktails at lunch.

  106. Bumblebee*

    I’m a university staff member with parents who also worked at universities. I internalized some very weird ideas about what was “proper student affairs work,” “proper degree programs,” who was “lazy and just recycled last year’s lesson plans,” and so on. I still have to untangle it much, much later in life. Although I was also taught how to properly treat custodians and maintenance workers, without whom none of us would actually be able to do our jobs, and who never get the respect they deserve! So that’s good.

  107. Fernie*

    I always assumed I would be interviewed by Johnny Carson as a guest on The Tonight Show (US late night TV talk show). I watched other interviewees and tried to figure out what I would wear, the best way to sit, how best to be gracious to Ed McMahon sitting on my other side, how much to laugh vs. be serious, etc.

    I never thought about what professional accomplishement I was being interviewed FOR, I just assumed that any job would eventually lead to a Tonight Show appearance.

  108. Allllllllllllllllllllllllllllly*

    I always thought that on Pay Day, you were given a physical sack of money – as in, paper money, in a rucksack with a “$” printed on the front of it, like Scrooge McDuck. In my head, I imagined everyone in their suits and ties lining up outside the payroll office, waiting to collect their money, and walking out with their bags of cash. I even felt badly for the people who made less money because their bags would be visibly smaller and lighter than their bosses who had big, heavy bags of money. I couldn’t wait for the day when I would grow up, get a job, and collect my sack of money on pay day; I had big plans to take it home, spread it on my bed, and roll around on it. This was before I learned about things like direct deposit, and FICA (womp womp).

  109. KT*

    My mom was a VP of a medical-adjacent company whose department was in charge of federal compliance. It was her team’s job to be kept up to date on ever-changing federal and industry rules and restrictions and make sure every other department fell in line a

    1. KT*

      and do inspections of the various departments to make sure everything was up to snuff. It wasn’t uncommon for her to come home from a 10 hour work day annoucing she had done nothing all day but sit in meetings. I was convinced nobody in office jobs actually worked beyond just talking in meetings all day.

    2. Sue Smith*

      My teenage daughter got her first part-time job, excited about the wages to come. She came home, very indignant. “What is this FICA shit?!”

  111. CSRoadWarrior*

    As a kid, I thought you got paid every day after work at the end of the workday. Literally, I mean you get paid 5 days a week Monday to Friday.

    It wasn’t until I saw the calendar we had at home when my mother would circle the date on a Wednesday every other week. I didn’t know what it meant, so when I asked her, she told me those were the days my dad would get paid at his job. I remember being surprised about this. Obviously, it meant my dad got paid biweekly on a Wednesday, but as a kid I didn’t really understand.

  112. Halloween fun times*

    Not as a kid, exactly, but in college when watching the Office, I thought everyone really did dress up for Halloween at work. I have yet to have a job where people really dress up other than a handful of outliers.

    1. DisneyChannelThis*

      My first year in my full time working era, I wore a costume on halloween. No one else did. I ended up borrowing a coworkers fleece jacket to cover up most the day. My second full time job I asked ahead of time, do people dress up for Halloween and the answer was no. All through childhood, high school, college people always dressed up!

    2. Missa Brevis*

      Halloween is hit or miss, but the lab I currently work at goes HARD for lab week (medical laboratory professionals week) and on top of other activities does outfit themes for every day, like spirit week in school – and almost everyone actually dresses up. It kind of blew my mind the first year.

    3. Bast*

      Oh, I’ve worked jobs where people go HARD for Halloween costumes. One larger office had an annual contest with prizes and a pizza party after. That was probably the less stressful day in that office, because it was usually a pretty awful place to be.

      1. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

        Yes, 20+ years with the same LARGE company at 3 different locations (~10,000 at each site), I watched Halloween costumes go from really enthusiastic company-sponsored costume competition of only home-made costumes with prizes in the late 1990’s reduced to less than a dozen of us on a 400-person program actually in costume.

  113. OntarioTeacher*

    My dad sold auto parts for a living (first as an employee, then he opened his own store). I remember sharing what our parents did in daycare and being so upset when the daycare worker said he was a salesman. My only point of reference for that so young was an early 20th century huckster wearing a striped red and white suit and a straw hat (from a cartoon, probably?). And I knew my dad was nothing like THAT lol.

  114. Justin*

    I really thought the only thing people did at work was have meetings because that’s the only thing I ever saw my parents do (I wasn’t there in th during the many hours a day when they did other stuff).

  115. MigraineMonth*

    My dad was a college professor in a field related to geometry. This should have been a really easy thing for a child to understand: I had teachers, I knew what shapes were, he was a teacher who worked with shapes.

    Except I never saw him actually teach, just office hours (when I was waiting for him to pack up and a student or professor would engage him in a last-minute question). So he would talk with them while drawing something on the whiteboard, then they’d mark something on his picture, then he’d add something else.

    So I grew up with the vague idea that my dad played really fancy games of tic-tac-toe for a living.

  116. Forrest Rhodes*

    Sort of work-adjacent. When I was 17, my first job of any kind was full-time, office-type, 9-to-5. Because of the lack of street parking nearby, employees had to rent our own parking spaces in one of the nearby lots. One day, during my first 6 months or so of work, I was sick and had to stay home; on another day I was assigned to visit a different office for the day.

    At the end of the month, when I went to the parking lot owner to pay for my next month’s parking space, I asked him how much two days’ credit would be, because there were two days I hadn’t used the space.

    He was much kinder than he might have been to this naive little person who’d never rented anything in her life, and explained that no, the deal was that I rented the space for a month at a time, and whether I actually used the space or not was up to me.

    Lights went on in my brain. Ooooh, so that’s how the renting-something process goes! It was one of many similar lessons I learned over that first year in what my boss liked to call “the World of Work.”

  117. Pippa K*

    Did no one else grow up in a military family? It definitely affects what you think about things like “chain of command” and whether frequent relocation is normal.

    1. Aisling*

      I know this is late, but I did. I was shocked to realize that people could have jobs other than being in the military, since that was all I knew about my parent’s jobs and my friends parents’ jobs. In high school I met someone whose father was a chemist and I was floored!

    2. Lucien Nova, Disappointing Australian*

      Not directly, but my two older nieces did as my sister’s husband was military – the eldest has a very deeply instilled sense of wanderlust and is always travelling as a result! Her sister definitely prefers stability and has become much happier since my brother-in-law retired.

  118. SMH*

    Not mine, but my 5 year old was very excited about the prospect of becoming a cashier because he thought they got to keep all the money they received.

  119. Legally Brunette*

    I thought that “Take Your Child to Work Day” was only for people who had boring corporate jobs, and that it involved the kids helping their parents work. My Dad worked in a scientific laboratory for a large corporation, and always rebuffed our requests to attend this mythical event because the lab was dangerous, and we would be bored by his work.

    As an adult who has worked jobs that put on stellar Take Your Child to Work Day programs, and a parent myself, I now know he just wanted the peace and quiet of his work space instead of riding herd on us for the day. Good on you, Dad – I totally get it, and I plan to do the same thing!

    1. Zephy*

      You know, reading through this thread and thinking about the handful of times I went to work with my parents…I have to wonder. *Is* “Take Your Child To Work Day” actually a thing anywhere? Because I’m almost certain there were *never* any other kids around on those days, so I assume the real occasion was an unexpected lack of other childcare for whatever reason. But I have a vague memory of going to work with my dad for a “Take Your Daughter To Work” thing, like I specifically recall “daughter” being part of it, somehow. I don’t remember seeing any other kids around, though.

      1. Ari Flynn*

        They were when I was a kid, back in the Cretaceous. My sister and I both went. Dad worked at a plant big enough that they arranged kid-friendy tours and activities, and didn’t expect any actual work to get done that day.

      2. Janne*

        My dad’s work (in the Netherlands, in the 00s) didn’t have Take Your Child To Work Days, but we went to his workplace twice a year, for a barbecue at the start of the summer holidays and for a December party with presents for all the kids. For the December party, they surprisingly always had perfect presents for us — I never noticed that I always got the things that I circled in the toy catalog that always just appeared in our house in November.

      4. Lucien Nova, Disappointing Australian*

        It was definitely a thing! I offer the caveat that my dad worked in tech my entire life and so it may be more prevalent in that industry but I’ve got very fond memories of roaming his various workplaces with a pack of other children. :)

  120. Emotional support capybara (he/him)*

    When I was tiny my dad was a welder and worked the night shift. So the rare nights Dad came home before I went to bed were A Big Deal. Mom worked days at a bakery and sometimes brought me to work.

    I don’t remember how old I was when I learned otherwise but I thought dads worked at night and moms worked during the day and that’s just how it was. I do remember thinking the old former Navy cook (grandpa age so he counted as Probably A Dad, I guess?) who did the baking fit this pattern because he came in before the sun came up, therefore he worked at night. It made sense when I could still be pushed around in a stroller.

  121. VVex*

    I’m in my 50s. When I was in first grade, I knew that my dad was an engineer and, for a class project, drew a picture of him driving a train. It was the only kind of engineer I was aware of (from picture books) and had somehow concluded that was his job. Cool!

    I think my teacher must have slipped word to him, because later in the year, he showed up for a “what do engineers do all day” visit to my class.

  122. Slinky*

    I believed for a long time that all managers are tyrants, based entirely on the media portrayal of managers. I kind of pictured them all like the boss in 9-to-5 and red-faced yelling all day long. As an adult, I’ve realized that isn’t the case, though reading AAM has also taught me that it is true more often than we’d like.

  124. Warrant Officer Georgiana Breakspear-Goldfinch*

    Both my parents were teachers, and socialized largely with their colleagues, and when I was small, I had a notion that all grownups were teachers. When you grew up, you were bigger, you could use the stove unsupervised, you were a teacher. I just didn’t realize there were other options! Not really sure when I realized this was not how the world worked. (I am not a teacher.)

  125. Christina*

    When I was little my dad was a school librarian and an adjunct professor in the library science department of a large Catholic university in the Northeast. My dad would bring my sister and I to work parties where we played games with the nuns that were his colleagues. So from then on when I would see any sisters in habits in public, like the grocery store I would shout, “Look! A librarian!”

  126. SawbonzMD*

    I thought being a tool taker or a cashier would be the best job in the world – because I thought the tool taker or cashier got to keep the money my mom handed them.

  127. MeridethLibrarian*

    My father was a military police officer.

    Once when I was 5, he told me he arrested the Easter Bunny for breaking and entering, so no basket this year. (He had hidden the basket my mom had lovingly put together).

    Of course, I burst into tears, but bravely told him I understood, because “it’s your job.” Dejectedly, I trudged up the stairs to my room.

    I heard my mom (who was 8 months pregnant at the time) yelling at him, then he shamefacedly brought me my Easter Basket and told me it was a joke.

    My mother has never let him forget it.

    1. Phony Genius*

      Which is why I despise Jimmy Kimmel’s annual video compilation of parents telling kids that they ate all their Halloween candy. No action that causes real tears can be considered a prank.

  128. Lola*

    I asked my dad if he drank wine during lunch at work, or if he drank milk with his lunch like I did. He worked at a research facility that was a bit isolated at the time and included lunch as part of the compensation. I only had lunch with dad on weekends, and he would usually have a glass of wine, so it made sense to 7-year-old me…

  129. JamieE*

    When my mom would come get me out of school to take me to a doctor appointment, I felt so free. I remember riding in the passenger seat almost in awe that I got to be out in the world while everyone else was in school. I couldn’t wait to be done with school and get to be a “free” adult out there in the world, ha! It didn’t occur to me that my mom (an office worker) was also breaking out of jail for a few hours, so to speak.

  131. Sandy S*

    Two observations about work when I was very young:
    I thought every person was required to be President of the United States. I remember asking my dad when it was his turn. I remember being shocked when he said he would never want that job.

    He’s an engineer (true rocket scientist) but I recall thinking he drove trains all day.

  132. SlideScanner*

    When I was very little, I thought my dad went to work just to earn money to buy bread so that we could go to the duck pond and feed the ducks. I didn’t know what he did, but it did confuse me when sometimes he came home in a flight suit and other times in his normal work clothes. Turns out, at the time he was a flight test engineer for Sikorsky, and had to go up in the helicopters after they were built.

  133. 888 Pocomo*

    My dad was a NASA engineer. I had NO idea what a NASA engineer did, so, since he also spent a lot of time at home building things out of wood, I told everyone that I knew that he was a carpenter.

  134. JLZ*

    As a kid I remember hearing my mom mention that she was talking to a “headhunter” and was genuinely horrified at the thought that she was associating with some sort of monstrous serial killer, until she explained that it was basically just a recruiter.

  135. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    I had no inkling of Imposter Experience until it smacked me upside the head. The idea that you could do the job day in and out, feel lost and that you have no idea what you’re doing, just blindsided me, along with the feeling of being perpetually one false move away from being thrown overboard as ballast.

    Similarly, I had no idea the true power of charisma. I thought it was a Hollywood thing, like so many other “normal” conventions on television. I thought professional life was much closer to a meritocracy.

    Finally, I thought conformity was much more strict and stringent than it’s turned out to be.

    My career has turned out being much more M*A*S*H and Night Court than I had expected.

  136. Chocoholic*

    When I was a kid, I thought that bus drivers only got paid via the fares from people riding the bus during the time of their shift, and how did they get paid if nobody happened to ride their bus that day.

    Similarly, I was very confused about how librarians got paid when overdue library book fines were only 10 cents/day, and could be avoided by returning your book on time.

  137. Trish*

    My mom used to come home from work talking about things everyone in her office was saying about So-and-so. I thought So-and-so was one of her coworkers.

  138. Phony Genius*

    When first I heard the phrase “paid vacation” as an employee benefit, it was in a cartoon show I was watching. So of course I thought it meant “all expenses paid vacation,” not that you just get paid your normal salary during your time off.

  139. Butterfly Counter*

    I had a misconception about a very specific job: The president of the United States.

    I knew POTUS lived in “The White House.” While I’m sure I had seen a picture, my imagination said that this important person must live in a huge white house where they could oversee the entire United States. My town had a very white, very tall, huge (to a 4 year-old) water tower. What a great vantage point!

    Yes, I believed that the president lived in my town’s water tower. Every time we drove past it, I wondered if Ronald Reagan could see me waving.

    1. MsM*

      Not work related, but while I could go look at the actual White House as a child, I thought a certain local Mormon temple was Disney World and was very angry my parents wouldn’t take me.

  140. FrogEngineer*

    Growing up, my dad worked about five minutes from home, so he usually came home during his lunch break. Of course I learned later that this is not the norm, but it sure would be nice if it was!

  141. canary*

    Having watched Empire Records religiously as a kid, I thought my first job as a teenager was going to be AWESOME. Hanging out with friends, flirting with cute coworkers, chill bosses that let you treat the store like your own personal clubhouse… yeah that was a rude awakening.

  142. Sharvey007*

    My mom worked a Boeing in the plant/shop. I would stare at the plants in our house wondering how she shrunk down small enough to work in such a small space. I also wondered when she transformed to my regular sized mom.

    I also could not understand how she was working from home. I’d say “But you are at home, why did you tell your boss you were working?” To me, sitting at a computer was not working. Now I know it is!

  143. pally*

    I never understood how other kids were able to visit their dads at their place of employment and do the things they talked about doing there. Like sitting at their dad’s desk and using all of the markers to draw pictures. Or run up and down hallways. Or get food. Or play with some of the equipment (adding machines, copiers, etc.). Or even just plain goof off.

    When I asked my dad why he never brought us to work, he explained that work was a very dangerous place for children. Not “his” work was a very dangerous place for children.

    See, Dad was an electrical engineer. He designed power supplies. Big ones. He not only had an office, but he also had a lab. Full of electrical equipment. High voltage stuff. So yeah, a very dangerous place for kids to be goofing around in. He said I couldn’t even look into the lab. Figured that meant something scary was in there. Monsters maybe? Most likely there was a security clearance needed to get in there.

    I was allowed to see his office. Once. But I was not allowed to touch anything or play with all the drafting tools and other things he used. Not even his mechanical pencils. He had tablets of paper with lines on them going in both directions. I begged him to let me color the little squares -and promised to color within the lines- but he said that wasn’t how you used this kind of paper.

    The thing that intrigued me the most on his desk was the telephone. It had push buttons (no dial). And extra buttons too. I wanted to know what those extra buttons were for. Dad explained them to me. I couldn’t grasp all that he said. Figured that you had to be really smart to know how to use work telephones.

    Conclusion: work is a very serious place for very smart people. I worried that I’d never be smart enough to hold down a job.

  144. William Murdoch's Homburg*

    Not necessarily that weird, but I remember thinking that work must be WAY MORE EXCITING than being in school all day long. I was sitting through a spelling lesson, aged maybe 7 or so, and thinking to myself, “I wonder what adults even do all day while they’re at work? I bet it’s way cooler than going to school!”

    Now aged 36, I like my work but laugh at how naive I was.

  145. Hotdog not dog*

    I had a few misconceptions about work…
    *thought everyone retired at 65 and got a pension (because my grandfather did)
    *thought all the women in the office were secretaries (because my father ran a machine shop, and the only female employee was a secretary; and also because my mother worked part time as a secretary)
    *thought if you did a good job, the boss would automatically give you a raise (no clue where this delusion came from!)
    *thought you could own a home and raise a family on one income (wow, was THAT ever inaccurate!)
    *Not as much work, but life in general…I always assumed that there were smart adults running things. (Uh, No. Clearly the inmates are running the asylum!)

  146. alfie*

    I have a vivid memory of being quite young and considering what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think my only exposure to the idea of jobs were my parents (a doctor and a nurse) and kids media like Richard Scarry books, Postman Pat and Fireman Sam. I went through a process of elimination of professions such as doctor, teacher, policeman, fireman, shopkeeper which I discounted for various reasons and ended up deciding I’d *have* to be a postman because that was all that was left. Five year old me would probably be very surprised to learn I became a software engineer :D

  147. Sue Smith*

    When I was very young I thought my dad operated a train because he was an engineer, but he wore a business suit and came home every night. The few times my mom dropped him off at the office, I looked around in vain for trains and tracks. When I asked for clarification, he said he was a pencil pusher. This was disappointing and mystifying for a few years.

  148. 2 Cents*

    A major one: Because I did oh so well in school (excellent grades, praise from teachers and professors), I’d have an equally easy time in the workplace. Ha! No one gives you a promotion just because “it’s time” and hard work is usually rewarded with more work, not accolades. Plus, it’s not a benefit to be an introvert, and the people I see rewarded are the ones who went out to parties on weekends (because they can network), not the ones like me who stayed in because crowds = no good. It’s made me all a bit cynical.

  149. Lab Snep*

    At one of my first jobs I proclaimed I was going on a one month overseas vacation.

    I don’t know why I expected my retail job would be there when I got back, but friends it was not.

    1. Lab Snep*

      To be fair, even my FAMILY didn’t tell me not to, they also didn’t really raise me to be a competent adult, and I had undiagnosed neurodivergent stuff and didn’t really know how to people.

      I still sometimes don’t know how to people, but I DO always make sure I can actually take vacations before booking them.

      1. Zephy*

        Also in fairness, if you have the opportunity to take a month-long vacation overseas, and you’re currently working in retail…like, that’s a no-brainer, you take the vacation. The only thing you might’ve done wrong is not quitting the retail job in a more conventional way (giving notice, etc).

        1. Lab Snep*

          Oh, Absolutely.

          I was still a teen at the time so my brain was in weird teenage “But why?” Mode.

  150. Indigo64*

    My dad is an engineer who spent a good chunk of his career building components for fighter jets. Through his contacts, he secured a coveted invite to an Air National Guard event where we got to sit in the cockpit of a decommissioned Blackbird. I was 8, and didn’t understand why my dad wasn’t allowed to fly it. Sure he wasn’t a pilot, but he built the thing, right?

  151. I never have real plans*

    A formational moment for me when visiting my dad at work at a grain mill in the 80s was the poker hand coffee cups in the break room. I had so many questions about how you knew when to find other people who would also have poker hands, what did they use for chips, etc. I knew the poker wasn’t part of work, but it seemed like those cups must be important.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        I’m picturing mugs with 5 playing cards, partially lapping, painted on the side.

  152. Cat*

    I was confused by businesses that were open 24/7. I was like when do the people get to go to bed?!? lol

  153. Megan*

    My mom worked as a dental assistant, for her brother (the dentist) and with her sister (another dental assistant) and I, for probably longer then I should have, thought all medcal offices were run by families. I concluded this because my Dad was a carpenter and he didnt’ work with his siblings. My other aunt and uncle worked together too (not in the medical field but I didn’t understand thier jobs so I assigned them as medical field in my head).

    Anytime I went to the doctors I’d try to guess how they were related, like assigning roles!

    I honestly can’t remember when I discovered it wasn’t true, lol.

    2. Bean Counter Extraordinaire*

      I thought this too!

      Especially places that are named Such-and-Such Family Dental! Clearly everybody there has to be a Such-and-Such.

  154. gingerbread*

    This isn’t exactly on topic, but it’s adjacent. Although my mom took the day off for my 4th birthday, she wanted to stop at her office to join a retirement party that was happening, and brought me along with her. The gentleman who was retiring lived on a hobby farm, so his retirement cake was John Deere themed, with green icing to look like grass, brown hay bales made of icing, and a toy tractor. I assumed, because it was my birthday and there was party, that the party was for me. When we were in the car leaving, I said to my mom: “That was nice of them to throw a party for my birthday, but next time can you ask them for a Strawberry Shortcake cake?”

  155. sgpb*

    Thanks to every single teacher at my high school, I thought if you turned in anything late you got fired.

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      1,000% In school, if you can’t meet the deadline, there’s no point in even starting.

      “Do your best and prize accuracy; I can explain late but I can’t explain wrong” from a previous supervisor liberating. Then came the revelation that, in the real world, deadlines are often negotiable and the person doing the work has the best understanding of what a realistic deadline looks like…

    2. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      That your boss would be mad at you if you were sick, got in late, something happened! They might not be happy but no one is going to punish you or fire you because you were sick. (at least at 98% of jobs)

      1. basically functional*

        It was the opposite for me. I assumed bosses would be understanding about illness and have no problem with employees taking time off when needed. I was very surprised to be fired from my first (and only) retail job as a teenager because I got the flu and called out sick for 3 days.

    3. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

      Oh, yeah, thanks to the “you broke it, you bought it” policy at stores, I was under the impression early on in my first “real” job that if I brought the entire website down at work (I work in software development), *obviously* whatever money this cost the company would come out of my paycheck. I was confused why my boss said, “Of course we would never do that,” when I did what I saw as the honorable thing and volunteered to pay the company for the outage. I felt like I was being allowed to “get away” with something when he said no, and I was very uncomfortable about it. Then the Etsy essay on blameless post mortems came out a few months later, and it all made sense!

  156. Czech Mate*

    My mom took a lot of business trips when I was a kid. Once, when I was about two or three, she went to a big conference at Miami. For weeks, she’d been talking about “When I go to Miami” and “This is something we can deal with when I get back from Miami,” etc.

    As we were driving her to the airport, I apparently said, “Next time you go to your ami, can I go with you?”

    It’s still not clear what I thought an “ami” was. I suppose I thought it was something adults got to visit when they were old enough to work, like an individualized retreat or vacation spot. Maybe because my mom bought a new bathing suit specifically to take to “herami.”

    1. Legally Brunette*

      This is adorable!!

      I did not understand business trips at all as a child. My mother also flew for business when I was quite young. Back when you could go to the airport terminal and wait at the gate, 3-year old me told everyone how my Mommy was lost in Chicago all week, but she was coming home now! I was pretty big into Fivel’s American Tale at the time (IYKYK).

      Apparently, my toddler happy squeals and crying as I ran into my mother’s arms at the gate elicited applause and a few tears from the other people waiting. Mom was pretty confused, but Dad thought it was hysterical :)

      1. Czech Mate*

        Oh yeah, there was 0 conception that a work trip was for work. Mom always regaled me with stories about things she saw, food she ate, people she met, so that’s all I thought work trips were!

        It wasn’t until I was MUCH older, when my mom was spearheading the effort to implement our state’s 2-1-1 system, that I realized she’d been spending all of that time talking to nonprofit leaders and state representatives about ways to more efficiently provide human services in impoverished, rural communities. Who knew?

  157. CommanderBanana*

    I thought there would be a lot more stamping of documents (probably influenced by my dad’s bringing home old office equipment from his Army office, which included lots of wooden stamps and a delightfully heavy old push-button phone) and that people would behave like adults.

    Wrong on both counts!

  158. Sleepiest Girl Out Here*

    I don’t know if this fits but it’s in the same vein. My dad was a developer around the time that actually started to be a job. I remember one time he brought me in to his office on a “take your daughter to work” day. I erased his whole whiteboard where he had been working out code so that I could draw pictures of the ballerina hippos from Fantasia.

    Now that I work in development myself I’ve realized how miserable that probably was for him and have since apologized profusely.

  159. Katydid*

    I thought it was weird that everyone on TV wore ties or business apparel, because growing up I did not know a single person who wore a tie to work every day. My Mom was a teacher and my Dad worked as a welder. My Grandpas both wore collared shirts more regularly than my dad but they both worked in more “blue collar” jobs as well. (Power Plant supervisor and Park Services at a state park). The suggested gifts for Father’s Day were always wildly off base as well.

  160. Don’t make me come over there*

    The common use of the terms “9-to-5” and “lunch hour” led me to believe that a 1-hour paid lunch break was standard. I was too embarrassed to admit this to an angry supervisor at my first job in college who thought I was padding my time sheet.

    2. Six Feldspar*

      Very surreal to be working a twelve hour shift as part of a fourteen day roster and have that song playing frequently! I used to wonder what kind of worker’s paradise Dolly Parton came from that she thought 9-5 was a schedule bad enough to sing about…

  161. Human Embodiment of the 100 Emoji*

    I thought I would have my PhD and be in a prestigious tenured job at a top university or museum by the time I was thirty… teenager brains are funny.

  162. JSPA*

    Mine were mostly language confusion.

    Believing that “blue collar” and “white collar” referred to actual shirt colors you were required to wear, and confidently saying my dad was “blue collar” on days when he wore a blue shirt. Likewise, believing that work done without wearing a shirt with a (white or blue) collar was…still work, but somehow different (like maybe not taxed)?

    That “working under the table” meant scrubbing the floor under furniture.

    That prerequisites and perquisites (perks) were… not exactly the same, but somehow linked?

    That fines, tickets and late payments worked like a summons, in that they had to reach you to be enforceable.

    That door-to-door salespeople were just being friendly.

  163. NotARealManager*

    I thought work was just a salary. I didn’t expect it should come with any kinds of benefits (health insurance, retirement, PTO, etc.) until I met my future husband who had an “adult job” at 25. I worked so many jobs just for a paycheck because I didn’t expect it to come with more and I have a master’s degree and am from a family of educated professionals. Everyone just assumed I would know what to look for? We need to do a better job explaining to young people what a job could offer them beyond money*.

    *I know sometimes you just need a paycheck and not all jobs come with benefits, but I wish someone would’ve told me to expect better.

  164. That Crazy Cat Lady*

    My mom had a bit of a time management problem, and she was usually running late in the mornings. She would often freak out while getting ready and say she was going to get fired if she didn’t hurry up and get there on time.

    So…I used to think that if she was late for work, they would literally set her on fire. Imagine my relief when I found out what firing was. Don’t get me wrong, getting fired still sucks. But…still much better than I thought lol.

  165. ajpiano*

    I used to think ‘toll-booth attendant’ was the best job in the world cause they would have gotten to keep all the money.

  166. Eleanor Shellstrop*

    Like all children in college towns, I thought tenure was what happened to you after you had been a professor for ten years.

  167. Lorna*

    My Dad was a session musician. You can hear him (well, his instrument) on countless records from the 70s and 80s.
    I always thought he was on tour with the famous people, hanging out with fans/groupies, getting paid in gold bars and having the time of his life.
    That was until he took me to work one day. It was the most boring day of my life, sitting on a wobbly chair in a dingy recording studio, no famous people anywhere.
    Just listening to him and his colleagues repeatedly playing the same few bars of music until they got it absolutely right.

    Don’t get me wrong – they all were amazing musicians, but 10 year old me was bored stiff that day.
    My Dad on the other hand always had the time of his life – no gold bars though ;)

  168. Everlast*

    When I was 5 I told my mom I planned to be a pastor on Sundays, a teacher during the day and an aerobics instructor at 4pm. I assumed those people only ever worked during the exact hours that we interacted with them, and so that would be an efficient workweek.

  169. CherryBlossom*

    I grew up in a working class family, in a working class neighborhood. I didn’t know anyone that had an office job, but I knew that they lived in the nicer neighborhoods. So I assumed that anyone with an office job was automatically rich!

    It actually bit me a little when I got my first office job. One of my coworkers said something about being working class and I said “You work for a hedge fund, how can you be poor?!” Yikes.

    In my defense, I didn’t have anyone to teach me the ways of office politics. It took me a long time to learn how to tone my working class bluntness down while at work.

  170. Cardboard Marmalade*

    My aunt worked at a bank and while she was talking about it once, she mentioned that the hardest part of her job involved having to fire people sometimes. Naturally I understood this to mean that she owned the bank. I had no trouble squaring this with her other least-favorite thing about the job, which was that because she was a woman, everyone expected her to make coffee (which she got around by just bald-face lying that she didn’t drink coffee and thus didn’t know how to make it). Even at a young age, I was like, ‘Sexism? Checks out.’ It came as a shock to me many years later to discover that she did not, in fact, own this huge NYC bank but worked in HR.

  171. ugh academia*

    My mom was an academic and my dad was not. One time my dad was complaining about office politics and I said “I want to work at a university like mom does so I don’t have to worry about politics!” My mom laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

  172. I didn't say banana*

    My dad was a highly sought after Financial Strategy consultant. He often travelled internationally and took me with him, and I’d sit in the back of the conference rooms and read. Because companies were paying a lot of money and sending their brightest, most committed, high level executives to my dad’s training, I developed some very incorrect assumptions about all workers being smart, attentive and motivated and about all trainings being useful and interesting with good catering.

  173. Blue Spoon*

    When I was young and wanted to be a librarian, I thought that working at a library would involve a lot more reading and a lot fewer meetings than I’ve now experienced in my 7 years working at one.

  174. LoraC*

    This is more of a sign of dysfunction, but my dad would come every night from work and viciously complain about his coworkers and managers. He’d spend the entire dinner time, about an hour, complaining non-stop about how dumb they were, how they couldn’t do anything without him, how everyone was an idiot, how his bosses were morons, etc.

    I grew up thinking this was completely normal; that it’s normal to hate your coworkers and bosses to this extent, and that complaining for hours was a normal thing working adults did. So when I graduated college and started working, I did it too, and quickly realized I was losing friends and creating an extremely negative impression of myself.

    I think I was around 23 when a friend eventually snapped at me and asked me what was wrong with me and why I was so negative about work. That’s when I realized no one else was doing what I was doing and slowly stopped.

  175. nerak*

    I work for an association that has the letters C and A in its acronym, and my daughter used to tell people I worked for the CIA because she couldn’t remember where I actually worked, and well, close enough (we live in the DC-area too, so this is actually believable). One of her teachers asked me one time what I did for the CIA and that’s how I found out, hahaha.

    1. Evan Þ*

      And when you told the teacher that you didn’t work for the CIA at all, did they nod knowingly at your cover story?

  176. Middle Aged Lady*

    I thought going to work was so hard and being a homemaker was ‘easy’ (Boomer conditioning.) Work was always so much easier than being at home! Homemaking is project management, facilitities management, budget analyst, health and hygiene, ‘happiness coordinator,’ concierge, cook, maid. And it’s mostly on you with little training and few days off. You even have to manage the vacations!

  177. ButternutSquash*

    My mother was an anesthesiologist; when I was about six her hospital hosted their first ever Take Your Daughter To Work Day. There was some sort of emergency and most of the more senior doctors were called away, so myself and a few other little girls were left in the care of bewildered med students. Their genius plan was to show us old VHS tapes of anesthesia safety videos from the 1960s, one of which was on the fire and explosion dangers of ether. It wasn’t until I was an adult and having knee surgery in 2010 that I realized people do not generally catch fire or explode in modern surgery.

    1. Smoking can kill you (but they survived)*

      To be fair to six year old you, within my mid-life adult memory someone caused an explosion and fire at the local hospital when they tried to light a cigarette while on high flow oxygen, so the risks still aren’t nil.

  178. Fingus*

    I thought 8-8 was a regular work day… my dad seemed to always be at work on weekdays, and somewhere in there I got the impression that a regular day is ALL day.

  179. Abogado Avocado*

    Because my parents worked for large corporations, I thought you went to work, you did whatever
    “work” was, and you got a paycheck. When I graduated from undergrad, I went to work for big corporations and never connected the paycheck with generating business — until I entered law school and realized that, somehow, you had to attract clients in order to have business.

  180. Nonanon*

    When I first became a scientist, I thought I would spend the bulk of my time running experiments and excitedly telling the world about their results, no matter what the data were, not begging various agencies for money only for my pleas to be rejected because I had the gall to provide the timeline they asked for.

    YES I’M STILL MAD AT THAT ONE REVIEWER IN PARTICULAR. WAS IT YOU? I’M STILL MAD.

  181. Grilledcheeser*

    I thought my dad worked on the Moon. That he drove / flew there every day, racing other people to get there to work, because he told me he worked on “the moon race”. I would get very upset if my siblings delayed him in the morning – and I totally understood why he was tired when he got home after work, it was a big commute! When I learned he just worked on Earth it was so disappointing. (Though I did get to ride on their prototype lunar rover here on Earth!)

  182. HigherEdAdmin*

    When I was a preschooler, my dad worked with a guy named Ernie and I was dying to meet him because I was so sure he was the Sesame Street character.

  183. spcepickle*

    I was embarrassingly old before I learned that people worked all summer. My mom was a principal and my dad worked contract jobs. We would spend the summer camping, working on my grandparents farm, and generally hanging out. When my dad got his first office job (I think I was 12) I was beyond disappointed to learn most people work all summer.
    I now work in construction where summer is our crazy busy season – but I take long vacation in February.

    1. Addicted to Sims*

      Me too! Every adult in my family, and most of my friends families was in education one way or another (most of us were children of a large cohort of faculty hired at the university in 1965-6). It came as a nasty shock to find out everyone doesn’t get summers off.

    2. ICodeForFood*

      My step-siblings were around 14 and 11 when their mother married my father, and they didn’t believe that people worked in the summer because their mother had always taken summers off to be with them…

  184. rosy maple moth*

    Growing up I was essentially taught (by my actor mom and composer dad) that you had three options:
    a) be SUPER amazing and talented and the very very best at What You Are Meant To Do (which was either theater, music, visual art, or creative writing, definitely not science or anything like that) in which case you will automatically be rich and famous and there will be world peace somehow and you’ll get awards and have to fend off paparazzi
    b) sell out and get a soulless office job, which will also get you rich but you will hate it because it will not have Meaning and Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness. You will eventually have a Midlife Crisis, buy a tiny sports car, and abandon your family; this is definitely the result of how soulless your career was, and not due to your own choices or the fact that your marriage was never great to begin with
    c) be a Starving Artist: work in retail, food service, or freelance tutoring or something (basically, any job that does NOT come with benefits) while spending every spare moment at What You Are Meant To Do. Either you end up at option A, or you live a simple life full of meaning and honor because Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness
    I didn’t love the idea of fending off paparazzi, so I planned my whole entire life around option C. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that “soulless” office jobs make it a LOT easier to do art on the side than working for job that pays below a living wage with no sick time or PTO, while keeping mall hours and rescheduling your shifts out from under you constantly! Even if they don’t really make you rich.

  185. Curiouser and Curiouser*

    I had a coworker who, charmingly, was shocked to learn that he would be paid during his vacation time at his first full-time job. He was under the impression that it was like part-time work in college, where the benefit was being allowed to not be at work. He called his mom and was like, “Can you believe this?!” to which his mom gave him a loving “Yes, dear, I have been working most of my life.” It was truly a reminder to be grateful for my PTO benefits!

  186. Regina Falangie*

    I was excited to attend meetings and how important they all (and I as an attendee) would be and they would obviously always have a purpose/be productive.

    1. Teaching teacher*

      I remember being shocked and appalled at the attitude of my new coworkers at our beginning of the year staff meeting. I mean, our boss, an *expert* in education, was going to provide us information that would help us better educate our students! Why wouldn’t the PE teacher be salty about sitting in a meeting learning about a new assessment program that will replace the one they replaced three years ago?

  187. RainbowDaisy*

    In middle school, my niece thought two uncles’ professions were what she saw them do. She thought the one in her neighborhood was a drummer (he’s an engineer). She thought the out-of-state uncle whose place has nature and sports was a camp director (he’s a CPA), because we call the homestead Camp HisLastName.

  188. Name (Required)*

    That the best and the brightest ascend the leadership ranks to make thoughtful decisions informed by long-term forecasts, potential consequences and a keen regard for the greatest good.

    Boooooooooooy was that a hard slap from reality.

  189. Elsewise*

    I was a big animal lover, as were my friends in elementary school. My best friend, who knew everything, wanted to be a veterinarian, so I did too so we could work together. Until one day when we had a sleepover and watched Emergency Vet over breakfast. I decided veterinarians dealt with too much gross stuff to be a good career, and besides, sometimes the animals die and I wasn’t okay with that. So I decided I would be a dog trainer.

    Except, of course, I assumed that there’s no way you can just train dogs and get paid for it, you had to train them to DO something. So I decided I would train guide dogs for the blind! It involved dogs and doing good things, so it was perfect. (I had never met a service dog before and I didn’t know any blind people, so this was all very theoretical.) A male friend of ours scoffed at that and explained to me that you can’t make money doing that because blind people don’t have money and they don’t pay for their own guide dogs, they get them as gifts. (He also didn’t know any blind people or service dogs, but was very confident so I assumed he was probably right.) He told me that if I wanted to make REAL money as a grownup, I’d have to train bomb-sniffing dogs. This was shortly after 9/11, so we all knew that bombs were a frequent problem and there were bomb-sniffing dogs everywhere.

    To me, this sounded even WORSE than being a veterinarian, because you train all of these dogs and send them off to save people knowing that they’re going to die. I was fully convinced that bomb-sniffing dogs find bombs and then lie down on top of them and detonate them. I decided I wanted to be a journalist instead.

    As an epilogue, I now work for a nonprofit unrelated to animals, and my best friend now does animal behavior research. I think the other kid might have gone into finance, but I’m not in touch with him anymore. I do have several friends with service dogs, and they do have to pay for them.

  190. Sara*

    Not me, but when my daughter was in 2nd grade she told me that her friend’s dad made water bottles in a factory and his mom worked in the Uncrustables factory sewing up the sandwiches to keep the peanut butter and jelly in. Turns out the kid used a branded water bottle from the tech company where his dad worked, and his mom stayed home and used a special cutter to make Uncrustable-style sandwiches for his lunch every day.

  191. Still Queer, Still Here*

    My father is a Protestant (left-leaning end of that spectrum) minister, so I have so many weird things I thought were normal.
    -When I was very young, like 4 or so, I attended the pre-school in my dad’s church. He would come and do “chapel time” with us, which mostly included him telling a bible story and playing a couple of kid-church songs on the guitar with us. He would also accompany us on the guitar for an annual music program. One of my classmates was telling me how it all worked on the first day, pointed to my dad and said “So that’s God, he’s gonna come and play some songs for us and tell us stories about his life.” I immediately told her “No, that’s my dad actually!” and my classmate argued so vehemently and was so convinced she was right, that for a while I legitimately wondered if my father was God during the day, and turned into my silly goofy Dad at night. Maybe that’s why we call God “Father” etc. It all makes sense, right? It was all straightened out by Kindergarten, but hoo boy does my dad love to tell that story now!

    -Another memorable one: My family lived on a farm, so my dad usually dressed very casually and often went right to work after doing farm chores. Lots of jeans and polos etc. Except on wedding or funeral days. He had a very specific fancy suit he would wear for funerals. It was a fairly average mid-90s era suit, but I thought of it as his fancy one, because it was only for special occasions. He wore a blazer and slacks for worship, but this one was very much serious business attire. Once, while at a friend’s house, their father came home after work at their law firm in a suit on the same professional-level as this “funeral suit” and I asked my friend very matter-of-factly “Oh, I guess your dad had to do a funeral today, huh?” Poor kid was so completely flummoxed, we were like 7 or 8 at the time, I don’t think she really knew what a funeral even was. Her dad thought it was hilarious. For what it’s worth, my family still calls my dad’s fanciest suit his “funeral suit” even though he’s retired now and only wears it a couple times a year.

  192. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    I don’t recall anything about what I thought about work. It was just something you did. I don’t think it helped that my school never had career day or anything and even in high school no one ever asked what I wanted to do when I graduated. I think everyone assumed I would go into some sort of care work.
    When I was little my mom had worked at a care facility for handicaped adults. It was also where her sister lived. We would always attend the family events and go to visit it her. These were just other people we knew and my mom helped take care of some of them. Even when she got other jobs as a switchboard operator I just figured this is what you do. You grow up and get a job.

  193. Check it out*

    Please someone find this story I read online somewhere, about a kid who went to work with their mom and mom asked them to take something to the boss’s office. In the office, a pug was sitting in the chair behind the desk (no person in sight) and the kid had heard about “working dogs,” and was mad that Mom didn’t tell them her boss was a DOG.

      1. check it out*

        Thank you! I looked for it but then I couldn’t find it. And I love this story so much!!

  194. Cat Woman*

    As a kid who grew up on public transportation, I was fascinated by the people waiting for the bus to “go to work”, and just knew I wanted to be one of them. I had no idea what they did when they got there, but that never occurred to me. I just saw myself as one of those people getting on the bus to “go to work”.

  195. hiraeth*

    When I was very, very small, I thought that to get a particular job you had to go to the government and ask very nicely if you could be a teacher or a doctor or whatever. (I never questioned why my dad would have begged to be allowed to become a mortgage adviser.) Blew my mind when I realised it was a free-for-all with people just applying to job ads and NO GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT WHATSOEVER.

    After that I believed that working in an office was the death of the soul and to be avoided at all costs, but luckily I would be able to make a living through my art.

    After *that* I believed that everyone was competent at their job.

  196. delaware baby*

    Ah, mine’s heartbreaking. My dad was an ER doctor, so he worked exceptional hours, nights, early mornings, holidays, birthdays, whatever. I understood that most people’s work schedules weren’t like that. My mom was a teacher. She got all the summers off, of course.

    I didn’t realize until I was about 13 that most adults actually don’t get a three-month summer break from their jobs. Still quite disappointed about that.

  197. Turtle*

    My work has a party once a year for employees and their families. One year there was a bounce house, food truck, snow cone truck and face painter. All of it unlimited. My 5 year old daughter could go up and ask for as many snow cones and face paintings as she could handle–it was pure child heaven.

    The only time she goes to my office is for those events so she is convinced that I get to have parties every day at work. She cries and asks to go with me to work on a regular basis.

  198. kicking-k*

    My mum was a teacher and so I had a fairly clear idea what she did – especially as she used to mark her students’ work sitting in our kitchen. For a long time, though, I thought teachers asked questions to find out the answers. I was that child who always has her hand up, and I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t always let me answer if I knew it.

    My dad was an accountant and I vaguely pictured him using a computer to do maths (it was the 80s and he was very excited when he got a new work computer). That was more accurate. I had seen his office. I also thought that once you had a job, that was it and you’d work there till you retired, because most of the adults I knew had more or less done that.

  199. Eat my Squirrel*

    Wherever my dad got laid off or fired, it was obviously because the company he worked for was horrible, and not because he was a bad employee. One occasion in particular stands out to me now. He worked for a computer store back in the 80s as a repair technician. At one point he brought home an Apple Macintosh computer (this was back when they were an all-in one desktop with a tiny screen and a handle on top to make them “portable.) At first it was to do work on it, and he’d take it back to work, and bring it back home a few days later. But after a while the computer never left our house and was basically ours. My brother and I were allowed to play games on it. Dad said his boss said he could borrow it. I didn’t care, we had a game machine! Sweet! Stayed with us until he was fired a couple years later.

    It wasn’t until I was in my 30s looking back that it occurred to me that there was no way dad had permission to keep a company computer as his own, and that the boss finding out about it might have had something to do with his firing…

    1. kicking-k*

      I don’t know… I think this was fairly common! I have fond memories of playing “Lemmings” on my dad’s very early work laptop, which had a greyscale screen (it was wild when I found out the characters had green hair). He did take the laptop back to work between times, though. This would have been in the mid-90s.

      His office would also regularly sell off older computers to the employees when they upgraded. My first computer was one of those, bought secondhand for £100 just before I went to university, when the office upgraded to Pentium processors.

      1. nnn*

        Memories of sitting in my father’s office playing Carmen Sandiego on his work computer while he was in a meeting!

        Unfortunately, this left me with the impression that it’s normal to just install whatever you want on a work computer, and therefore installing ICQ on my work computer during my first internship, which got me a bit of a talking-to.

        (I later found out that the reason I was able to install games on my father’s work computer is that he was sysadmin.)

      2. AFac*

        His office would also regularly sell off older computers to the employees when they upgraded.

        My dad’s work did the same thing — with typewriters. That’s how I filled out all my college applications, way back in the last ice age.

  200. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

    That 9-5 work hours were just a suggestion. In my first job, I was regularly late and would leave early or take 2 hour lunches to go shopping and bring my finds back to the office to show everyone. After several weeks, my boss sat me down and explained exactly what was expected.
    I also watched Mary Tyler Moore and believed that everyone in the office was as invested in my personal life as I was. They were not. I can still cringe at the memory of all the oversharing that I did.

  201. kicking-k*

    When my kids were young I worked very part-time, and usually only dressed up on my one weekly workday. My preschool-age son would get very cross if he saw me in a skirt, and it took me a while to realise he thought it inevitably meant I was going to work.

    Ten years on, he’s still annoyed that I sometimes get to go on long journeys on public transport to get to our remote sites, and can’t take him with me (maybe if one ever falls in his school holidays…)

  202. Eli*

    When my daughter was little, my husband’s job title was “webmaster”. I once overheard her telling an equally small friend “My daddy is a spiderman.”

    1. kicking-k*

      I remember reading *The Deed of Paksennarion*, a fantasy book which has a villain called Achyra the Webmistress, at a time when my job description included that (we were an all-female workplace at the time). I remember thinking it probably sounded a lot more sinister when it was written!

      1. Tiny Clay Insects*

        I wasn’t ready for a Paksenarrion reference! This is amazing!

        Do you also feel that the scene in Liart’s temple is too overly horrible? I always have to skip it, which is a shame, because I love the rest of it so much.

        On a note more related to jobs, I learned about mercenaries from this book, and was as shocked as Paks in Book 1 that they would fight for whoever paid them.

    2. Tinamedte*

      Totally love this! Would really like to have an idea about what she thought his job entailed, day-to-day.

  203. aunttora*

    I thought I’d go out to lunch every day at a nice restaurant and have a martini. (My guess this is due to Bewitched reruns.) Now I WFH and I suppose I could take a swig from the bottle in the freezer.

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      I have a standing claim that if I ever find a reasonably priced stainless steel martini “glass,” I’m going to use it as a coffee cup.

  204. SorrySoSassy*

    I thought that working hard and being smart and acting ethically would be what it took to be recognized and rewarded in the workplace.
    Sadly, I have not seen that to be the case.
    Again and again, mediocre people with the right demographics, nepo-babies, and those willing to lie and cheat are doing GREAT, while hard-working, smart, ethical people are the unsung workhorses.

    1. aunttora*

      Shamelessness is the quality most prized by corporate America. Even if I had known this at an early age, I’m not sure I could have cultivated it, to my detriment.

  205. Ms. Eleanous*

    Before I worked 2 non-union jobs, I thought unions were
    a) unnecessary, and
    b) more trouble than they were worth.

    #NotGoingBack

  206. The Prettiest Curse*

    My dad was a solicitor (lawyer) and my mum (who also worked full-time, as a teacher) would have to host dinner parties for his clients every couple of months. So I assumed that I’d have to host a lot of dinner parties for important people when I started working.
    I’ve never hosted a dinner party in my life!

    1. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      Oh, yes. When I was a kid movies and TV would definitely have the husband coming home to announce the boss was coming over for dinner that night and that and the wife and kids would need to impress him — zany hijinks would ensue…the dog would eat the roast, the kids would all fall into a muddy pit, the washing machine would go haywire while they were washing their only nice clothes.

  207. nnn*

    I thought waking up in the morning and getting out the door in time and commuting was effortless for all grownups. After all, if it was as difficult for them as it was for me, the world wouldn’t be set up so that everyone has to do it every day!

  208. Voodoo Priestess*

    Last year, my husband and I were talking about working and someone at my job had recently been fired. My kids (8 and 10) were aghast! “They can do that to you?!?” I explained that he hadn’t been doing his job and we worked with him a long time, but yes. If you can’t do you job, you can get fired. My oldest says “I never want to get a job if they can just kill you like that. Aren’t you worried you’ll get fired?”

    It turns out they confused ‘cremated’ with ‘fired’ since a few weeks before, I had a relative pass that was cremated instead of buried.

  209. SBT*

    As a former teacher, it’s amazing how many kids don’t know that teaching is a job. You’d hear all the time “Miss! What’s your job?” This! Kid, this is my job! “No, but what’s your real job?” Made all the more confusing by the fact that many teachers have to get second jobs to afford to live, so many DO have another real job.

  210. Fuzzyfuzz*

    That 9:00-5:00 were not sacrosanct hours that everyone kept to! My first job, I was shocked when my coworkers played “who can leave latest?” as a political thing.

  211. Freddy*

    I’ve worked as an insurance agent for as long as my son has been alive, and a few years ago it became clear that he thought in addition to insurance, I literally put out fires at work.

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      This makes me think of how I used to think that all firefighters/emts were volunteers because that’s all my rural town had. All of them had other jobs.

      1. Snow Angels in the Zen Garden*

        I thought EMTs, paramedics, etc. could only be employed by a government entity until my early 20s because that’s what my rural community had. I had no concept of private ambulance companies.

  212. Shark bait (oh-hah-hah!)*

    I thought that when you became a grown-up, you were just given a job. Like, when you finished school you could walk into/call up wherever it was you wanted to work and tell them you were ready for a job and they’d just give you one.

  213. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

    So I am a super-conscientious, rules-oriented individual. When I was in grad school and got paid by the hour to be a research assistant for a professor, I was very committed to making sure I never got paid when I wasn’t working, and when I wasn’t giving it my all. So if I needed a bathroom break, a mental break, or to refill my water bottle, I would diligently fill out my timesheets to indicate that I wasn’t working for that 3-minute period. Then I got stressed out that there weren’t enough lines on the timesheet to capture all my breaks over a biweekly period, and I didn’t want to have to LIE about working when I wasn’t actually working! I figured other people had to take many fewer breaks than I did, as opposed to other people just being more comfortable with approximations.

    Likewise, anything less than my best effort would be shortchanging the professor whose funding was paying me. So whenever I sat down to do an hour’s worth of work, I would give it my full concentration and work as hard as I could. I came to the conclusion that I could never last in an office job and needed to stay in academia, because I couldn’t sustain that pace for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week! And clearly that’s what you have to do if you’re getting paid for a set number of hours, instead of a set list of accomplishments.

    I have since learned that nobody can sustain their utmost concentration for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, however many weeks a year, and that there are normal fluctuations in concentration. And that you don’t have to mark every little fluctuation on a timesheet.

    LOL.

    1. Morgan Proctor*

      Wait, I have so many questions. What happened the first time you submitted a time card with a million 3 minute breaks? Why did you think you needed to do this? Did you think other people did this? How did you make it all the way to graduate school not knowing that nobody else does this?? This is so naive and innocent in a childlike way. Was this your first job? If not, how did you fill out your timesheets in the past???

      1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        I had never had a job outside of academia! I had a full ride through college thanks to scholarships, and most of my grad school funding was a combination of teaching assistantships, fellowships, and grants, all of which were task-based. Only the research assistantships were hourly, and this was my first research assistantship.

        Yes, I thought other people also did this! I thought it was part of basic honesty to not say you were working when you weren’t! If you scroll up, you’ll see someone else commenting, “The common use of the terms “9-to-5” and “lunch hour” led me to believe that a 1-hour paid lunch break was standard. I was too embarrassed to admit this to an angry supervisor at my first job in college who thought I was padding my time sheet.”

        To me, these were the same thing, and I didn’t want to be padding my time sheet by getting paid for breaks.

        When I submitted my time cards with a million 3 minute breaks, nothing happened. I got paid, no comment. I suspect no one actually read them; they weren’t submitted to the professor but to the departmental administration, and in hindsight I suspect the department just filed your timesheet away somewhere as a paper trail, and kept paying you as long as they didn’t hear any complaints from the professor about your work.

        So I kept on thinking that was the right way to do it! It was so self-evident that you don’t commit fraud by lying on a timesheet that I never questioned it, except for the part where I kept running out of space. So I started having to consolidate my working hours and pretending I took fewer and longer breaks…and no one questioned that either…and eventually I osmosed how it really worked.

        1. Morgan Proctor*

          Thank you for answering my questions! No one ever looking at the paperwork you’re “required” to fill out totally tracks for academia. This is honestly so cute and charming, I can’t stop thinking about it.

      2. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

        As for my upbringing: my mother was a stay-at-home mom who had never had a paid job in her life, and my dad was in the military and didn’t get paid by the hour. I knew a bunch of things about work that other commenters here report not knowing, but I didn’t know how hourly employment/timesheets worked!

      3. Higher Ed Cube Farmer*

        I had a similar (though less extreme?) experience to Theon in my first timesheet-tracked job at age 17, which was also as a student assistant in academia.

        In my case, someone explained that a 15-minute break is allowed and expected every 2-3 hours, and a 30-minute lunch break if you’re working 8 hours or more, but you’re supposed record your start and stop times accurately, and other than those scheduled break(s), you’re supposed to work straight through your entire scheduled shift, unless you get special permission from your boss in advance, or else there’s an emergency. That was more or less like the latter half of my school experience up to that point: when you were in class, you were expected to be actively engaged in the class work, you had designated times (passing periods between classes, lunch) to use the restroom, eat/drink, socialize; you had to get special permission to leave class to go to the bathroom or whatever. So I thought timesheet tracked hourly wage work was like that too. I think it took me a few months of watching office norms to realize I wasn’t going to get in trouble for stopping work and leaving my workstation to use the bathroom or the water fountain outside the designated 15-minutes breaks, or ask my boss for permission.

        1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

          “That was more or less like the latter half of my school experience up to that point: when you were in class, you were expected to be actively engaged in the class work, you had designated times (passing periods between classes, lunch) to use the restroom, eat/drink, socialize; you had to get special permission to leave class to go to the bathroom or whatever.”

          Yes, exactly! When I was in class (and I had done nothing but school since first grade!), I had to bring my full concentration for the entire class period (unless it was a 3-hour class, then we got a break after 90 minutes) and never leave until class was over. An interrupted class period was usually either 50 or 75 minutes. That’s why I thought both time sheets were like that and also office work in general: you bring your full concentration and work your hardest for 8 hours a day. And I just couldn’t imagine sustaining that kind of concentration for a total of 8 hours a day, day-in, day-out, even with breaks. And of course if I wasn’t sustaining that level of effort, it wasn’t work and had to be logged as a break on the time sheet!

          1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

            That should say “an UNinterrupted class period was usually 50 or 75 minutes.”

  214. Still Queer, Still Here*

    Another good one: My younger sister was really fixated on what happened when people got fired. She was very inquisitive naturally, but this was next-level. She really wanted to know what people could possibly do that would result in getting fired. One day when she was about 7, we were driving past a couple of factory plants with big smokestacks, and she said “oh, is that where all the fired people are?” She thought when you got fired, that you were immediately cremated. The way the whole car just went “excuse me WHAT?!”

  215. A Nanny Mouse*

    Growing up, both of my parents were employed by an apartment complex that had “Royal” in the name. When I was pre-K age, I thought this made my parents a King and Queen and as such it madenme a princess. I also assumed that I would work for this complex when I came of age, for some reason.

  216. Dinwar*

    I thought jobs had more rigid hierarchies. Like, there’s a boss. And the boss tells you what to do. And you do it. Grew up Roman Catholic (which inherited the Roman penchant for strict hierarchies) and in the Rust Belt (“This is not a democracy” was a common joke about families), so that was all I knew about human organization. To this day it still makes me uncomfortable that at least in my roll in the company, while there are people I answer to, those same people often answer to me in different roles, and roles can change fluidly between projects, and really we’re all just trying to get the job done. Then there are people like safety and quality managers who have their own hierarchy.

    My clients get amused that I call them “sir” and “ma’am”. It’s the South, so it’s not culturally unacceptable, but they find it amusing that a guy older than them is calling them that.

  217. Terrible life choices*

    I thought that if I got a PhD from an Ivy League university, got glowing teaching reviews, and published well-reviewed research I would be able to get a job as a history professor. Not a fancy job, mind. Just a regular old tenure track professor job. Joke’s on me!

  218. Mother of Corgis*

    Not really what I believed for all work places, but growing up I was convinced my dad’s job was to play solitaire and minesweeper, because every time I got to do Take Your Daughter to Work Day, that was all I remembered seeing him doing. Now I’m sure its just because none of the other computer stuff he was doing stuck with me, it was just the games I knew how to play lol.

  219. Skippy*

    When I was finishing university, I thought with sadness that I’d have to be careful not to swear and I’d have to stop reading online magazines and newspapers (this was before I had internet at home). Turns out my colleagues swore like sailors and keeping up on news/media was essential.

  220. sir pancake*

    My dad would sometimes take client calls at home and end the call by telling them that he’d “give you a ring” later. I thought he meant an actual, physical ring that you’d wear on your finger. I didn’t even associate this with proposals or marriage – I just thought that giving each other rings was just something that adults did as part of business.

  221. JJ*

    The Dairy Queen in the small town I lived in as a young kid was only open in the summers, and I wanted to work there so I’d only have to work three months a year.

  222. Nonprofit Lifer*

    My father was a scientist who had a very international lab. Most of his post-docs and grad students were from other countries. During the longer academic breaks they’d usually travel home, but during shorter breaks, it was too expensive to travel. By their second or third year they usually had friends to spend time with out of work, but at the start of the academic year, in the fall, they often only knew people from within the lab. Knowing this, my father would always invite whoever didn’t have anywhere else to go to have Thanksgiving dinner with my family.

    As a child, having been exposed to the whole “first Thanksgiving” myth at school, I thought that Thanksgiving was the meal when you invited foreigners to eat in your house. It took me years to realize that some people only ate with family.

    1. 1LFTW*

      That is lovely! My parents made friends with their fellow grad students who were too far away/too poor to travel for Thanksgiving. Pretty soon it became a tradition, and by the time I was born they’d become family. That was more than fifty years ago, and they’re still family.

  223. Anne*

    When I was a kid I couldn’t figure out how people knew what to do at work. I was so scared of getting my first job because how would I know what to do? My very first job at age 12 was weeding a landscaped area for a library. I got dropped off at the library, was told “weed that” and then everyone left. They didn’t train me. I pulled out all the large plants (weeds and garden plants) then spent hours picking out thousands of miniscule barely-germinated plants. I didn’t know that you could use a hoe to eliminate those ones, nor did I have a hoe. Such tedious work meant that I only weeded about 8×8′ in a full day. When my boss came back to pick me up he saw that I ripped out the landscape plants and accomplished little else (he couldn’t see the miniscule germinants, they were that tiny). I was fired. Then when I got my second job (cleaning a seafood store at age 16) they actually trained me and I realized that I can in fact be a good worker.

    1. N C Kiddle*

      When I was about 18, I got a job as a pot washer in a local pub. They cooked with gas, and the bottoms of the pans were pretty dirty. Nobody told me what to do, so I used logic: if the bottoms were wet, they wouldn’t cook properly so I needed to dry them. If I dried them without cleaning them thoroughly, I’d dirty the drying cloths, so obviously I needed to clean the bottoms of all the pans as thoroughly as I could. I lasted about two days.

  224. MuseumChick*

    Late to the party today. Before I started working I assumed people just….did their jobs and did them well. I have since been cured of the belief.

  225. IHaveKittens*

    I am the child of 2 public school teachers. Most of their friends were also public school teachers. I grew up thinking that EVERYONE got the summer off for vacation. When I started working after college, I was quite shocked that most people got 2 weeks of vacation a year. Sometimes, this still startles me.

  226. Unkempt Flatware*

    My biggest surprise was that grown adults can be unintelligent, lack common sense, make bad choices, etc.

  227. Cardboard Marmalade*

    Reading all these reminded me of another:

    In kindergarten or first grade I lost my first tooth and the next morning excitedly told the girl sitting next to me on the bus that the tooth fairy had given me a whole dollar for it (at this point in my life more money than I had ever held at one time). She, a lofty 2nd grader, scoffed and said, “My mom is the tooth fairy.” I asked the only clarifying questions I could think of (“REALLY?” “How do you know???”) I then went home, thrilled to pieces to tell my parents that Guess what, Stephanie who rode the bus with me was the daughter of The Actual Tooth Fairy! Like, I 100% thought she meant the Tooth Fairy for EVERYBODY. I could not have been more starstruck if she’d said that Oh, and by the way, her dad was Raffi, of Baby Beluga fame.

    1. jotab*

      What an absolutely amazing job that would be – tooth fairy for everyone! That’s what I want to be when I grow up…. sneaking in and never having to talk to anyone…

    2. WantonSeedStitch*

      When I was a kid, I used to have trouble falling asleep, and went downstairs one night to tell my parents I couldn’t sleep. My sister had put a lost tooth under her pillow that evening. I was still hidden by the bannister/wall of the stairs on my way down when I heard my dad say to my mom, “time to go be the Tooth Fairy!” I was gobsmacked, and tiptoed back to my bed as quickly and quietly as I could to see what happened. I pretended to be asleep but watched through slitted eyes as my parents crept in and rummaged under my sister’s pillow. In the morning, I told her that the Tooth Fairy was really Mama and Papa. We eventually figured out this must also apply to the Easter Bunny. I was reluctant to accept that it might also be true of Santa, but when we confronted my mom, she tearfully admitted to it all.

  228. Juicebox Hero*

    I thought that female teachers weren’t allowed to be married, because when they got married they automatically became mommies, and mommies had to stay at home with their children.

    1. Terrible Life Choices*

      For a very long time, women teachers in the US were automatically fired upon marriage for this very reason. And a bit later on, they could be married, but would be automatically fired when they became (visibly) pregnant. It varied by location, but automatic firing upon pregancy was still common in some districts until the mid-1970s.

      Depending on how old you are, you weren’t wrong!

  229. Jane*

    So I was 10 years old when Spirited Away came out in the US and it was almost immediately my New Favorite Movie; as a result, I thought that if you needed a job, all you had to do was go directly to your would-be boss and loudly demand that they put you to work. (I assumed the “parents getting turned into pigs/literally having to sign your name away as part of your employment contract” parts were optional.)

  230. Angelfoodcake4me*

    I used to believe promotions and raises were something automatically bestowed to you given skill and experience. Like those old 60s sitcoms where the dad comes home excited to announce he just got a surprise promotion and/or raise that day.

    1. Former Retail Lifer*

      Oh man. I remember believing this as well! I was in the workforce for over 20 years before I found a company that gave me real raises and promotions.

  231. Morgan Proctor*

    Both my parents hated their corporate office jobs. I thought that if I pursued my passions and nurtured my creative spirit, I’d be happier than they were.

    I was right! I love my creative career. I feel like the general vibe of this commenting community is “abandon your dreams, you’ll be happier.” I guess I feel the need to be the lone voice of dissent. Don’t give up on your dreams! Go to art school! Get that MFA! Keep working at it, if you’re actually talented and make good work, you’ll eventually land on your feet!

    1. Jackalope*

      I had kind of the opposite experience. (Not with art; I’ve never wanted to be an artist, nor do I have the kind of abilities needed to be one professionally.) I had a dream that I nurtured for several years (5th grade until I graduated from college), and so I got a position in that field…. And then it was awful, and I got so burned out within a few years that it took years to recover. So I applied for any job I could find, picked one randomly based on the benefits, was sure I’d hate it, and…. Love it. Still here 15 years later. So I definitely encourage people to try for their dreams, but also to be open to other options if it doesn’t work out the way they planned. I would never go back to that original career, and I’m so happy that I stumbled into this one instead. But I know some people who did what they’d dreamed of doing and it worked out really well for them! Goes to show that you never can tell.

    2. JB*

      I don’t know where you got that idea, there are plenty of commenters here in creative careers.

      And certainly do not get an MFA if your dream is to be an author. Those programs ruin more writers than they create. Most successful people I know in visual art careers also don’t have MFAs, though I understand it’s a lot more useful as a degree than the writing MFA programs.

  232. DevilWearsHoodies*

    When I was little, I thought everyone working in an office would dress like the people in The Devil Wears Prada. Every day.
    Then I entered the tech industry. Oh, boy!

  233. Insalaried*

    Before having a job, I thought that the power of a salary was infinite: I could buy everything, everywhere, all at once XD.

    Bless my heart!

  234. WantonSeedStitch*

    I assumed my mom just looked after neighborhood kids because she liked kids. I didn’t realize until I was a little older that she was doing in-home daycare. It might also have been a bit more of an informal arrangement until we moved, possibly due to the fact that our home was rented. Not sure if she would have been able to get a license until they owned their own place. But when they did buy a home, she spent some time thinking up a business name, put a listing in the Yellow Pages, and started taking in more kids.

  235. SoftFundedAcademic*

    Both of my parents were educators, and I was probably about 7 before I realized that not everyone had summers off, spring breaks, etc.

  236. EngGirl*

    I thought everyone really liked and enjoyed their job and that all jobs were very easy to explain and classify (ex. Fireman, lawyer, teacher, chef etc.) As an adult I realize that many many jobs are more of “sit behind a desk and do come things on a computer that make sense to you, but people outside of your industry/corporate structure will never really understand and quite frankly no one wants to hear about it.”

    I also thought everyone went out to lunch everyday. Specifically Pizza Hut.

  237. Space Cadet*

    Well.. I thought anyone worth their salt wore a suit to work. I also thought that work was inherently and constantly miserable and stressful.
    Fortunately (in large part thanks to this blog) I eventually learned that neither of those need to be true =)

  238. Former Retail Lifer*

    My mom was a waitress and then later started her own business out of our house as an event planner and my dad was a farmer. Growing up, I thought working in an office building was the height of sophistication.

    I work in one now. For sure, it’s not!

  239. Head Sheep Counter*

    I thought work would be far more equitable and based on the skills that you had and had learned. That you’d naturally progress through “the ranks” and that your colleagues would be on the same/similar journey.

    As a woman I wasn’t real clear on gender politics. The first time I got “treated” like a woman in a way that I couldn’t just ignore it… was a shock. The first time my boss told me that I’d been hired for such and such position and that’s all she had… if I didn’t like the door was behind me… was also a surprise. She did me a huge favor being that honest (it was Accounts Payable and there was no career path) and was supportive of me finding work elsewhere in the organization.

    1. M2RB*

      I grew up with pretty gender-neutral expectations of the working world (which is amazing since my family of origin is very conservative and Southern Baptist), and WOW, seeing how women are sometimes/often treated in the workplace was eye-opening and radicalizing.

      1. Head Sheep Counter*

        I was really lucky (or blind) until I started on a research project… and phew… it was… not great.

  240. OrbitTime*

    I thought, until I was in my second real job at TWENTY-SIX, that everyone got time-and-a-half for working weekends. My dad worked shift work as a technician at a power plant and he and my mom would talk about the cost/benefit of him working weekends sometimes. I’m still mad that my corporate engineering job has us as “exempt” but we still have to work exactly 40 hours every week and track every hour and we have a 5-hour “gate” before we can earn comp time and we need VP approval to get any overtime.

  241. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

    Much of my family is skilled labor (carpenters, masons, seamstresses), and I was distraught when looking for my first job because I had no skills as I defined skills (do not ask me to build you a house or sew you a wedding dress, things I have witnessed family members very confidently do). It still amazes me that here I am, still making it up as I go along and getting paid for it.

  242. Ann O'Nemity*

    As a kid, I assumed everyone hated their jobs and that the only reason people worked was to make money. It turns out I was just poor and surrounded by people who worked in low-paid and exhausting jobs. Even my teachers seemed miserable.

  243. OneBean TwoBean*

    I didn’t think it consciously, but somewhere deep down I believed that when you were working, you’d only have one task at a time. This 100% came from TV. Lawyers were working on This One Important Case. Doctors were working with One Mystery Patient. Advertising executives were working on One Big Pitch. No one was juggling multiple projects (and mundane tasks) competing for your time and attention.

  244. DJ Abbott*

    I was raised in a factory town, and I thought you got one job and stayed in it for 30+ years until you retired. I didn’t understand the complexities of getting and keeping a job, being on good terms with boss and colleagues, etc. I thought it was all automatic as soon as you got a job.
    It was confusing and shocking when I got fired from my first few jobs because I had no idea how to behave. And realizing I didn’t want the jobs that were available in my hometown.

  245. Definitely not me*

    My parents owned an office supply store and when I was 7 or 8 (mid-70s) I assumed all jobs must involve HON office furniture (okay), typewriters and ribbon (sure), and those price tags that were a thin ring of metal around a white piece of cardboard on a string. I couldn’t wait to get big and find out how I’d use those tags.

  246. KAG*

    My mom was a professional musician and my father was a college professor, so what people do who work in an office was mystifying to me. My only reference was Cathy cartoons, so I concluded that people in offices spend their days moving papers from an “In” box to an “Out” box. I work in an office now… I wish my job were that easy!

  247. What's a salary?*

    Both my parents work for themselves- my dad runs a small business and my mom is a therapist with her own practice. So it never occurred to me that work had a beginning and an end? And set hours? And bosses? Even the concept of a biweekly paycheck was foreign to me until my first office job.

    I can’t imagine how I came across to my first bosses- I took responsibility for everything and assumed that the fate of the business rested on my entry-level shoulders. I also had no concept of hierarchy, so you can imagine how I presented my suggestions.

    Bonus story- my parents don’t know what work is like either. My sister is staff at a university, and whenever she complains about initiatives that create more work for her, my dad’s response is “make an appointment with the president and talk to him about his long term strategy”. Her response: “yeah sure, as soon as I’m done sweeping these floors”.

  248. All the Tanks*

    When I left my science graduate program and got a job at a Silicon Valley company, I was absolutely gobsmacked at how much disk storage there was, and that people didn’t get testy emails from the sysadmins reminding everyone to delete their huge data files within three days. I was 22.

  249. Kids, man!*

    Not me but my son (5): He has asked more than once (at least a year apart) how people get money to pay to get their first job. He seems to understand you work a job to get money but then ALSO believes you need to pay to get a job. He has refused to disclose the source of this misinformation.

  250. The Most Boring Person In My Family*

    I come from a long line of drama weasels– which are a lot like drama llamas except they have a tendency towards biting, scratching, and other things that make you a frequent flyer at the county jail or the Jerry Springer show.

    For my entire life, up until my first office job, I thought that people kept their nonsense and bad behavior under control at work. That they only indulged in affairs/ backstabbing/ DUIs/ divorces that made the news on the weekends, and that when they were at work they sucked it all up and acted professionally.

    I was looking forward to an oasis of calm during the weekdays, and I was SO UPSET after my first office job when I realized that wasn’t true. I also learned that office politics was mostly caused being trapped for 10 hours a day in a fixed location with people indulging their worst impulses. At least on Thanksgiving, you can leave once the fighting gets really bad, and people will call you a glassbowl to your face instead of behind your back!

  251. Simlish*

    The Sims set me up for wild expectations about work! It’s as easy as deciding what you want to do and then agreeing to do it – who needs applications or interviews? You get paid every day and as long as you work hard, you get promoted every couple of days.

    1. MsM*

      I mean, sometimes you also have to have conversations with strangers about random things, or talk to yourself in the mirror a bunch to level up your charisma, or…

  252. Jenthar*

    I have a distinct memory of tagging along with my dad one day when I was in 3rd grade. We went and visited a friend of his, who was a lawyer. We were shown into this lawyer’s office. We take a seat. Lawyer was on the phone. Feet up on the desk. A massive pile of rubber bands on the desk that he was shooting one by one at the window. And I thought, dang, I gotta grow up and be an adult, this looks amazing.

  254. A large cage of birds*

    I thought school would prepare me for work. But the work environment is so different from the school environment.

    1. Jiminy Cricket*

      They kept telling us that we had to follow certain rules and norms in school, because we’d have to in the working world. Turns out, no, almost nothing is applicable.

      1. 1LFTW*

        My fourth grade teacher would yell at us for having bad handwriting, because none of us would ever get jobs with bad handwriting. She insisted that handwritten letters would be the first impression we would make with future employers.

        Two or three years later I was writing everything on a word processor.

  255. AnneC*

    Well, at my first post-university job, I did not understand how vacation time worked. I just didn’t take days off for the longest time because I assumed you had to finish all your work first. Only later did someone explain to me that vacation = part of your benefits, if you’re salaried, so you actually had a right to take it, and if you finished ALL your work, you wouldn’t have a job anymore, would you?

  256. Constance Lloyd*

    This is a misunderstanding about work in the sense that being a movie star is also a job. When I was little, probably around kindergarten, it did not occur to me that someone could simply pretend to die in a movie, but I knew of a few actors who had died in a movie but not in real life. Rather than realizing that perhaps the dying scenes were also pretend, I came to the conclusion that film studios hired people to die on camera for the sake of art. This created a new puzzle for me, because I DEFINITELY knew you couldn’t just kill people, you would go to jail. For weeks I tried to figure out the logistics of hiring for this position. How did they choose who to cast? How long would they have to spend in hair and makeup to look just like the real actor? What if they were really bad at delivering their lines and had to take acting classes first? What sort of paperwork would they have to sign to make sure this wasn’t illegal? When I finally asked my mom about it, I don’t know if she was more horrified or amused.

    This was the same year I told my teacher, “My grandpa doesn’t have a job. He drinks Pig’s Eye beer and plays Lucky Kitty scratch cards.” Reader, he was simply retired.

    1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      I didn’t go quite that far but I recall wondering if (and why or why not as it may be) actors were ‘really’ married after they got married in a wedding scene – they had gone through the formality of saying the vows etc so they had, inadvertently, actually carried out the marriage process for real. (I’m not very good at following through so) it didn’t occur to me to wonder about consequences of that like what if they have to have multiple ‘takes’ of the scene, what if the same actor then has a wedding scene in another movie or tv show, etc.

  257. Morning Gloria*

    I blame my mother for my strange ideas about work. She wanted me to go to college, and every time I expressed interest in a career that didn’t require a degree, she would tell me horror stories.
    A hair stylist? No. According to her they had to deal with dangerous chemicals. Hair dye and permanent solution burns their hands and eyes all day, and they go home with their hair and clothing reeking of fumes. Also, they constantly cut their fingers with sharp scissors by accident and you can imagine how much it hurts when the chemicals get into those cuts.

    A truck driver? No, truck drivers get hemorrhoids from sitting all day, everyone knows that.

    A flight attendant? No, those poor women are so constipated because of the time changes and they all have to live in an apartment together, like nine or ten of them in one apartment. There aren’t enough beds, so some of them have to sleep on the floor. Also, you have to be skinny to be a flight attendant.
    (I still haven’t given up my dream of being a flight attendant, constipation be damned!)

    1. HRneedsAdrink*

      Mine was the same! I HAD to go to college, like I would perish if I didn’t! I still wish I had pursued being a flight attendant!

      1. Morning Gloria*

        It may not be too late–some airline companies hire retired people who want a second career. The few that I’ve heard about were in their late fifties and I saw a flight attendant who appeared to be in his early sixties. I’m definitely considering it for when I retire!

  258. Alexis Moira Rose*

    Based on what I saw in movies like Miss Congeniality, I assumed all offices had an assistant who frequently brought in coffee for the entire office, which of course in my imagination, imitating the movies, consisted of customized individual coffee drinks (think skim latte, chai latte with no whip, decaf flat white with sprinkles…!!!)

  259. Laura*

    One work day my daycare was closed so mom brought 4-year-old me with her to the office where I played with paper (it was 1989!) strategic planning materials and made a fort under the desk in her cubicle. I guess I was getting a little too loud making my fake cities so my mom told me to quiet down. I looked at her with serious understanding and said “people are sleeping.” Because of course that’s the only reason one had to quiet down during my normal day! Well mom’s cube neighbor heard me a snort-laughed his coffee and had to do some serious desk clean up. Ooops!

  260. Retail Dalliance*

    This is such a great question!

    Up until probably age 16 or 17 I believed that 5-10 minutes late was “close enough” to being on-time that I did NOT understand why my dad was insistent that I get to my job at least 5 minutes before my shift began. I just could not conceive of how 5-10 minutes of lateness would inconvenience anyone else at my place of employment. In my head it didn’t even count as “late.”

    I look back at my previous stance on this in absolute horror. I am religiously on-time/early for work now (age 33).

  261. urban planner*

    1. I thought that people regularly had their boss (and boss’s spouse) over for dinner parties, because 80s TV.
    2. I thought that people in office jobs worked all day, every minute that they were at their job – like sat down at a desk and just typed for 8 hours straight. I remember being really surprised in my first job that people took breaks to have a chat with coworkers or run an errand.

    1. Jiminy Cricket*

      Darren’s boss was always coming over unexpectedly for dinner! On a weeknight!

      I can’t even imagine either my or my spouse’s boss stopping in and expecting to be fed.

  262. sara*

    My dad had the same job for his whole career. My mum had a job before kids and then after kids (they had 3 kids under 4 so she didn’t go back to work full-time until my little brother was in full-time school), she worked at the same job (different one than pre-kids) until she retired.

    So I assumed that was normal… But here I am in my early 40s on my 3rd career, and 4th job in that career (probably 15th job total, not counting part-time or temping jobs).

  263. Mockingjay*

    I was thrown by how much of a job can be self-directed, even junior roles. The retail and secretarial intern jobs I had in college: you were told what to do, every minute. First “real” office job: people scurrying around finding plenty of things to do and I’m just sitting at my desk, re-reading the company handbook for the fifth time and wondering “how does work…work?

    After all, every cartoon I watched growing up had a boss constantly yelling at everyone what to do and how to do it. Then Dad retired early because he didn’t want to do what the boss told him. (That’s his story, anyway.) So I kinda figured my first role would be the same. Not.

  264. Throwaway Account*

    First me, age ~ 6 or 7: My parents described work like it was providing services so we could all function. So I somehow got the idea that if a school or govt worker needed pencils, they could go to the store and say, I work for the government, and we ran out of pencils. And the store would say, yes, of course, you need pencils to do your work for all of us, here are some pencils.

    Second, my son, age 22 or so: When my son got his first professional job in his early 20s, he came home one day in a bit of a mood. He was so frustrated with us. He kept saying, “you are all faking your jobs!” He finally explained — he had just figured out that no one knows how to do their job until they get hired to do it. He somehow thought that everyone apprenticed to the next level of their job until they knew it, THEN and only then, would they get hired for the next position. It makes sense in that school prepares you for your job. But his high school job was a toxic cesspool that put him in charge of small children in the boating pool with no training, no support, and no other teens willing to do the job so I don’t know why he got that idea!

    1. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      > He somehow thought that everyone apprenticed to the next level of their job until they knew it, THEN and only then, would they get hired for the next position.

      He is kind of right about this though (in some situations). Promotions and upward moves in a different company often have an element of being ‘ready’ to take on the higher level role through demonstrated knowledge and experience.

  265. Anon for this one*

    I grew up with an unemployed single parent so didn’t really have first-hand experience of what it was like to have a job or have to work set hours etc. Our “income” came as benefits (welfare) from the government office that processed it. The kids I associated with at school were mainly more well-off and had parents who worked but that was a bit too abstract to me. So when discussions came up at school with the teacher asking “what do you want to be when you grow up” (not the careers advice, but when you are asked when you’re much younger) I wasn’t even able to name any jobs I would want to do. Maybe a vet as I liked animals and was good with science and numbers etc.

    I was scared by the idea of having to figure out what I wanted to do, and thought a good solution to this was that I’d just have a bunch of children so I wouldn’t have to / be able to work!

    I didn’t figure out until much later what the process of getting a job actually was like (that you’d have to write a CV/resume, apply for jobs, go to interviews, etc). Somehow I thought you just decided on the job you want and then started doing that … except I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. School careers advice was useless. My parent was also useless in that respect as any time I mooted ideas about things I might possibly like to do, I’d get a response like “don’t be stupid, they won’t take you on for jobs like that!”

    1. Anon4Poverty*

      Mine is similar! I grew up poor and I didn’t really know many adults with jobs and so I thought jobs were these magical things you had to be already rich to get. I also thought very basic things like having a car made somebody Warren Buffet. So I thought all jobs were high prestige and glamorous rich people doing high prestige and glamorous rich people things. I also thought people who lived in multigenerational households were all rich because they had houses large enough for their extended family.

      To this day I am self employed and don’t actually know what a lot of jobs are.

  266. Julian*

    The dog story reminded me of this one: when I was a young kid my mother used to work at a nonprofit that did work in services for people with disabilities, so I’d hear her talk about “Special Ed” a lot, which I of course assumed was the job title of someone named Ed she worked with, like how we all called my pediatrician “Dr. Rachel”. At one point when I was maybe six or seven years old I went to her office where she introduced me to a coworker who was in fact named Ed, who I proceeded to ask “oh, are you Special Ed?” He thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and apparently for years afterwards people in the office would refer to each other as “Special Ed”, “Special Steve”, “Special Joe”, etc.

  267. JadziaSnax*

    Not work per se, but because my parents met in law school and only ever told stories about the funny, wacky-high-jinx parts of law school I assumed that it would be a normal, not overly difficult, somewhat fun experience.

    …took about six months in the pre-law society in college to disabuse me of that notion and realize that a legal career was NOT in my future.

    (Ironically, after a decadelong stint in publishing I do now work in the communications department of a law school)

  268. lizzyboredom*

    When I was a kid, we used to frequent a diner. I was so impressed by how waitress would write your order while holding her little paper pad….I remember trying to do it (i must of been like 4 so not the finest motor skills yet) and I remember I couldn’t and I cried thinking I could never be a waitress because I couldn’t write while holding the pen pad……??

  269. Bluestocking*

    My mom still brings up and laughs about me wanting to be a “starving artist” when I was a kid – I had only heard the term applied to creative people and I was a very creative kid! I thought it sounded romantic and evoked images of living in Paris, for some reason. It wasn’t until later that I separated the two words and that starving wasn’t actually a good thing.

  270. child*

    As a child, I assumed that all Christians got Christmas and Easter off, and if any stores were open, it was because they had Jewish employees who were working (how kind of them!). I only knew of those two religions, and no one in my family worked a job that was open on holidays.

    1. Good Enough For Government Work*

      When I worked in a call centre it did kind of work like this, especially since a large proportion of the staff were Muslim (in a Christian-majority country).

      It was informally but generally understood that the Muslim staff would take extra shifts to let the Christmas-celebrating staff have Christmas off, while we’d return the favour by pulling extra shifts at Eid.

  271. Sam*

    2 things:
    1. I used to believe people only did jobs they liked and were good at. I thought everyone picked what they were interested in and did that. I now know most people get jobs where they can and often work out of necessity.

    2. I didn’t realize; there are people who just lucked into an aptitude or felid that happens to make a lot of money. I have a PhD in sociology and make the starting salary of a mechanical engineer. I am now in a top salary role in my felid. I can’t do math or anything technical. I will never make up the financial ground of someone who studied in a higher earning felid. My aptitudes are not as valued professionally. My life is good but I used to think if you just did your best you would be wealthy.

  272. anon for this*

    For a while at the age of 5 or 6 I assumed I’d end up working at a hospital because that was what my dad did. I even wore a little white cardigan sweater a lot because it looked enough like a lab coat that I assumed it counted as practicing being a doctor.

    My mom, meanwhile, worked in administration for two overlapping organizations and went to a lot of “board meetings.” I never saw what a board meeting looked like, and always envisioned 8 or 9 adults standing around in a circle, all staring downward at…a board, just sitting there on the floor.

    1. anon for this*

      Another one: by the time I was 10 or 11, I’d learned the word “professional,” but I thought it meant that someone was really good at something. This is why I informed my parents that my classmate Louis was a “professional dork.” The first time my dad defined the word for me accurately, I thought he was pulling my leg.

  273. Invisible fish*

    I thought every adult had a job, so when I couldn’t figure out why a neighbor stayed home all day, my mother told me she was a home maker. Oh, an interior decorator? Sure, that makes sense! It was years before I learned some people did not work outside the home for money.

  274. Holly Gibney*

    My father may or may not be a spy. Unconfirmed, but due to his “consulting” job we as a family lived in many political hotspots around the world when I was young (fun fact, we were some of the first foreigners to live in Russia after the fall of the Iron Curtain). My family eventually settled outside Washington, D.C. so my sister and I wouldn’t have to keep being the new kids at school. This meant, though, that my father spent ~9 months of the year in primarily former war zones fixing other countries’ infrastructures (what he SAYS his job is), so literally up until I moved out at 18 I assumed that all jobs inherently meant travelling a ton, likely internationally.

    Then I went to film school in Los Angeles, became a writer in Los Angeles, and will stay in Los Angeles until the end of time because this is where almost every single TV writers’ room is. The only opportunities for travel are if you write an episode of a TV show that films somewhere outside of LA, and even then it’s not guaranteed the show will fly you out for production.

    I. Am. Stuck. Here.

  275. notadentist*

    When I was little, I wanted to be a dentist when I grew up. Not because I was practical or had any interest in going into a medical field, but because each time I went to the dentist, they would give me a small toy – a bouncy ball, cool sticker, or the like.

    In my child brain, if I were to become a dentist, I would get unlimited access to the toy drawer, and thus be fulfilled professionally.

  276. 80s Baby*

    My parents were, for lack of a better term, confrontational Karens who were permanently offended by everything. At the end of each work day both of them would spend at least an hour per ranting and raving about every slight and offense (angry rolls lady-type). I didn’t know that they had horrible reputations and weren’t well-liked at either of their jobs. I thought their daily gripe-fest meant that the workforce was terrible. My first job as a teen I steeled myself for a horrible summer, working at a small touristy amusement park. I had so much fun my first day I was nervous to go home, I thought my parents would be mad I had a great job!

  277. Swedish Fish Tuesday*

    I was a paralegal right out of college. I’d worked food service and had internships before, but never a job with an annual bonus. Y’all, I was SHOCKED AND APPALLED when I found out that my bonus was taxed. I stormed around asking the attorneys I supported if they knew about this travesty. They did.

  278. I Licked Your Salt Lamp*

    My parents were both accountants and fairly high up on the ladder (controller/ VP of Finance). They each worked out of large offices with a window and pretty view of downtown Boston. As a kid, I wanted an office job in a fancy building with a big desk and beautiful window view and it honestly didn’t occur to me until my first internship that entry-level employees not only didn’t get a big office with a view, but most likely worked in a depressing cubicle or open space office with zero sunlight.

    I still feel let down by the corporate world sometimes.

  279. Late Bloomer*

    My ideas about wages were completely bonkers because (a) my parents would never ever talk about how much my dad made per year [Mom did not work]; (b) going to a residential liberal arts college did not do much to expose me to the actual cost of living; and (b) throughout my entire time in high school, one of my math teachers had a poster in his classroom showing potential wages for potential math-related careers, with teaching listed at $8,000. This was in the late 1970s. Well, I’d wanted to be a teacher since pretty much the day I set foot in school, so I thought I’d be making something around that when I applied for teaching jobs in 1984. Offer was for $18,000, in small-town Midwest, and I thought I was rich. It took me a while to realize I was not.

  280. pally*

    I thought being an audience member for the Dick Cavett show was an actual occupation. Since I adored the stories told by all the guests, that was what I aspired to.

  281. Long Lost Cheetah Girl*

    I grew up watching a lot of Disney Channel and thought that becoming a pop star as a teenager was a normal and reasonable career choice. I just needed to wait until I was in high school and do really well in the talent show. My high school never put on a talent show and now I work a very normal office job. I guess I missed my chance.

  282. Actuary Mom*

    I got my first office job at THIRTY and was surprised that I didn’t have an “expense account” that enabled me to go out to lunch every day. I had really expected something different for an office job. (I had been in academia before that & grew up with a farmer for a dad so I had no context for office jobs other than TV).

  283. Wilbur*

    I talked to an engineer that worked on hydroelectric dams as part of a science fair project when I was in middle school. He talked about travelling to the sites and I thought that sounded cool. To be fair, it is very cool but having travelled for work, it’s not all fun. Earlier in my career I thought it also meant you could grab a bunch of awesome (but not necessarily expensive) meals on someone elses dime. I have had a lot of cool work travel experiences (cherry blossoms in Japan!) but it’s always been balanced against really long days, awkward business dinners, trying to process information while you’re delirious from jet lag, and spitting so many bones out of my mouth (Everything is bone in when you’re in China).

  284. Jaydee*

    My dad told us he went to board meetings. I misunderstood that as bored meetings. So my little brother and I would ask him how his boring meetings were. He corrected us…but also confirmed that sometimes board meetings were in fact boring.

  285. Yes, we have no bananapants*

    I remember thinking Happy Hour would be a bigger part of work-related life. Like, everyone would clock out at 5, then go straight to happy hour to meet up with friends or network or socialize with coworkers in a more relaxed environment. No clue where I got this idea from.

    Now most of the people I work with can’t wait to get away from each other at the end of the day. I can count on one hand the number of happy hours I’ve spent with colleagues, all of which were at conferences.

    1. Six Feldspar*

      Office life has turned out to be significantly less zany than all the sitcoms led me to believe…

  286. HRneedsAdrink*

    1- I honestly thought that you HAD to climb the corporate ladder, that it was actually part of every job. I think as a kid, my parents kept telling me to go to college and climb the corporate ladder. Just thought it was an everyday thing. I started out doing just that out of college, but quickly realized I’m a worker bee, not one to oversee everything. And I’m more than ok with that.

    2- We used to live in a very small town that didn’t have a movie theater. I worked with a guy who was a huge movie buff. He had permission on Friday and Saturday nights to rent movies (DVDs) and show them on our projector/ screen at work (we had a small auditorium/ theater). He often showed “family” movies on Saturday afternoons so I was able to take my then 4 year old son. For the longest time, my son thought that I watched movies all day for work. I wish buddy, I wish.

  287. Hypnotoad*

    When I was in college (!) I thought there was no such thing as paid time off. Not for vacations, holidays, nothing. Never. Everyone had to take those days off unpaid, regardless of the type of job and they were ok with that. Imagine my surprise when I earned a few days of PTO at my part-time office job! To not be at work and still getting paid – glorious!

  288. Molly*

    This brought back a memory of my son when he was in kindergarten.
    He wasn’t happy about moving from his wonderful preschool, but we explained that he was now old enough to have a job like daddy and school was his job. He loved the idea so much, that he insisted on wearing a collared shirt with a clip-on tie every day. In addition, he decided this blue cardboard suitcase (think about the size of a lunchbox) was his briefcase.
    Every morning, I walked him the two blocks to school in his shirt and tie, carrying his briefcase.
    So cute! He had five different little clip-on ties. He kept that up all year. But when he started first grade, he decided to dress like the rest of the kids.

    3. merida*

      Ok that is SO CUTE! :)

      When I went into kindergarten, I thought it was “kinder garden,” like an actual garden with plants. In my kid-brain, “kindergarden” looked like like the butterfly garden I saw at the zoo. Also, I was going to be homeschooled. So my mom was really baffled that I kept asking where kindergarten was and how the butterflies would get there. I knew I was homeschooled but I expected the garden to be an actual place, like in my backyard.

  289. The Contractor's kid*

    When I was a kid my dad (a general contractor) had a business that was ran out of our house. People would call day or night. I thought two things about work. I would have to work at all hours (NO! Thankfully) and that I would get yelled at all day.

    1. Hudson*

      I had the same misconception about working all hours because of my dad’s job and his clients calling the house. Since he was a criminal defense attorney, there were several times when I’d pick up the phone only to get the recorded message that we were receiving a call from the state prison, and to press 1 if we wanted to accept the call.

  290. Anonymouse*

    When I was real young (like 5 or 6), I wanted to be a McDonald’s drive thru worker, taking people’s orders with a headset (my mom was none too pleased when my aunt got me a dress up McDonald’s uniform with headset for my birthday).

    I had some interesting ideas when I was a kid – like how the older kids got to go to school on Saturdays (not sure where I came up with that one, but I was mad jealous – I wanted to be in school learning instead of at home) – but I never had “kid logic” about work. My dad was a forester and my mom was a elementary teacher, so Bring Your Daughter to Work Day was always interesting. I spent most of my childhood not really thinking about being an adult, because it stressed me out (I also decided at the age of 6 that finding someone to marry was too hard, so I just wasn’t going to get married). I think all of this should have been the hint to my parents that I’m probably a little neurospicy, but I don’t think they made the connection. :)

  291. You want stories, I've got stories*

    You mention briefcases and I have to say I’m surprised they haven’t made a comeback. Something sturdy to put your laptop into instead of a flimsy thing to drape over your shoulder.

    2. JB*

      I think most people are using backpacks for that?? Who’s using a flimsy messenger bag to carry a laptop?

  292. HiddenT*

    Until I worked retail, I thought everyone knew they should walk items back to where they came from if they decided they didn’t want them anymore. I was horrified when I learned the truth.

    (Bless my parents for teaching me, both explicitly and by example, to treat everyone with respect no matter their position.)

  293. Juicebox Hero*

    When I was 6 mother got a job at a Hallmark store (greeting cards, wrapping paper, tchotchkes for those unfamiliar).

    I thought she was allowed to just bring home whatever she wanted from the store without paying. I mean, she worked there, and pushed buttons and gave people things when they took them to the register, so she could just take things to the register and push buttons for herself, right?

    Reminder, I was 6. Having to pay for stuff wasn’t a concept I was familiar with at the time.

  294. SpringRain*

    I guess for me, I just didn’t know that office jobs… existed? My mom was a public school teacher, so I spent my summers in her school, while she was doing her planning. My dad was a traveling furniture salesman who worked from an office in our house when he wasn’t on the road. My grandparents were teachers, a police officer and a waitress. So I really only knew about jobs I saw – retail, restaurant, teachers, service roles, police/firefighters, etc. I had no idea about office jobs or what people in those big buildings downtown did.

  295. Toothpaste*

    As a child, I had a meltdown because I heard about someone being “fired” from their job. I thought it meant they were literally set on fire. I don’t think my parents did a very good job explaining that it was a metaphor, because I grew up convinced that I needed to get a job from which I could not be fired. Hence I should get a PhD, become a professor, and earn tenure.

    1. Seekyou*

      This is hilarious! I used to take things so literally as a kid too. I used to think Gatorade was made out of sweat because of the commercials where the athletes would sweat the color of Gatorade. Grossed me out for a really long time.

  296. Having a Scrummy Week*

    Thinking that you can take a real vacation with every job, not stuck with a shitty 15 days of combined PTO

  297. Clymene*

    When people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I always said I wanted to work in a toll booth. My parents finally got tired of that and investigated why that was my dream job. I thought they kept the money.

  298. Zellie*

    My mother was a Secretary (way before Admin was used) and my dad an office manager. So, until I got to college, I thought women were secretaries and men were the bosses. I literally saw no other examples until after college.

    I wound up in two professions where women make up the majority of the workforce, but in many cases the really top level jobs are still held by men. In recent years, it’s started changing, but I still see it.

  299. ReallyBadPerson*

    After we had moved to a new town and I had taken the kids to their new dentist, my son came out excitedly and said, “Mom! Guess what?! Boys can be dentists, too!”

    All of our previous dentists had been women.

  300. Fran Katzenjammer*

    I live in England. My second cousin Tim (who is several decades older than me) is a journalist.

    My mum often explains things using examples. When I was about six years old, Tim came up in conversation and I asked my Mum what a journalist did. She told me that if something were to happen like the Queen dying, Tim would run and tell the newspapers, and the newspapers would tell everyone else, to make sure people like us at home knew what was going on. I did not appreciate that “run and tell” was only a turn of phrase.

    For many years after that, I truly believed that Tim’s full-time job was to wait in Buckingham Palace all day, poised for Her Majesty to breathe her last, at which he would then physically sprint all the way down to the newspaper offices (which I assumed were all next to one another) and would shout very loudly “THE QUEEN IS DEAD”. The newspaper people would then get to work printing the newspapers, and presumably Tim could retire. I knew that he wore a suit, tie and smart shoes to work and assumed that he would have to run in these, which would be very uncomfortable – but it made sense. It’s not like you could hang around Buckingham Palace in jogging shorts. I knew that he didn’t travel with the Queen and didn’t work nights, and I did wonder how the Palace would communicate the news if the Queen died when Tim wasn’t there, and also whether Tim would be upset that his life’s purpose had come to nothing. It was an embarrassing number of years before I realised that this was not what Tim did for a living. Also, I was six in 1995, and Her Majesty lived until 2022 (RIP), so Tim would have had to wait 27 years before his fateful sprint from the Palace to Fleet Street.

  301. MHK*

    I thought for a very long time that the sure sign you had made it as a powerful woman in the working world was to own and wear a navy blue pinstriped suit. (Who knows where this idea came from, but it persisted into college…)

  302. Murphy*

    As a child, I thought everyone who went to the hospital ended up dying there. I was extremely sad when my grandfather was hospitalized, and then was totally surprised when he actually got better and went home. My dad was a doctor who ran the ICU, and I guess I only picked up on situations when he was sad when a patient had passed and didn’t clock that some people were getting better and leaving.

  303. Ivory Tower?*

    I had heard or read when i was in grade school that university and college professors lived in ivory towers. I had a very elaborate fantasy about decorating my ivory tower with books and nice chairs. I work at a university now but alas, no ivory tower. I can’t remember how old I was when I realized this was a euphemism but I was highly disappointed.

    1. learnedthehardway*

      I too, would like an ivory tower that I can decorate with books and comfy chairs!!! (Now, I mean. My childhood self wanted to be a spy, because that was cool.)

  304. T in midwest*

    I must have watched too much TV and assumed that was similar to real life. I am a salaried employee in a “fun” field (marketing) and it’s really not at all like I thought it would be. I thought I would:
    – get an actual lunch hour every day and be able to go out to eat with coworkers or meet other friends at lunch. (Instead, lunch is usually eaten during zoom calls (off camera) or a 10 minute break sometime between 11am and 2pm.)
    – wear business formal clothes (instead it’s mostly business casual or even full casual)
    – would have an office with a desk of my own (nope, it’s open floor plans and hotdesking)
    – would work with a group of people who would become friends (nope, it’s fairly competitive and lots of drama but not the fun kind)

    I wish jobs were more like TV, I guess

  305. Harriet Vane*

    This isn’t about me, but my dad, who was mystified about what his dad (my grandfather) did for a living.

    My grandfather started a business selling advertising specialties, which is the technical name for swag for businesses to give away to promote themselves (think printed pens, keychains, etc.) and in the beginning he worked from the basement of the family home. My grandfather explained this to my father as “making things for people to give away for free.” My dad refused to believe that this could be a real business– why would anyone buy things that they gave away for free? And the fact that my grandfather was dressing in a suit simply to go down to the basement was the most inexplicable thing of all. He thought the whole thing was extremely suspicious, but no one would tell him the truth.

    He concluded that my grandfather must be in the mob and everyone was hiding the truth from him to protect him. My dad was terrified of his father going to jail until he got old enough to understand that, no, making things that businesses give away for free is a real thing. I laugh about this story every time I get a branded pen from a bank!

  306. Tess McGill*

    So embarrassing: my dad worked in an office and my mom was a SAHM so my brain at a super young age thought that only men had to go to work (cringing so hard!)

  307. Pamma*

    I don’t really remember thinking any particular thing about the working world BUT when I was 7 or 8 my friends and I started talking about what we wanted to do/be when we grew up. I distinctly remember saying I wanted to own a bank. I didn’t know what that meant or what I’d get out of owning a bank but that’s what I wanted. I did like counting the coins my grandfather had saved so maybe that had something to do with it? Also I remember going to the bank a lot with my mom. A really old-fashioned branch that had marble throughout. I can still remember how that bank smelled! I ended up working as a teller for a bit and I hated it!

  308. DontLetMeDown*

    My dad was a NYPD officer and sometimes would take my brothers and I to the precinct when he needed to pick up his paycheck. He’d usually lock us up in a smelly holding cell for a couple of minutes. We thought it was hysterical.

    He never talked about his job at home. We only knew that he arrested the bad guys and put them in jail. He would let us load his gun before going to work – he kept it and the bullets locked up and far away from where we could ever find it on our own. We had a healthy respect for guns from a very young age.

    One day in 1984 little 8 1/2 year old me begged him to take me with him to work? Why? Because he was not going after bad guys that night. He was going to help protect The Beatles while they performed at Carnegie Hall. Alas, he could not take me to work that evening, just like any other day. It took me a while to understand. But I never forgot.

  309. grumblecore*

    I came from a working-class rural area where a “job” meant either nonstop heavy farm labor from early morning until bedtime or else hourly wage jobs where you were only allowed say one 10-minute break and a half-hour lunch period, all of which were strictly enforced through punching a time clock.

    When I got my first white-collar office job I behaved as if I was at an hourly labor job and thought I needed to be basically nose to the grindstone every minute I was at my desk, with to-the-minute breaks for lunch, not leaving until exactly 5 pm, etc. My boss (who was fantastic) finally told me to relax and to stop tracking every minute I was there, she didn’t care if I took an extra 10 minutes at lunch, she trusted me to get stuff done without reporting back to her on every single thing, and so on.

    It was a huge to realize that I could actually work like a human being now instead of a cog in a factory. And that this style of work was actually normal outside the blue-collar/hourly wage environment. I was also astounded by things like paid time off, retirement accounts, etc.–none of which I had encountered at a single job in my life before this.

  310. Hudson*

    More a misconception about the actual tasks, my mom was a midwife who would occasionally describe births as “catching babies”. Even though I knew the basics of how babies came into this world, I still assumed as a child that it was a little like catching a ball, and she had to be careful not to miss and accidentally drop the baby.

  311. grumblecore2*

    I came from a working-class rural area where a “job” meant either nonstop heavy farm labor from early morning until bedtime or else hourly wage jobs where you were only allowed say one 10-minute break and a half-hour lunch period, all of which were strictly enforced through punching a time clock.

    When I got my first white-collar office job I behaved as if I was at an hourly labor job and thought I needed to be basically nose to the grindstone every minute I was at my desk, with to-the-minute breaks for lunch, not leaving until exactly 5 pm, etc. My boss (who was fantastic) finally told me to relax and to stop tracking every minute I was there, she didn’t care if I took an extra 10 minutes at lunch, she trusted me to get stuff done without reporting back to her on every single thing, and so on.

    It was a huge to realize that I could actually work like a human being now instead of a cog in a factory. And that this style of work was actually normal outside the blue-collar/hourly wage environment. I was also astounded by things like paid time off, retirement accounts, etc.–none of which I had encountered at a single job in my life before this.

  312. RandomED*

    When I was a kid, my dad worked at a car dealership. Every once in a while, he’d take me into work on a Friday, show me his office with a bunch of sales awards on the wall, chit chat with his coworkers, pick up his check, and then (this is the important part) take me out for ice cream.

    Ever since then, I can’t get it out of my mind that Fridays at work are supposed to be relaxing and fun. I’m pretty sure he had Fridays off, but my kid brain just figured this is what work is like.

  313. Anne Shirley Blythe*

    Kinda sad, but for far too long, I had no idea my field (copyediting/proofreading) was so low-paying. My ignorance probably stemmed from a few things—not knowing I could negotiate my first real job’s pay; the stigma about revealing salary in American society; and mostly the tendency of people to couple up and live on two incomes. I just figured my colleagues and friends who were frequently dining out, driving nice cars, and taking trips were primarily benefitting from their double-income households. And I’m sure they were. But by themselves, these individuals still made far more money than me. It’s a real gut-punch when I read about salary expectations here on this blog.

  314. Seekyou*

    My father was a college dean in the 70s/80s and I thought he spent his days shuffling papers and clearing his throat. Which now that I think about it, isn’t that far off.

  315. My Cousin Vinny was VERY popular in my house*

    Both my parents were lawyers, and a lot of their friends were lawyers, and their friends were married to each other…. and so when I was a kid I assumed you married someone who did the same job as you. So teachers marry teachers, lawyers marry lawyers, nurses/doctors marry nurses/doctors. And I found out i was wrong when in second grade I explained to my best friend that she must’ve misunderstood her dads job, there’s no way he was an engineer because her mom was an attorney, and she had NO CLUE what I was talking about.

  316. Pikachu*

    I think I saw a meme about this and it brought back all kinds of memories.

    When I was in my teens/early 20s, it felt like all the magazines ever routinely had a spread on “day-to-night” outfits. How to turn your boring office garb into something fashionable and fun for a night on the town. Usually consisted of swapping pants for a skirt and changing from high heels to higher heels. It was the ultimate grown ass woman goal to be the office-to-happy hour chameleon with the right outfit for every occasion all in one day.

    I must say, even when I was a younger person who attended regular happy hours, this vital wardrobe transition period was… not a thing.

  317. lamppost*

    When I was in eighth grade, we had to take a standardized career assessment that was based on both skills and interests. My results came back with a list of dozens of careers I might be skilled at but only five that I would be “moderately interested” in (none that I would be “highly interested” in). I truly believed my entire adult life would be miserable because of this, and it wasn’t until I was in my second career-track position in my mid-20s that I realized the career I ended up in didn’t exist in its current form when this assessment was created and that the whole thing was probably an utter load of crap. If I have any problem with career satisfaction now it’s that there are so many things in my field that interest me and not enough time to explore or get good at all of them!

    1. ICodeForFood*

      Twenty-five years ago, contemplating a career change, I took an aptitude test which turned out to be completely outdated. The only thing I remember was that the results indicated I would be a good ferry-boat captain, but not a good bus driver…
      I wound up doing a career change to tech and I’m still writing SQL code 25 years later.

  318. Nosmo King*

    This one is about my son.

    For several years I was a freelance writer so I could work at home while caring for my small children. When my son was about 3, I found him pretending to type at my computer. I asked him what he was doing and he said “Being a mom!” with a big smile on his face.

    It was cute, but it sort of broke my heart and made me take a long look at how much I was working vs. spending quality time with him, which was the whole point of me having that career!

  319. Bookworm*

    That networking actually worked and you are promoted, etc. based on your work ethic/quality. LOLOLOLOLOL

  320. Tantallum99*

    My dad sold “promotional products”. Pens with company names, tote bags with logos, branded stress balls or coasters that you’d get at a conference registration, that kind of thing. Being a young elementary schooler, I couldn’t really wrap my head around it enough to explain (whereas my mom was a nurse, easy). So my (awesome) dad would always say, “if anyone ever asks what your dad does for a living, tell them he sells crap.”
    People always looked confused when I relayed that exact answer, but I know my dad got an absolute kick out of it.

  322. kupo*

    I thought if you had a volunteer position you could just show up whenever you feel like it and pick what you want to do from available tasks. I was in high school when I discovered to truth while looking into volunteering at the Zoo.

  323. learnedthehardway*

    My dad tells the story of coming home and discussing with my mother that they had to fire someone at work. My sister (about 3 yo) overheard, and asked in a horrified tone, “Did it hurt, Daddy!??”

    Well, yeah, probably, but not in the sense that they got torched….

  324. merida*

    As a kid I loved reading and I was (in retrospect) a huge nerd, so I’d get my friends to “play office” with me instead of “playing house.” The “office” was of course a publishing company that published cool books. We’d have meetings and trade off playing the part of the publishing company staff member vs. the author. I assumed that the publisher was a one-person company who did everything. So kid-me would dutifully review a “manuscript” (stack of blank papers) for submission, provide the “author” (aka the neighbor kid) with feedback and editing, design the cover myself (I’m no artist so it was very sloppy hand-drawings, or sometimes if I felt really fancy I created a cover with Clip Art in Word and printed it off – this was the early 2000s :), and I also sold and displayed the “published books” (just books from my bookshelf) right there in my “office” (blanket fort). I had no idea that editing and marketing and production were all separate jobs and that I’d have to pick a path eventually.

    I actually did end up working in publishing for a while after college, until I burned out horrifically. It really was a great job at first, and the funny assumption I had as a kid of wearing all the different hats actually served me well when working for a small, scrappy publishing company.

    P.S. Am I really the only one who initiated playing office as a kid?? lol

    1. Summer*

      I loved playing both teacher and office! I’ve always been into office supplies (and still am) and I loved playing with all of that stuff as a kid. My great-grandfather founded a bank and my grandparents worked there along with most of my mom’s side of the family so there were always excess supplies at my grandparents’ house. I loved using my grandmother’s notary stamp! I also had a mini chalkboard in my bedroom that I loved teaching from :)

    2. All things considered, I'd rather be a dragon*

      My brother once confused a friend visiting at our house by answering the question about what to do with, “Let’s play ‘read a book’.”

  325. Grandma Mazur*

    Two from me:

    I knew that work was a thing and that people got paid to work, but being on TV seemed so glamorous, and (at least to me as a kid) only really possible by winning a competition or something, that I assumed, in contrast to working, that people on TV had paid for the privilege. I always wondered how I’d make enough money to be able to pay to be on TV as a presenter.
    (Still think there’s a kernel of truth in that story, given unpaid internships, etc.)

    When I was 16 and in the fifth year at secondary school, we all had to do work experience for a week. I already knew I wanted to be an academic, but was somehow convinced (I guess because the only people I’d seen do work experience had all worked in a business of some kind) that you couldn’t do work experience at a university, so I went and worked for a sign-maker for a week, knowing all the while it wasn’t at all what I wanted to do. Did well enough that they paid me a nominal amount of cash at the end of the week! (£35, back in 1997 – a laughable £1/hour rate even then, but on the other hand, £35 I wasn’t expecting! Promptly lost the whole amount in the park while drinking with school friends that evening).

    Lasted about 6 months as an academic post-PhD, realised work-life balance was not a thing in academia and got out. Am now academic-adjacent and the thing I love most about my job is clocking in and out. My employer values literally every minute I work for them!

  326. Suz*

    When I was a kid I thought all jobs had unlimited vacation days. My parents owned their own business and would close the shop all the time to take the family on vacation. And my grandparents owned the grocery store in our little town and would have employees run it whenever they wanted time off. So I thought all jobs were like that.

  327. Sue Smith*

    I didn’t understand inherited wealth and figured you got money mainly through your job. A relative by marriage came from a rich family, grew up in a mansion, and had hired help. As a young teenager, I assumed her father, an elected official, accepted bribes to supplement his salary to accumulate that kind of wealth.

  328. goddessoftransitory*

    I would say the pretty common belief that adults I saw out in the world that weren’t my parents–like teachers, firefighters and such–didn’t go home the way “normal” people did–that they just lived at the school or fire station or grocery store. It was always a shock when you spotted your teacher or librarian “out in the wild” running errands or with their own families!

  329. Nicole Maria*

    When I was very little I believed that my dad went to work to make money – literally. I believed he worked in a factory where they manufactured coins and bills and that he got to take a certain amount home each day. Thankfully a family event at his work around age 5 or 6 helped me set the record straight.

  330. Not office worker!*

    When I was a kid, I believed everyone grew up, went to college, and got a 9 to 5 office job. I have no clue why I thought this because no one in my family had a college degree or a 9 to 5 office job. All of my family members are blue-collar workers

  331. lin*

    As a consequence of reading “All Creatures Great and Small” at the age of 7, I thought that veterinarians stored their clinical equipment and medicines inside footwear to keep it organized.

    Seven year old American me did not understand that an English man “getting the stethoscope out of the boot” meant “out of the back end of the vehicle where things are stored for transport”

  332. Old Mountain Lady*

    When I was six or seven, I knew my dad was an engineer. I also knew that he went to work at the same place every day, and was home for dinner every night. I had a lot of trouble reconciling these ideas, and it was a few years before I learned that he didn’t drive a train but was instead an aerospace engineer.

  333. software gardener*

    As a young adult with one parent perhaps over-devoted to their job, I thought that people who engaged with work outside of work must either be super important to a job they were really passionate about, or deluded into thinking they were. Years later, I shocked myself when I opened up Slack the day before my wedding (I’d been out of the office all week) and realized that I did it because I was experiencing so many crazy stresses, family dynamics, and other things outside my control, whereas at work I was a competent person with good boundaries and a lot of things under my control. It wasn’t about thinking I was important, or that my team couldn’t get along without me, or that my project was so important to the world that I had to prioritize it during my personal time. It had never occurred to me before that work might feel like a safe space where things are manageable when other areas of life don’t feel like that.

    (Also, don’t worry, I didn’t actually post anything or check in on the project. At most I might have given a celebratory emoji on something that launched since I’d gone out for my wedding. But I definitely didn’t want to model that behavior to anyone else!)

  334. Troubadour*

    I’m not sure we ever believed him, but when we used to ask what Dad did at work all day he used to tell us he played Pacman. (He was a software developer of some kind. I’m still slightly fuzzy on the details lol!)

  335. KM*

    My dad is a physician, and when I was a kid I thought that the proper way to answer the phone was “Hey, this is Dr. [Last Name], I was paged.”

  336. I didn't say banana*

    I’m a forensic psychologist, I get hired by lawyers to assess their clients and make the case that it would be better for everyone if the offender got mental health/substance use treatment, vocational training, case management support, etc, instead of sitting in prison. The judge considers my opinion and may give a community sentence instead of a prison one. My daughter tells people “my mum helps prisoners escape”.

    1. ThatOtherClare*

      That’s too cute! By definition it’s only the people who shouldn’t be in prison. I imagine she sees you as being only one step removed from her favourite superheroes.

  337. BofaOnTheSofa*

    When I was young enough to go daycare my mom would try to hurry us up saying, “hurry up, I don’t want to be late & get fired.” I TOTALLY pictured her boss holding a triton and shooting flames at her. When I found out what getting fired really was, I was like “huh, is that all? It sounds kinda nice to not go to work”, not understanding you have to work to buy food and shelter. We’d always ask when she came home that day, “did you get fired today?” (picturing the literal flames)

  338. BofaOnTheSofa*

    I thought all small-town pastors of small churches were rich. My friend’s dad was a pastor and she went home for lunch, didn’t eat lunch in the school like the rest of us, their family was kind of big (and my dad always said kids were expensive) and they happened to have the same linoleum as my aunt & uncle who actually were pretty high income. That was “rich people linoleum” in my mind & I was *convinced* pastors much be rich.

  339. meowmix*

    I worked an internship with a local government that started the summer before my last year at undergrad. It was great! I really lucked out – it was intended for a grad student, but there weren’t many applicants and I was somehow competitive enough to get the position as an undergrad. I did really interesting and meaningful work, was paid quite well for an intern, everyone was really nice (especially my boss), and I even got government job benefits. I did not come from a background where anyone in my family had done internships, and did not understand that such internships are more like entry level positions, so I assumed it was a nice short term project. As I neared the end of my time in school, I felt like I needed a bit more time for some senior projects, and had wrapped up the big project I’d been hired for. I sat down in his office and told my very nice boss that I had finished my main project, needed a bit more time for school projects, and was ready to wrap the internship up thank you very much. He accepted my sort-of resignation very gracefully. I then graduated into the 2008 recession and didn’t make as much as I’d made at that internship for the next 4 years.

  340. Gregory*

    I thought getting “fired” meant literally being burned at the stake. When I was a kid, one of my camp counselors said something nasty to me (I forget what, it was many years ago) and I told my mother and she said we’d tell the camp director the next day and get the counselor fired. But I didn’t know what that meant, and had visions of us setting her on fire at the camp like while we roasted marshmallows over the flames like we did at cookouts. And I didn’t want that on my conscience, whatever she did wasn’t bad enough to merit the death penalty, so I went back to my mother and said I made the whole thing up.

  341. Bryce*

    I grew up with a lot of leader-focused talk about careers. Family who started their own business, dad was a “top scientist” so a lot of the other adults I knew were also top scientists, teachers leading their classes… I don’t think anyone I knew personally had “assistant” in their job description, or didn’t emphasize it if they did. So I thought I needed to be a leader as well, to know my direction and go there right from the start.

    Crash, burn, terrible. I get horrible decision paralysis. I dream of being an Igor, someone else picks what’s getting done and I do what I can to help that happen. Took me way too long to realize that was allowed.

  342. Anna Crusis*

    When I was 7 or 8, I thought I was going to be a famous concert violinist AND a scientist. I practiced my violin willingly at least an hour a day and figured two careers at once would be a piece of cake.

    As a teen, I thought a minimum wage after school job would fully fund my wishes to be a world traveler during the summers. I still haven’t been able to do that as a full-time employee. My passport is current but it would be nice to be able to afford to even travel around the US every once in a while.

    And I’m embarrassed to admit that as a recent grad with my first professional job that I thought office hours were 9-5, with an hour lunch. I was born too late for that to be the standard! We did get an hour lunch, but my boss gently told me after a week or so that I had to be there at 8am like the rest of the office. Such a shock after mostly managing to avoid 8am classes all through college!

  343. Summer*

    I thought all office work was like Christina Applegate’s job in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dead. I saw that movie in the theaters as a teen (and I still love it – it’s so 90s and cheesy in the best way) and I was worried that you were thrown in the deep end without any help and were expected to know how to run the TPS reports and send faxes and have important meetings and throw events all on your own with zero training.

  344. Kid Serious*

    I thought the President of the United States was my Dad’s direct boss. This will age me, but I was in kindergarten during the Carter vs. Ford election. My Dad was in the military. We had a mock election at school a few weeks before the actual election and I asked Dad who to vote for. He said, “Ford because if Carter wins, I’ll lose my job.” He meant, of course, less military spending but I took him literally amd knew losing his job would be absolutely the worst thing ever Carefully, I voted at school and anxiously waited for the results. Did I mention he was stationed in Georgia? Guess who was announced as the school winner? For weeks afterwards I was sure he would come home and announce he had been fired. Then, the actual election happened and it just made me scared all over again. It was a long time before I decided he had somehow been saved.

  345. Zee*

    I thought everyone made the same amount of money. Like, obviously there were a few rich CEOs making $250,000 a year, and of course doctors and lawyers both made $100,000. But everyone else made around $40,000.

      1. H3llifIknow*

        Hah similar! I made 19K my first job as a teacher and when I took a govt. job they offered me 24K and I thought “Whoa 2K a MONTH? I’m rolling in it!” I was not, in fact, rolling in anything but never ending student loan debt for many years!

  346. Not that other person you didn't like*

    A bit backwards, but when my son was in 1st or 2nd grade, he seemed to think that he was getting paid to go to school (the way I got paid to go to work). I asked where he thought the money was going and I guess he just thought it was going into the family bank account! He was really disappointed to hear that he actually wasn’t getting paid, so I explained that he was doing it for his future self and the payment was in the future.

  347. Lucy*

    My father used to play squash during his lunch break. Several years later, my little sister walked in on the family watching a game of squash of television and went “Ohhhhh! THAT’S what squash is! Dad, I thought you were playing ‘stacks on’ at your old job”. We LOST it. You see, stacks on is a schoolyard game where you see your best friend lying on the floor and you flop down on top of them shouting “Stacks on!”. Then all the other children in the vicinity come and pile on top of you and you all end up in a big wriggling, giggling pile of knees and elbows. That’s it. The whole game. She had been imagining that there was a group of middle-aged businessmen in suits playing stacks on in my father’s office every day.

  348. Officially Official*

    I come from a blue collar family and had this impression that white collar/office environments were always professional and formal.
    Barely 6 months into my first office job I’d encountered all kinds of nonsense, drama and unprofessionalism that I couldn’t even make up
    – management caught having relations with each other
    – supposedly haunted elevators
    – service rats in the office
    – physical fighting between IT staff
    – disgruntled employees calling the office to make bomb threats

    1. Wolf*

      Yeah, I’ve been in offices that were barely any better than a school project with 14-year-olds.

    2. Chad Chad*

      …service rats? Like…service dogs, but …rats? For realz? I’m not sure I could handle being in close proximity to a rat, pet or not *shudder*.

    3. HRneedsAdrink*

      Same, and when I got into Banking as my first big girl job, I was so surprised at the number of staff sleeping with each other! Like everyone- from the President down.

  349. Traveler*

    I was convinced that “firing” someone involved chasing them from the building waving a flaming torch at their backside.

    As a natural extension of that,”hiring” someone involved waving the flaming torch above their head. You know – because it’s “higher” than what you do when you fire them.

    I’m well into middle age and am still a little disappointed that this isn’t how it’s really done.

  350. Six Feldspar*

    When I started my first full time office job, I’d been warned about the bad lighting and the back pain and the meetings that could have been emails (all true).

    Nobody warned me about finishing work every day and having the absolute goddamn need to do something with my hands (knitting, drawing, cooking, whatever) otherwise my brain would be itchy the rest of the night…

    1. Snow Angels in the Zen Garden*

      That you bent over backward and did whatever a customer wanted to make them happy, or you would lose your job. I had unfortunately already been working for 8 years before I was introduced to the concept of firing a customer.

      That people put things back where they got them from in stores when they didn’t want them.

      That it was normal to rarely see dads because my dad worked a day job AND farmed, so he was often already gone when I got up in the morning and came back after I was in bed. Another male relative was a truck driver. My former spouse was initially ideal to me because he wanted to do fieldwork and would be away often.

      I was horrified at the the thought I would have to lick ALL of those envelopes. I didn’t know envelope moisteners existed.

  351. GythaOgden*

    My sister was once asked what our dad did for his job. She honestly answered: he rides a bike.

    Because you know, every morning she saw him go off on his bike and come back on his bike and she didn’t realise that in between times he stopped at a construction site to help manage the building of a power plant.

    Ironically her husband now does the same thing…

    1. Wolf*

      I thought my mom sat in an office all day, because I had once visited her there. That office had nice plants and snacks, so i wanted to work there, too.

  352. Katie Impact*

    Around age 8 or so I got the idea somewhere that it was normal to have to pay money to your employer to get a job, instead of that being one of the biggest red flags for a scam.

  353. Wolf*

    My main idea of office jobs when I was little was a very mundane one: I thought everyone came in at 7am, typed on computers until 9am, had a coffee together, then typed at computers until 12, had lunch, and then typed again until 3pm, when they went home.

    I had no idea yet, what coding or servers or software were – to me, typing on computers was just some kind of things adults did. Nor did its eem interesting at all. Other people’s parents were builders or teachers or gardeners, which I understood better because I knew what those were good for.

    Oh, and the naive one: when I found out that my daddy brought home (the local equivalent of) 1000€ each month, I thought that was soooo much money. After all, our house had cost 100’000€, so it would only take 100 months to buy a house? Little Me casually forgot we needed to eat, and get things like electricity or clothes. And fix up that relatively cheap house.

    Yeah, 5 year old me was pretty sheltered. And I’m really quite thankful that I could spend my early years unaware that we were struggling.

  354. Lady Kelvin*

    My family dropped me off at the airport for a work trip, and my two-year-old understood that Mommy was going to work, and then they went grocery shopping before they went back home. When they got home, he said “Oh we have to go get mommy at the airport!” Because he thought I was working at the airport and they forgot to pick me up, not that I was going on a work trip and wouldn’t be back for a few weeks. It was pretty sweet how worried he was that they forgot me at work.

  355. Hanna*

    My parents both worked at the local university. Dinner conversations oftentimes went right over my head as a kid. One of the terms they often used was ‘post-docs’. I was convinced for a few years, that all their office mail was delivered by ‘post dogs’ with little hats, faithfully transporting all their mail.

  356. Lemon*

    I thought normal working hours for “professional” jobs were ACTUALLY 9-5. I was surprised when my first office job started at 8:30, with an unpaid half hour lunch break.

  357. ONFM*

    I thought HR was there to protect the employees, rather than the company. It’s true that often those are the same things, but also, sometimes they are not. I guess I thought they were like the justice system of the work world – which, like the actual justice system, seems to fail quite often.

  358. Fresh Princess of Bel Air*

    It wasn’t until I was IN COLLEGE FOR ARCHITECTURE that I found out Engineer does not equal Train Conductor. I don’t even know why I thought that, looking back—Thomas the Train, maybe??

    1. iglwif*

      I also remember being surprised to learn that there was another meaning of “engineer” besides “man who gets to drive the train”!

      I didn’t discover Thomas the Tank Engine until I was a grown adult with my own child, so I suspect in my this was case due to my father, who paid his way through university as a railroad worker in the 1940s, talking about engineers while he and my older brother worked on their model railway in the basement.

    2. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

      I just remembered that my dad’s coworker was asked for his diploma after he had been working with my dad (mechanical engineer) at a large company for about three years. HR was totally confused when coworker said he didn’t have a diploma, he actually had spent 10 years as a train engineer prior to being hired by the company!

  359. Spooz*

    My son currently does not understand the difference between “works there” as in “gets paid to be there full time” and “works there” as in “volunteers there and can answer the question you have right now about this train museum”. I am gently trying to suggest that being a full-time volunteer steam train driver who lives at home forever isn’t a viable life plan.

    Thankfully he’s only six so no need to rain on his parade just yet ;)

  360. Jo*

    Anyone remember the very relatable Barbie story from decades ago?

    Two little girls playing with Barbies. The Barbie family woke up, got dressed, had breakfast in the Barbie house. Then they threw Ken under the (real) bed and proceeded to plan adventures with the girl dolls. When asked about Ken, the daughter looked puzzled and explained. “He went to work. He’ll be back at supper time.”

    This would have been before career Barbie became a trend and Barbie became the most glamorous professional on the planet.

  361. Swales*

    My grandfather was a biochemist at a big university, where he had a laboratory. My father, as a child, assumed this was the norm: everyone’s dad has a lab. That’s where dads go all day. I think a small part of him is still a little disappointed that when he became a dad, he did not receive a dad-lab of his own.

    1. Swales*

      Oh! And I just remembered one of my own childhood misconceptions: my mom did a lot of volunteer work with the PTA at school, and I knew PTA was “Parent-Teacher Association” and that they planned stuff together like bake sales and field days. I assumed that the other place where my mom did volunteer work was more or less the same– it was a bigger building and it wasn’t attached to a school, so probably it was where, like, LOTS of parents from different schools get together to plan EVEN BIGGER bake sales and truly MASSIVE multi-school field days. I mean, why would they call it “Planned Parenthood” if it’s not where parents go to plan things?

  362. Mermaid of the Lunacy*

    I loved to write fiction when I was a tween. All the protagonists in my books had parents who were “marine biologists” because I didn’t know many job titles and I thought that sounded really smart. Never mind that all the stories took place in the Midwest and nowhere near a coast.

  363. CurlyGiHRl*

    My mom worked as the head secretary for a group of doctors. As a kid, I remember watching her fix things like the classic 1980s Cheese Ball and, my personal favorite, a fruit pizza to take in to work. Whenever I would inquire why she was bringing in the tasty treat, she would explain that they were having a party for fill-in-the-blank reason. None of the reason’s given ever sounded party-worth to me, so I just remember thinking that all offices just like to throw parties so they can eat yummy food that no one gets at home. At one point (during my pre-teen sassiness) I remember commenting “Oh, another party; someone must have sharpened a pencil!”

  364. Reb*

    I thought workplaces would be very, very strict. In my first real* job, I had to clean a piece of kitchen equipment. The guy training me took a clean cloth to test wipe it with and it came back with a smudge. I was so sure this guy was going to yell at me, and was rather surprised when he just nodded and said “good.” I didn’t know how to react. I pointed out the smudge in confusion and he explained that that’s as clean as the thing gets.

    *real as in not employed by family

  365. The OG Fluffy Orange Menace*

    I am a cyber analyst for the DoD. I’ve been doing this for 25+ years. I recently found out my kids thought–and told their friends and teachers for years– that I was “a secretary” because I sat at a computer and typed all day.

  366. WheresMyPen*

    I always thought that you’d get the job and just be expected to know what to do. I actually really worried about it before my first office job, thinking I’d just be plonked at a desk with a pile of work and should know how to do it. If I do talks with students I always mention that they shouldn’t panic, they’ll be taught what to do (at least if it’s a decent company).

    On a similar vein, when I got my first office-based internship, I thought I’d just be sat watching people do their jobs over their shoulder. It didn’t occur to me that I’d actually get my own desk and computer and have my own tasks to do!

  367. KellyforBrickwork*

    Many of these are funny and relatable. My beliefs were more serious:
    – all jobs (including doctor, lawyer, etc.) paid just enough to support a lower-middle-class life, give or take a few thousand dollars. People who had more than the basics were either: spending beyond their means, had saved for decades, or denied themselves other necessities.
    – you were supposed to give 100% at your job selflessly and not ask for anything in return, including wages. Expressing a desire for compensation, respect, and so on was a ‘what’s in it for me’ attitude, the essence of a bad work ethic.

    To avoid/delay such a rotten existence I stayed in academia all the way through a PhD, never thinking about a career or career path. I was in my early 40s, after degree, by the time I realized my beliefs were inaccurate. Sure, I inevitably acquired some skills, but it was haphazard and not really deliberate. Turns out that my avoidance has led me to lower-paying, disappointing work. Irony!

  368. LibraryAnne*

    I know that as a child, I was under the impression that “poor” people didn’t have jobs. If you had a job, you weren’t “poor.” My understanding of the word “poor” meant unhoused, completely disabled (ex: blind), or starving. So, hearing my father say, “Get a job!” to someone holding their hand out on the street was actually reasonable. I.. uh.. obviously don’t agree with that now. Dad and I did not agree politically for the last 20 or so years.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      I think I also assumed that poor meant unemployed when I was a child, because…well, living in a country where the unemployment rate approached 20%, anybody who had a job was doing better than a significant portion of the country.

      But “get a job” would have seemed utterly bizarre to me as a child because the idea of a job being something you could just “get” rather than something you were pretty lucky to have just wouldn’t have been in my conception of the world. My assumption was that if you could get a job without having to emigrate, you were pretty lucky.

      The only reason the unemployment rate wasn’t even higher was the numbers that were leaving the country – apparently nearly half a million left Ireland in the first decade of my life…and the population of Ireland at the time was about 3.5 million. So yeah, if they’d all stayed you’d have been talking probably a 30% unemployment rate.

  369. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

    I worked in the school cafeteria when I was in fifth grade. I signed up to do it again in sixth and wasn’t selected (although a friend who’s name I had submitted did work the next year). It wasn’t until I was in college that my mom told me that the reason I didn’t work the second year was that my dad had been unemployed when I was in fifth grade but was working again the next year. If I hadn’t been working, I would have been one of the ones in line getting a free lunch, and my parents thought it would be better if I worked for it.
    I recall being told that dad was having a really difficult time selling life insurance to families who were having difficulty keeping food on the table. As my dad was an Engineer who worked in Aerospace, I could see how he was neurodiverse enough to not be successful as a salesman of anything.
    It must have been that same year when I came home from school one day and discovered my “old coin” collection was gone. My mom said she’d spent the coins (for food?). I vaguely recall rejecting her offer to pay me back (on next payday?), and didn’t look at the date on a coin again for at least a decade.

  370. Blue Gecko*

    My dad ran a small manufacturing business when I was a kid and was “President and CEO.” As a child I naturally thought that meant he was THE President and was confused when the Clinton/Bush race happened in the early 90’s, since my dad was already President!

  371. Pdweasel*

    Up until about age 10, I had simply assumed that men who worked in offices had to wear suits and ties and carry briefcases. That was the uniform and the Only Way.

    Cue much consternation when my dad (who’d freelanced and worked from home and/or taught at community college all my childhood) took a job in an office and left for work wearing a polo shirt and slacks, and carrying a messenger bag.

  372. Mmmmmarianne*

    When I was growing up, my parents always talked about ‘adult’ stuff with the entire family (two parents, three kids). One day, my dad was talking about a co-worker of his who was probably going to get fired. I had heard this term before in other conversations, and always thought it meant the person was thrown into a fire pit. I was probably around 7 years old, when I told my parents how awful that was; they were kind of surprised at the empathy level of a young kid, until I explained what I really thought it meant. They had a great laugh about that one., and I was very relieved that I would be saved from the burning pit if I was ever in a situation where I was fired!

  373. iglwif*

    I am a faculty brat (bio dad was a tenured professor, mom never finished her PhD dissertation but was at various times across my childhood & adolescence a sessional instructor, adult ESL teacher, MMus student and TA, and Cont Ed instructor) so all my ideas about work and workplace norms came from academia. It’s not just that my parents were faculty folks, it was also that most of their friends (i.e., the adults I knew) were too, and they belonged to the Faculty Babysitting Swap at our local university so I was even babysat by professors and professors’ spouses. (This was the 1970s and early 1980s, so it was mostly but not exclusively professors’ wives.) The working adults I knew who weren’t university instructors were largely librarians or teachers.

    I believed, for instance, that everyone had a department secretary (the one in my father’s department was called Charlotte and she knew how to do EVERYTHING), that it was usual to have both an office at work and an office at home, and that carrying a briefcase was pretty much required, and that sabbatical years and very long summer breaks (end of April through beginning of September) were normal.

  374. Pandabur*

    I wanted to be a bank teller when I was in 2nd grade because I thought you got to keep the money at the end of the night. Nevermind most of the time, people come into the bank to withdrawal money…

  375. coffee-waffle*

    I deeply believed as a child that Professor of Paranormal Research was a job I could someday have, and it was indeed my goal in life for a very long time – until a bout of nightmares at age 11 made my dad set me straight about the differences between Stephen King novels and like….life.

  376. F P*

    I don’t know if this is weird but I once was told by a teacher in high school that work was much easier then school. You don’t have to do term papers, you don’t have to study for tests, you don’t have to do readings, and you don’t have to worry about homework. In all honesty in a perfect world this would be perfect but it took several major mistakes and being threatened to be fired that this wasn’t the case. If you don’t do the job you are supposed to do you could get fired. Also you don’t get by on talent you often have to do what the employers want even if you don’t like what they ask.

  377. Harriet Vane*

    My brother was developmentally disabled, and he used to come stay with me a lot, back in the halcyon days when my husband and I both worked as journalists for a flourishing daily newspaper. It turns out that it’s kind of hard to tell someone with limited understanding of the world of work exactly what journalism is. Therefore, my bro used to tell everyone we typed, with an unmistakable air of pride. My brother died two years ago, and though I don’t work at a newspaper anymore, I do work as a writer and editor. And still, whenever someone asks me what I do, the first thing I think of saying is, “I type for a living.”

  378. Vio*

    I had so many misconceptions. Firstly I believed that everybody hated work except Bosses. My parents both worked a lot of hours and (while I didn’t understand it at the time) were both overworked, unappreciated and underpaid. They never told me that they hated their jobs (in fact I much later learned that they didn’t) but from the complaints I overheard I got the impression that they did. Some teachers at school also let slip the occasional complaints and I often heard friends of my parents share their grumblings. So it was obvious, work was an unpleasant thing that nobody wanted to do but everybody had to do. The fact that I was later diagnosed with lifelong depression probably also contributed to my assumptions.

    Also as a child when I first heard “hourly wage” I thought it meant that people actually got paid every hour, like you’d work for an hour and be handed money, work another hour and another handful of cash…

  379. Irish Teacher.*

    Not really wrong for the time and place I grew up in, but I had no concept of a world where getting a job was to be expected. I remember being about 9 and our teacher asking about what we’d wish for if we had three wishes and the only thing I could think of was that I’d get a teaching job when I grew up.

    And I wasn’t worried that I might not getting the points for teaching (I don’t think I had any concept of failing to get into the degree course of your choice at that age). It was because I was living in a country that had been in recession all my life with something like 20% unemployment and so much emigration that people spoke of how Ireland’s greatest export was its people and how people were “raising their children for export.”

Comments are closed.