what’s a secret about your field that would surprise outsiders to hear?

by Alison Green on April 10, 2025

For the Thursday “ask the readers,” what’s a secret about your field that would surprise outsiders to hear?

Spill the beans in the comment section. (Make sure to specify your industry!)

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  1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

    I can’t wait for the comments.

    Not my current industry, but a past one: truck brokerage. If people knew how much money was thrown around moving freight around the country, they’d be horrified. And then to know how many middlemen there are- the freight brokers- and how much mark up there is because of them? Much worse. And the industry is so bonkers, I literally Googled, “Is truck brokerage legal?” my first week working in it. It seems like a scam and the behavior of so many people in the industry appalling.

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    2. Parenthesis Guy*

      Do you think that self-driving trucks will help remove some of the middlemen and reduce costs of freight?

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      1. Rotating Username*

        They can’t get self-driving cars safe enough not to kill people. Unless the country continues to be run by Fox News commentators, self-driving trucks are not happening.

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        1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          If they could get the self driving trucks to be safer than a human, the trucking industry would jump all over it. One of the really unsettling things from my second trucking company was how against they were for “nuclear settlements” in trucking accidents- ie: payouts of over $10 million. Of course the company wouldn’t want to be liable for that sort of money. However, it seemed so inhumane- if someone is injured in an accident- paralyzed or has long term health consequences- $10 million isn’t going to be enough to cover a life time of care. If they thought self driving trucks could lower the chances of those payouts, they’d probably jump on it. But until that happens, no- it’s not going to happen.

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          1. Beyond the sea*

            My husband used to work in Trucking Insurance and I promise you they would. Many times, anyone who gets into any kind of accident with a truck sues. Even if its not the truck’s fault. My husband has seen the at fault driver get paid thousands just bc its a truck. He has also seen some terrible accident photos when it was clearly the trucks fault. As a result he is very cautious around trucks and often tells me what blind spots (On the truck) to avoid while driving.

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            1. Anon for this*

              Me too – about the blind spots. I was raised by a personal injury attorney (his firm defended the insurance companies). I do not linger on the right side of any large truck because – in my father’s words – THEY CANNOT SEE YOU. I also cannot get into a car without immediately putting on my seat belt (I’m 61).

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              1. Mari*

                My Dad trained me to make sure I could see both headlights of the truck in my rear view mirror before I would get in front of them when passing. I’m always amazed when I see a short little car move in with only a three foot gap.

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                1. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

                  Mine taught me that I have to see their bumper in the mirror, if not actual road before I pull in front of them. Also that if I can’t see the driver’s face in his side mirror, then he can’t see me. He drove logging trucks in college and made darn sure his kids knew the etiquette.

                2. 2 Cents*

                  What drivers do in front of trucks on the highway is insane. I live on Long Island and am amazed at how many near misses there are. Why would you pull out/cut off a vehicle that outweighs yours by 10x!?

              2. Old Bag*

                I work for a PI firm and my husband is one of those chronic no-seatbelt people. Can you imagine the anxiety it gives me? Oh and I do intake so I hear all the horror stories fresh and first hand.

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            2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

              I’d be hella careful around a truck for two reasons:

              1) The truck is always going to inflict more damage on my car than mine would on it, even if I were at fault.

              2) When I quit the industry in 2021, they were HEAVILY promoting dash cams- not just one on the dash, but I knew truckers who had six or more on their trucks. If I were ever in an accident in one, I’d fully expect to have video of the whole thing and it used against me.

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              1. Spicy Tuna*

                Counterpoint! I live in a wildly corrupt city (way too long to get into). I had a dispute with the 3rd party trash haulers the city has a contract with. In retaliation, they drove their truck onto my property, taking out my internet, damaging my fence and nearly killing a guy I had doing landscaping. When I contacted the company, they said they had no dash cams. I then contacted the head of sanitation, who said they had no dash cams. I then contacted a city commissioner who said that dash cams were a requirement for a contract with the city. I obtained said dash cam footage and got my fence repaired

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              2. Disappointed with the Staff*

                These days the cams are affordable. I put 8 on my house truck (~10T, 40m3) because an 8-channel DVR was easy to get. That covers not just the ground around the truck but also the top at both ends so I could see what I’m about to hit. That thing could record ~100 hours from all 8 cameras at 1080p60 or 1440p30 so I bought 1440p cameras with good low light performance and just run them all the time, running or parked.

                They solve a lot of problems. Normally people see the footage and decide it’s not worth arguing that the camera lies :)

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            3. IainC*

              My philosophy around lorries is “Let the Wookie win”, and for the same logic as explained to C3PO.

              It doesn’t matter if you were right, you still get your limbs ripped off.

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          2. constant_craving*

            I don’t know about trucks specifically, but in general self-driving vehicles already are safer than human drivers. Which is not to safe that they’re perfectly safe, but they are relatively safer.

            MY BIL works in this industry, and it’s a pretty major ethical dilemma. Is it ok to release something that’s not perfectly safe when it would factually save more lives than would be risked?

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                1. Library Dragon*

                  Depends on the tech. Sight only Teslas are not safer, they just aren’t. They have too many faults.
                  LIDAR based tech like Waymos are better than bad or even just ok drivers under ideal conditions. There are still some serious issues though, like view distance, that create more hard stops and unpredictable behavior.

            2. Opaline*

              I think the bigger question around self-driving vehicles is going to end up being legal liability. If you’re hit by a rogue truck and seriously injured, you sue the trucker or, by extension, the truck company employing them. But if you’re hit by a self-driving vehicle, who’s responsible? The trucking company that owns it? The company that made the truck? The IT consultants the truck manufacturer hired to program the automatic navigation software?

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                1. Boof*

                  yeah sadly the answer is “who has the deepest pockets we can get into” not “who actually has any responsibility /made a mistake here”

            3. Disappointed with the Staff*

              They’re safer than humans driving cars, where they can be used. But that’s a very low bar.

              Compared to buses or trains the deaths per passenger-mile are atrocious. The real safety solution is getting people to stop driving cars (and “trucks”) everywhere for silly reasons. Strong Towns is a movement that’s trying to explain that cars are a problem that’s part of a vicious circle of problems that are bankrupting cities.

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            4. Oniya*

              I have seen video of a self-driving Tesla (no LIDAR, just cameras, because Edgy Manchild thinks LIDAR is lame) getting fooled by a Wile E. Coyote-style ‘road painting’. Went right through that styrofoam wall without slowing down.

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              1. Timothy (TRiG)*

                Probably Mark Rober’s recent video. Mark’s a smart guy who knows his stuff (former NASA engineer), but his videos have been getting more and more clickbaity of late, and this particular video has been criticized a lot. Some of those criticisms are from Tesla fanboys, some are politically motivated, but some may be legitimate.

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          3. Elizabeth West*

            The ONLY way I can see this working is if the trucks have a dedicated road to themselves so there is no chance of veering into another lane. This would cost way more money than anyone is willing to spend.

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            1. Wendy Darling*

              Yeah, I’m fairly certain that if we could magically eliminate all humans from an equation self-driving vehicles would be safer than humans *right now* — every object on the road would be behaving predictably.

              But as soon as you throw humans into it you have to handle all kinds of totally irrational behavior, so it gets way harder.

              Also at the point where self-driving trucks have dedicated self-driving-truck-only roads, I think that might just be trains.

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                1. zuzu*

                  I’ve seen the kangaroo catchers some of y’all put on your trucks.

                  What are kangaroos made of???

                2. Cherry Sours*

                  In the U.S. our animal to fear while driving is deer…particularly between a month after planting until harvest. I’ve accidently injured 1 (looking at deer coming out of the forest and not noting the one directly in front of my car), and likely ended lives of two others. I had a friend who couldn’t stop quickly enough to avoid the one crossing in front of him. He took his vehicle in for repairs, and a few days later he’d driving and one runs into the side of the engine compartment. Paybacks, perhaps, for earlier that week?

                1. stratospherica*

                  But if we had trains, my investment fund bros and I would not get a cut, and also I would be forced to… gasp! be around The Poors!

              2. Dogwoodblossom*

                God yes. Every time I hear somebody yammer on about self-driving technology I’m just like “The solution to this problem is trains.”

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                2. I Have RBF*

                  There is a reason that the stocks I invest in are railroads. The cost per ton-mile is less for train vs truck. A study by the Congressional Budget Office found that moving cargo by rail costs about 5.1 cents per ton-mile, compared to 15.6 cents per ton-mile by truck. But while train is cheaper, it is generally slower. This is why most vendors use trucks for the “last mile” delivery.

                3. Nightengale*

                  I love trains and we definitely should have more of them. But trains alone are not the solution of needing to move me and items I cannot carry all the way to a train station and load onto a train. And a lot of my trips are short.
                  As I age and my mobility is likely to decrease further, it would be really helpful to be able to order up something self-driving either door-to-door or at least from home to the train.

              3. Elizabeth West*

                Haha EXACTLY!

                It would be great to have more tracks, so we can have high-speed passenger rail. Right now, the freight trains share with the passenger trains, and freight gets precedence. Ugh. If we had separate things, the freight could just go by itself. Everything would speed up.

                I can take a train to St. Louis, but it takes a day and a half. Even to go to Philadelphia from here takes six flipping hours!

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            3. Mockingjay*

              The way forward (haha) is to embed tracking strips in all roads and make all vehicles pilotless. Vehicles will travel set speeds and merges will be automatic – your car slots into the next available space. Lanes can be set aside for trucks and heavier traffic for safety.

              Of course, this takes the fun out of driving because you won’t be – driving. (To be honest, I love driving.) But with billions of vehicles on the road world-wide, human driving skills are not up to par to manage concentrated traffic that’s only getting worse, not to mention road infrastructure that is always behind capacity. The technology isn’t to scale yet, but it exists.

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              1. Elizabeth West*

                Hell yeah, then I can sit there and read. Just think, you wouldn’t be late to work if you wanted to drive in because the automatic thingy would manage all the traffic.

                We could still have highway driving (at least for a while) and have this in cities. And we could set it to measure your vehicle and divert it if the clearance isn’t high enough. Just think, no more Storrowing! ;)

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              2. Sack of Benevolent Trash Marsupials*

                This scares me unless you change all cars so that no one can sit in a seat that has an accessible/working brake pedal (this is probably what you mean by pilotless). I have been on a track in a car wash being pulled along in neutral and been terrified because the person in front of me kept putting on their brake so I was getting closer and closer to colliding with their rear bumper. Fortunately I didn’t collide with them because of course there was someone being pulled along right behind me and had I braked, there would have been a chain reaction of low speed collision.

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            4. Middle Managing Cog*

              Hm. Cargo vehicles with a dedicated road.

              Don’t we have those, and aren’t they called “trains?”

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        2. Guacamole Bob*

          The long-haul portions of interstate highway truck routes are probably among the easier self-driving vehicle problems to solve. We’re a pretty long way from a truck being able to drive itself on busy surface streets but I can imagine that automation could come in stages where a person drives the truck to the highway, it drives itself hundreds of miles and then picks up a human driver for the end of the route.

          Not happening tomorrow, certainly, but it’s not necessarily all or nothing.

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          1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

            I’m in a pretty good size midwestern city and while I see plenty of Teslas about, there aren’t any actual self driving cars here. I’m not even sure anyone’s even proposed it here, so the legalities of it are super-questionable. Just because something’s happening in one area doesn’t mean it’s going to be adopted very quickly. At the very least, each state is going to have to approve their use and therefore, adoption is going to be held up there. And then it might come down to counties/cities/etc. Also, self driving cars aren’t priced to the average consumer yet, so adoption is going to have to rely on them getting a hell of a lot cheaper, which doesn’t seem feasible for awhile.

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          2. Richard Hershberger*

            Unless the tech has changed since I stopped paying attention, these self-driving cars depend on expensively detailed and constantly updated mapping. Which is to say, this tech only works in dense and wealthy areas. This is not scalable. I also notice that attempts to move this tech into areas with winter still seem not to go anywhere. Finally, even with the mapping, cars get stuck and need to be unstuck via driving by call center. I again don’t see this scaling up. As a demonstration, that call center will be well staffed with highly trained personnel. How likely is that to hold up? Also, cell tower dead zones. What we have is an interesting niche product. I don’t see it becoming widespread.

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            1. Usually Lurking*

              One of the major challenges with implementing self-driving vehicles is actually fleet turnover. If every vehicle on the road were self-driving, it would likely work, at least in areas where there aren’t a lot of pedestrians or bicycles. But when you have a few self-driving vehicles mixed in with human-driven vehicles that don’t behave in completely predictable ways, it’s a lot more complicated.

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          3. Harpo*

            I’m in Phoenix and we have them all over. I use them from time to time when I have a doctor’s appointment and know I won’t be in shape to drive afterwards. we also have self driving pizza delivery, which have big googly eyes and are pretty cute.

            https://images.app.goo.gl/xXt7mC7hwG6XRyZKA

            I have heard from friends (but can’t verify this) that they are all over campus, but that scooters are named because the human riders have had too many accidents.

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          4. Living with cars*

            As someone who lives in a city with them, we get to see first hand how they hold up traffic when they fritz because they can’t turn onto a non existent street, can’t navigate some traffic cones, kill pedestrians, etc. Right now they just aren’t there yet and my city is a very very easy city to navigate, but throw in any factor that is outside of a perfectly black and white box and things don’t go as well. They are coming but I would rather we actually make sure the kinks are worked out before we allow the rollout to continue.

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            1. IainC*

              The question shouldn’t be “do they never kill pedestrians?” because there will also be idiots looking in their phone with headphones on who just step into the road.

              It should be “do they kill significantly fewer?”. My gut says Yes, and you hear about all the incidents. And about very few piloted ones

              Dog bites Man Vs Man bites Dog.

              I am sceptical for different reasons – snow, non-grid cities outside north America, etc. But they could be a great mode in large inches like long haul. (Yes, trains. But they work because they don’t go between everywhere and everywhere.)

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        4. Quill*

          Yeah, also the self driving car experiments have been focused on passenger vehicles. There are completely different tolerances and safety practices for trucks, which is why they require a separate license!

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        5. mkaibear*

          >They can’t get self-driving cars safe enough not to kill people

          This is just not true.

          Waymo, for example, analysed 25.3 million auto-driven miles and published the study – it came out at 88% reduction in property damage claims and 92% reduction in injuries over human drivers.

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          1. ConlanMetalRose*

            The problem with this analysis, in my opinion, is that it was limited to 4 cities for Waymo: San Francisco, Phoenix, LA, and Austin. Regardless of the miles, I don’t think that is a large enough sample size to generalize that across the country for the reasons identified in other posts. So I’m skeptical still, but Waymo and Cruise, to my knowledge, aren’t even available where I live (East Coast), whether the taxi or the commercial side.

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            1. allathian*

              Climate’s a big one. Self-driving cars can work in good weather in a warm climate, but it’ll be a while before they are reliable and safe on snowy and icy roads where the smallest problem is that you/the car can’t see the lane markings.

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        7. Christine*

          The Waymo cars in San Francisco are AMAZING! Don’t write off computer-controlled cars. From my direct observations, they are the way of the future.

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          1. Another SF resident*

            Agree Waymo here is GREAT. I live in Potrero Hill, which was an early testing ground, and ten years ago they all sucked – twitchy, thrown by nearly everything, could not navigate four way stops. Now they are great, and behave very predictably and normally. The tech is nearly there.

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      2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        Well, self driving trucks will mean that it’s all middlemen and no drivers. Or significantly less drivers. That’s going to be a long time coming though- you’re going to basically only have them in rural areas and/or highways and not on street driving. And I hesitate to think of what the liability insurance is going to cost (the courts will have to figure out who’s at fault for an accident and who has to pay any damages). The current system is so entrenched, I don’t see it changing anytime soon, if only because the truck lobby is pretty strong and pretty MAGA at the moment. (Remember all the trucker protests in 2020 and Trump having a truck at the White House.) Plus, the fossil fuel industry would like a word, since those self driving trucks tend to be electric.

        The below isn’t an article about truck brokerage per se, but it’s about the trucking industry and a lot of the goings on in the article didn’t surprise me, given what I had been told about other companies in the industry.

        https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/

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      3. BatManDan*

        No, because that’s not where the markup is. Keep in mind, the industry may not want to “solve” the logistics “problem,” because to them, it’s not a problem.

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        1. Purple Hair, Don't Care!*

          I also worked for a truck brokerage and it is one of the most cut throat industries I’ve ever worked in. So much money thrown around and so much mark up. Its totally insane. For the record i also looked it up to see if it was legal. Its a wild world in that industry. I only lasted 10 months then quit due to sheer burn out.

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          1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

            I lasted almost 5 years- probably because I was at a tiny company and not one of the big players that are particularly buckwild. It was such a disheartening job- probably 98% of my time was spent calling trucking companies and hearing some variation of, “No.” No, no way, hell no, fuck no, stop calling here. At a certain point, I’d couldn’t take it anymore and it took me a year and a half to find a new job. The coworkers were nice; the industry was awful. I’d go home crying every night. And I was paid hourly- if I had worked on commission, I wouldn’t have lasted a week.

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      4. commensally*

        Honestly? We essentially already have self-driving freight in this country; what we’ve learned is that in order to be safe you need specially prepared infrastructure for the self-driving part of the route, and you still need humans for the beginning and the end and to take over in emergencies. This is called trains; once the infrastructure is in place they’re safer and cheaper than trucks, but even they are honestly still working on figuring out how much you can reduce the human oversight without stuff going very wrong. (it’s not as much as one would hope.)

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        2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          Mass transit and mass freight movement are a different beast all together. We move a lot by rail- probably way more than people think. If we built out the infrastructure to move more people and freight by rail, we’d be much better off. But we won’t.

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        3. Parenthesis Guy*

          Yes, I’m aware that our train system is designed primarily to support freight instead of people and fully agree that’ll go automated before trucks.

          I do think that automating trucks will have a larger impact than automating trains, simply due to the fact that trucks are a larger part of shipping than trains and trucks require more drivers than trains. Your average train just has larger capacity.

          Not saying it’ll happen tomorrow, just asking what’ll happen when it does happen.

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          1. JB*

            You seem to think that the driver is the significant cost-driver here. That’s just not the case. They’re one of the lowest costs involved.

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          2. commensally*

            No, I’m saying freight trains are already basically fully automated. They don’t call it “self-driving” in the press because in the train industry it’s not a profitable buzzword because they’ve been doing it for decades, and the main AI industry doesn’t want to be associated with trains, that are old and boring.. But all long-distance freight train drivers need to do these days, basically, is stay awake in case of emergencies and be there when the train stops and starts. It’s a solved technology for trains.

            Unfortunately, paying someone to be awake in case of emergencies isn’t actually that much cheaper than paying them to drive the train – and actually a harder job, because being constantly on alert with nothing to do for sixteen hours is harder than staying focused on driving. The main cost factor of staff on trains these days is actually the scheduling hiccups caused by needing to have the staff where the train is for shift changes. (And that’s mostly only the problem it is because they insist on using bad AI for just-in-time minimal staffing – it would be cheaper to just pay enough staff to be well-staffed but paying for staff looks worse to your investors than losing business because of delays.)

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      5. Lenora Rose*

        It might change insurance, per below, but I can say the cost of the *drivers* is minimal compared to everything else middlemen add in. And they do all they can to keep it as low as they can.

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      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        I, very fortunately, very rarely had to deal with customs and that was for truck freight. Everything about that whole thing would probably make my hair turn gray.

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    4. Annie*

      Are you talking moving van lines? All I know is when I moved half way across the country, it’s bonkers expensive, and yes, there was a separate company from the one I contacted that actually did the moving. And it took forever to do. It was a complicated mess.

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      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        No, commercial freight. I don’t know how that industry works, but I hope it’s less crazy than commercial freight. It’s probably worse, just because you’re dealing with business to consumer (ie: a business to a lay person) whereas most of the time, I dealt with business to business. Now, does that mean that everyone involved knew the challenges of the industry? Absolutely not. But I’m sure that it’s different when you, as a person who has flown across the country to meet your truck at your new house, finds out they’re still three days out due to mechanical problems, DOT hour limits, etc. vs. the receiving office at a manufacturing plant who is used to dealing with deliveries and delays all the time.

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    5. Lemons*

      I dated a scumbag who did brokerage for TQL, he would delight in hectoring drivers into doing illegal overtime, convincing them to not even record that overtime (aka not get paid), and going on routes they didn’t want to do. He’d be proud that he got someone to accept a route even though it meant they would now be missing something important at home. Like he would genuinely brag to me about these things. Yuck.

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      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        Yeah, in this town, if anyone knows anything about truck brokerage, it’s because of TQL. And they have a *terrible* reputation. I once went to an urgent care and the nurse practitioner asked me what I did. When I said truck brokerage, they winced. I asked if they knew someone in truck brokerage and they replied, “Yeah- me. I hated it so bad I went to school to become a nurse practitioner.”

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    6. Logistics Aren't Logical*

      I’m on the other side in logistics for a company so I book the trucks and work with brokers. Can second that it’s completely bananas and there are soooooo many things that people don’t think about until they’re in it. (This job was an unplanned sideways pivot but I have stories that will make your jaw drop.)

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    7. Heffalump*

      I don’t know if the LW on “Is it ever OK to ask to talk to a customer’s manager?” post is in truck brokerage, but she did say her company provides transportation services.

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      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        I just looked it up- if I had to guess, the LW in that letter is probably at a massive trucking company and deals with the actual freight movement (dispatching drivers, arranging for warehousing, etc). Beth is probably the broker. I can believe Beth would be a nightmare- I tried to be pleasant and realize that stressing everyone out in the situation wouldn’t help, but I know that isn’t the case for everyone. In this scenario, Beth was probably getting yelled at by the customer for the freight not arriving in a timely fashion and Beth was putting the screws to the trucking company.

        I always worked with the understanding that, as the middleman, I was never going to know 100% the truth of what was going on with the trucks. There were any number of very valid, very legitimate reasons for a load to be late (pick up times/appointments; DOT hour restrictions; mechanical failures; weather; etc) but then there were sometimes that it wasn’t a good excuse (hi, see the time a driver just abandoned a trailer of perishable goods because he didn’t want to wait for his appointment at the grocery warehouse). If the customer is stressed, it does me absolutely no good to pass that on to the dispatcher and the driver- the driver doesn’t work for me (even though I’m paying him), so he has no incentive to do anything I ask. The dispatcher is in the same boat I am- the driver may work for him, but the driver is in Kalamazoo and the dispatcher is in Bowling Green, so there aren’t any good consequences to the driver behaving badly. I just always tried to handle things professionally. Tried being the operative word- I lost my shit on occasion.

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    8. Reluctant Mezzo*

      Former nurse’s aide. There are some patients who are mean and whom we do not like! Yes, we will answer their buzzes. Yes, we will clean them up. Yes, we will do our best to help save their lives. But if it’s a tie between Mr. Nicely and Ms. Awful, guess which one we’re going to answer first.

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    9. IainC*

      If it helps, the company I work for is releasing a product this year which will heavily disrupt this sector. (No, not a start up which noone will ever use).

      If they pull it off, it will be amazing. And a “why didn’t they do this years ago?” kind of thing

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  2. Potato Potato*

    As a software developer, how much of my day is spent talking to other human beings. Requirements meetings, review meetings, team meetings, daily “stand up” meetings, company-wide meetings, planning meetings, etc. I would love to fulfill the stereotype of a coder who sits behind their screen and churns out software, but alas the higher ups have other ideas.

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    1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      Ha! True. Part of the reason I found out dev work wasn’t my preferred role was because there was so many meetings about work before you could do it.

      I much prefer ‘don’t care how you do it just fix the darn thing now’.

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      1. 48 hours*

        “ I much prefer ‘don’t care how you do it just fix the darn thing now”

        That seems like a recipe for disaster, TBH

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    2. Potato Potato*

      Oh also- just bc I’m good at one thing that uses computers, it doesn’t mean I know how to do other things that use computers. Trust me, you don’t want me trying to fix yours.

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      1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        Do you have a ‘no I won’t fix your computer!’ mug?

        Unless someone’s home computer has a database acting up I’m not getting involved with it. Me and hardware have the same relationship I do to my cat: If I go near it when it’s in a pissy mood I’m liable to end up scratched.

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        1. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

          I read “cat” as “car” and wondered if your car was haunted by your mother (like the ancient TV show My Mother the Car).

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          1. Elsewhere*

            Ancient? I watched My Mother the Car during its original broadcast on NBC. Sure, it’s old, but it ain’t graeco-roman!

            Is it?

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            1. Your Local Password Resetter*

              Apparently it’s original run was in 1965. By TV show standards that is indeed ancient. Unless you watched a rerun, you’ve already reached retirement age.

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              1. Old Lady at Large*

                I watched the original run when I was a kid because my dad liked it; I also watched the original run of Star Trek for the same reason.

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        3. wham*

          Agreed – just because I write iOS apps for a living doesn’t mean I know why your phone is broken and it certainly doesn’t mean I can fix some random app on your iPad that I’ve never used before.

          Luckily, my mom has become default tech support in our extended family, due to many years at a small company covering the duties of office manager / facilities / IT.

          Reply ↓
            1. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

              I used to be a nice guy and try to fix stuff until….

              My late wife and I were over at a friend’s house. Said friend was a wonderful cook. However, they had asked me to take a look at their computer, so I did. Windows Me. Full of viruses. Full of crapware.

              Everyone else enjoyed a lovely dinner, while I was stuck at the d*mn computer. That was my breaking point and I said “Never again”.

              The only people who get IT from me are my daughters and my (clueless) sister. Thank the FSM my GF can either handle it, or has her own IT person.

              Reply ↓
                1. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

                  Yes, it was. Which is why I will not work on anyone’s computer anymore. I have a boundary, and I enforce it now. I’m much happier, too.

              2. Elizabeth West*

                Hm, I would have said, “This will take a while; do you want me to take it with me?” and then enjoyed my dinner.

                Reply ↓
      4. Selina Luna*

        I actually did train to fix computers, but I haven’t done so in over a decade. Please don’t ask me to fix your computer.

        Reply ↓
      5. JustaTech*

        In college everyone learned very quickly *not* to ask the Computer Science majors for help with a computer that was acting up – their idea of “helping” usually involved installing Linux “because it’s better”.

        You were much better off asking around rather than relying on someone’s major.

        Reply ↓
      6. amoeba*

        Hah, yeah, my Computer Science friend is seriously horrible at, well, using everyday software. He can’t even navigate social media properly, and using MS Office is a nightmare. (I guess it’s easier now that he can ask ChatGPT for help, hah.)
        He’s actually pretty good at fixing computers, though!

        Reply ↓
    3. Snarkus Aurelius*

      Was Silicon Valley realistic then? I assumed it was because that’s what Mike Judge did before Beavis and Butthead.

      Reply ↓
      1. They Might Be a Giant*

        my friend is a chemist. he couldn’t bear to watch Breaking Bad because the chemistry in the show was too inaccurate.

        I’m a software engineer who has worked for startups. I couldn’t bear to watch Silicon Valley because the tech culture was too accurate

        Reply ↓
        1. Mantic Re*

          Interesting back when I was in Chem grad school the first season was incredibly popular with my cohort! Guess it depends on the chemist!

          Reply ↓
        2. GovernerdsUnited*

          My husband is a chemist! He loves the show, and has said they purposefully messed up the chemistry so viewers wouldn’t be able to make the real stuff based on instructions from the show.

          Reply ↓
          1. WeirdChemist*

            Yep, hydrofluoric acid wouldn’t do crap to dissolve a body… I do know some things that would work better though :)

            Also reminds me of a former professor who proclaimed that the best way to get an effective decongestant these days was to buy meth and turn it back into cold medicine lmao

            Reply ↓
            1. I Have RBF*

              Not far from wrong, IMO. You can only get a 10 day supply, in person, of a decongestant that actually works (pseudoephedrine). The phenylephrine was the “replacement” for pseudoephedrine foisted on us when the FDA and DEA made pseudoephedrine restricted to pharmacy sale and stupidly limited quantities. Phenylephrine actually has worse side effects that pseudoephedrine, and doesn’t even actually work when taken orally. *grumble*

              Reply ↓
              1. amoeba*

                Oh, that reminds me of the kg of pseudoephedrine we found in the chemical cupboard during my postdoc… My PI had apparently taken that from his former position, and it wasn’t recorded anywhere in our inventory. I guess it was his nest egg in case funding ran out, lol!

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          2. Lenora Rose*

            That actually makes sense, unlike the usual reasons they screw up science in a show (threw out the research because “Cool Idea” sounded better to them, especially when half the time “cool idea” is actually a common tv cliche they don’t want to let go of, and the real science would be more fun. Admittedly, the other half the time, the cool idea really is cooler than the real world version of waiting months to hear back on some lab results with heavy margins of error.)

            Reply ↓
          3. AF Vet*

            Sale reason military uniforms always have an error on TV. Civilians don’t know, but military do. It’s a great way to easily out someone who hasn’t earned the uniform.

            Reply ↓
        3. JustaTech*

          I’m an immunologist and I once leapt off my couch to scream at an episode of Fringe “That’s not how memory B cells work!”
          Memory B cells are the cells that hang out waiting for you to catch something again and then make antibodies against it.
          They do not in any way shape or form carry *thought* memories.

          Reply ↓
          1. Gentle Reader*

            Was Fringe the show that depicted a giant virus as a gooey blob? I said, “No, viruses are crystalline!” and lost interest in the show. (I worked in biological research for years.)

            Reply ↓
            1. JustaTech*

              Probably? It was also hilarious how Walter just had that huge lab in the basement at Harvard, as though every single square centimeter of campus space isn’t desperately fought over. (My mom used to work there so I know the campus pretty well.)

              All of that I could let be silly, but for some reason the memory B cells just got to me- maybe because they were so close and also so wrong.

              Reply ↓
        4. goddessoftransitory*

          I’ve talked about the TV show House before and how it would send my doctor dad into TIRADES of rage at how hospital admin/House’s behavior is handled.

          Reply ↓
          1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

            I can imagine. I had an aunt who was an RN, and she couldn’t watch any medical drama without grousing about all the inaccuracies. And from what I recall, House took more blatantly wild liberties with the facts than most medical shows.

            There was a time when I found that show quite entertaining, but after a while, it got to be too much even for me, lol

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    4. CatLady*

      It used to be that way. The Agile movement changed all that (when implemented “correctly”). As an ex software engineer I hated the change. As a current Product Manager – I think its not such a bad thing. :-)

      Reply ↓
      1. They Might Be a Giant*

        ahh yes, Incorrect Agile, the No True Scotsman of our times. I’ve never met anyone who has experienced this “correct” agile.

        Reply ↓
        1. A Poster Has No Name*

          I can’t say if my company does Agile 100% correct, but they do a pretty darn good job of it, I think. I’m on the business side, and it’s about a million times better than the old waterfall project days when requirements would go into this black hole and…something would emerge on the other side as a completed project that may or may not do even a fraction of what was needed. At least with Agile we can see things as they progress and make changes and if things aren’t able to be completed, we know why and have a say in what’s really needed vs. what is ‘nice to have’.

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          1. I Have RBF*

            But with added mini-Deathmarches and pointless meetings where they berate you for not “finishing your sprint tasks that you promised and committed to”

            frAgile as fuck.

            Reply ↓
        4. I Have RBF*

          Me neither, when it comes to the sacred “ScrumTM”. I’ve seen people do Kanban right, but corporate “AgileTM” is always scrum, but implemented like waterfall with more useless meetings and sprints as mini-deathmarches.

          I will forever have reservations about companies that brag about being “100% Agile”, because that means they have imposed sprint planning poker on every department, even accounting and operations.

          IMO, “keep the lights on and machines running” departments are only suited to do Kanban, with a constant “emergency/troubleshooting” swimlane.

          Reply ↓
      2. Camellia*

        Ah yes, Agile. We talk about the difference between the ‘real world’ and the ‘Agile world’.

        In the Agile world, of course we can complete that user story in one sprint! Of course the QA can start the testing before the developer finished the code!

        In the real world we all know that user story is going to carry over into the next sprint and, duh, code that’s not written yet can’t be tested.

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        1. former qa*

          In my last job, we had an actually decent Agile Scrum flow. In your example, QA at the beginning of the sprint was writing manual test steps or scaffolding automation, ideally using the dev’s feature branches so as the technical side is implemented the automation matches it. The literal QA step of the ticket was just to run whatever was done on the actual implementation, so we did more of the QA back and forth during development instead of mini waterfall sending it back at the end of the sprint.

          Current job, lolno

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    5. DataSlicentist*

      100% agree. I’m not strictly a software engineer, but work on teams with mostly SEs and that have a mostly Agile Scrum culture. Collaborative work and conflict resolution skills are so crucial.

      Reply ↓
    6. GovernerdsUnited*

      LOL so much of this, yes. I’m a Project Manager in a technology department and the number of hours I have to pull developers into mtgs is insane. I used to work for a tiny company and could just pop into their cubicle and be like “hey can you do this by Thursday? Yes, great, thanks bye.” and then it’d be done. Now I have to host SO MANY mtgs for them to tell us the right way to do it, get all the uppers on board, debate the merit of the idea, figure out how to track it all in Jira, and then hope they have 5 mins left in their sprint to actually do it. It’s SafeAgile and poorly executed and I hate it so much. Dear lord just let y’all do the work already!

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        I was assigned to work 20 hrs/week on a project where not only would no one give me the specifications, I was reprimanded for trying to meet with the internal customers to gather the requirements. Apparently they wanted to do the entire design by committee where all eight stakeholder organizations had an equal voice, even though only one represented the actual end-users. We had a shiny new teaching-herself-as-she-goes project manager who was putting in an amount of preplanning and risk analysis that would be appropriate for a 5 year, $5 million project, instead of something I could slap together in a month.

        Finally, after an interminable number of meetings, delays and so on, the project manager got a new job and they allowed me to do my own requirements gathering. A month later, just shy of two years after I was assigned the project, I finally delivered… an email alert.

        Reply ↓
          1. MigraineMonth*

            Apparently it was disrespectful of all the other stakeholders to directly ask the people receiving the email alert what information they wanted included in it. So we scheduled hour-long meetings with each of the 7 outside organizations to ask what information they thought should be in the email that *they weren’t receiving*.

            Reply ↓
              1. allathian*

                I think mine’d spontaneously combust after one round of that. Guess culture taken to extremes. It horrifies me to think what that email alert cost simply in terms of wasted work hours

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    7. Timothy*

      100% true. My last job wasted a valuable half hour *every day* doing a ‘stand up’ that was mostly the team lead talking. It should have been a five minute meeting, with perhaps a longer one weekly.

      Oh my GOD, Chad, stop talking so we can get back to work.

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        My first team meeting at my current software dev job ran 45 minutes over because my manager really, really loved to talk (mostly about unrelated topics). I found that particularly impressive given that it was scheduled for 30 minutes. In subsequent meetings, I tried nudging us back on track, then I tried mentioning that we were getting near the end of the meeting, and eventually just started announcing, “I have to go now” and leaving at the end of meetings with him to escape.

        Oddly, he got upset if anyone outside the department “wasted our time” by scheduling meetings with us, even if we were doing a project with them. He called one of the project managers “uppity” for asking me for updates instead of going through him. *side eyes manager*

        Reply ↓
      2. Potato Potato*

        My half hour stand up is literally just every developer reading the tasks in their scrum board, out loud. It’s the most useless thing I’ve ever been part of, but the project manager refuses to hear it. We can’t even talk to each other- if somebody has a question, we have to “take it offline”.

        Reply ↓
      3. El Muneco*

        If your team members don’t have the right to tune out or just straight up leave daily standups if they take longer than 90 seconds per person attending, your company is doing it wrong.

        Reply ↓
    8. Amy Purralta*

      As a Software Programme Manager I apologise. I try to include my Devs in as little meetings as possible so they can get on with the doing!

      Reply ↓
    9. LaminarFlow*

      Fellow engineer here, and LOL I totally agree!

      I also LOL at how TV and movies make it look oh so easy to hack into systems. I especially love when a group of hackers is attempting to….say, hack the NSA, and 45 seconds into the whole thing, someone pipes up with “I’m in” and the story progresses. It is soooo not that way. Mr. Robot and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are pretty accurate with the language and the overall processes, but security measures have changed/ramped up so much since both of those examples. Wired magazine has a few great episodes of “Technique Critique” on that aspect of the industry.

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        I love movie hacking scenes because they have to find a way to make someone typing on a computer look super exciting. Scrolling lines of green code! Swooping through a graphical interface! Sending graphical avatars to battle for control of the system! Typing frantically because you’re running the code as you’re typing it!

        Nobody wants to watch a scene of someone copy-pasting SQL commands into all the UI fields to see if the inputs are sanitized.

        Reply ↓
    10. Wendy Darling*

      I’m a software developer and I’m 2/3 of the way through a two-week “sprint” and haven’t written a single line of code. Most of the stuff I’m working on right now is figuring out if a bunch of old systems are still being used, so I’m primarily reading old code and then going and asking people if they’re using specific things, and sitting in meetings deciding what we’re going to do next.

      On a good day the answer to “are you using this?” is “no” and I get to turn something off. On a bad day the answer is “yes and also it’s messed up” and I get to write a ticket for my future self to fix it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Mrs. Tittlemouse*

        But that’s also part of software development – it’s the measure twice, cut once part. This is why we don’t measure good software in lines of code generated.

        Maintenance is less fun that hacking together something new, but it’s what makes the software better.

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    11. Quill*

      I joke with my father about “did you close any parentheses today?” meaning did he actually get to do software instead of meetings.

      Reply ↓
    12. MigraineMonth*

      How about this one: you will spend far more time reading code than writing it.

      No matter how fast or accurately you write code, you’re still going to spend most of your development time reading someone else’s code and wondering WTF the coder was thinking when they wrote something so bizarre and convoluted. (Half the time you will then look at version history and discover the idiot who wrote the code was you, two months ago.)

      Reply ↓
      2. Disappointed with the Staff*

        My comments are mostly addressed to future me, explaining why it was done this way, and especially the commented out code that looks like the right way but turns out not to be.

        The other 90% of comments are emails and messages and meeting notes from users explaining how things are supposed to work. Those have dates so there’s a version history of what exactly “is it online” means to the end users and thus the person reading next bug report has enough context to understand that it’s not a trivial question, you’re balancing incompatible demands from multiple sources.

        My code has the expected instances of “IsItOnline.cpp” that’s 2000 lines of comments with 100 lines of code. Including “for customer X do this, for customer Y do that, otherwise default to something” when necessary. And we haven’t even got to the translation/internationalisation part of the output yet :)

        Reply ↓
        1. lanfy*

          Speaking as a technical writer, I *always* find a way to incorporate comments in the source documents for exactly that purpose. Future-me, this is why I did it this way, and here’s the other areas that will be impacted if this information changes.

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    13. Plate of Wings*

      Hah! This describes my previous job perfectly! My current job is on a bigger team (both small-medium tech companies, less than 300 people) and I think that’s why my current job is more of the sit-down-and-code stereotype. Or maybe there’s a different explanation, not sure.

      Reply ↓
    14. IainC*

      Agreed. As I tell new colleagues – coding is the easy part. What to code, how it interacts with other systems, how you can make changes in a way that supports work customers have already done, etc is the hard part and can take a lot of sort skills.

      And ignoring customer wants, and getting behind them to what the actual problem they’re facing is. If you simply listened and did their first request you’ll be playing whack-a-requirement.

      I like to think that’s where I shine.

      Reply ↓
    15. Technically (not) Writing*

      Exactly this, but with technical writing too! Very little of my time is spent actually writing. So much time spent in meetings, and so much time waiting on people to give us the information they want us to document. Sometimes we can figure it out, but typically it’s a direct correlation between how much info you give us and how fast it gets done.

      I really feel for the devs I have to work with too, there’s always so much to get done in a short period of time with very little actual work time…

      Reply ↓
    16. Grump Curmudgeon*

      My husband is a software developer, and I teach public speaking. I always use him as an example on Day 1 of the 1110 course, because I invite them to envision what his day is like. It’s at least *half* meetings!

      Reply ↓
      1. ChurchOfDietCoke*

        Indeed. For all the ‘recycled paper’ and ‘100% fluffy bunnies forestry approved sustainable paper stock’ there’s an enormous amount of waste.

        Reply ↓
    2. londonedit*

      I’m also in publishing, and the thing that always shocks people is that books are sold to retailers on a sale or return basis. So yep, you can ship 1,000 books out to various bookshops, but if that title doesn’t do as well as hoped then those bookshops can send unsold copies right back to you. And if it’s a big high-street retailer (like WHSmith here in the UK, or the supermarkets) then they can send the books back damaged, with their ‘3 for 2’ stickers on them, however they like, and the publisher is the one who has to pay to have them re-jacketed or to store them or to, as you say, pulp them.

      It’s got slightly better thanks to digital printing, so you can print a smaller quantity initially and very quickly print additional copies if you need to, but when I started my career, if you had 25,000 ‘dues’, or pre-orders from retailers, you’d need to print 40-50,000 copies to make sure you had enough stock for the initial orders and the first few weeks of sale, and then you could end up with thousands of books coming back to you.

      Reply ↓
        1. londonedit*

          Well I’m in the UK, so there’s that for a start. With our books, the simple black-and-white stuff is printed in the UK. Colour books are either printed in Europe or in China – printing them in Europe is more expensive but quicker, as with China you have to allow time for them to be shipped by sea. There are options to print colour books in the UK, too, but for us it’s usually prohibitively expensive, unless it’s a specialist book or unless the schedule really is impossibly tight.

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        2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          Maybe someone else can clarify, but the print on demand books bought through Amazon come from the US. I’ve gotten books that not only tell me the city they’re printed in, but also the date- and it’s shockingly close (within a day or two) of when I ordered it.

          Reply ↓
          1. Lenora Rose*

            Yes, I’ve seen POD machines small enough to take up a corner of a (large scale) bookstore, which is pretty neat. Alas, they can’t scale to print runs of thousands, never minds tens of thousands.

            Reply ↓
        3. Scholarly Publisher*

          US-based publisher: It depends on the book.

          Text-only, or b&w illustrations, or color illustrations only in an 8 to 24-page insert? Printed in the US.

          Print-on-demand title? Printed in the US. (Unless it’s for an overseas customer; a UK bookstore ordering one of our POD titles will get a copy printed in the UK.)

          Full-color book or coffee-table book? Printed in another country. So far there’s not a US-based printer that can do the quality we need for those books at a workable unit price (and believe me, our production coordinator is looking for one).

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        4. lunchtime caller*

          The large majority of books in the US (especially anything in color or with special effects on it) are printed in China.

          Reply ↓
          1. Insert Pun Here*

            This is not true. Or, rather, it’s only true for books that are full color throughout (especially art books.) Most b/w books are printed in the US. It takes 6 weeks to send books by sea from China to the US, so it’s only worth doing if there is a significant cost savings (which there is for color, but not b/w.)

            Reply ↓
            1. Lenora Rose*

              However, these days they’re trying to make hardcovers more and more special, with more fancy edges and endpapers; are those actually printed in North America?

              Reply ↓
              1. Insert Pun Here*

                Yes, this can all be done in the US! It’s possible that some of the very high end endpapers may be imported, but they’re almost certainly printed and manufactured here. (Meaning that the printer imports a gigantic roll of paper from wherever, loads it into their various machines here in the US, and goes wild.)

                Reply ↓
                1. Lore*

                  Endpapers, yes; the foiled or stamped edges, ribbon bookmarks, and other bells and whistles that everyone wants after Yarrow, there are very few North American printers who can handle at quantity. One in Canada, but that market has gone from zero to sixty very fast and the capacity is in China. Which can get tricky when an author who’s used to delivering late and crashing a schedule suddenly has to get us the ms 4 months earlier for customs and transit.

      2. Jo Marching*

        It’s nice when authors can get remaindered copies, but it’s crappy that we generally have to pay for them, especially since as someone else noted, they get pulped. It’s not just the cost of shipping either. When authors donate books to events or giveaways, that’s often books they had to spend their own money on :(

        Reply ↓
      3. WellRed*

        What is the purpose of oversized mass markets vs the smaller size. Just a way to add a few dollars? (Assuming you have these across the pond).

        Reply ↓
        2. MassMatt*

          Larger format “trade paperbacks” books are meant to be displayed and sold on shelves and tables in the book trade. Smaller “mass market” softcovers are meant to be sold in wire racks, like you see at airports, drugstores, and supermarkets.

          Reply ↓
          1. Lenora Rose*

            I think they’re talking about the Mass market paperbacks that are a conspicious inch or more taller than they used to be, but not wider, and still in the cheaper paper of mass market.

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          1. Sharpie*

            I haven’t noticed the print is appreciably bigger in the larger sized paperback books,but they do take up more room. I just intensely dislike when a series goes from the smaller size to the larger overnight while the author is still writing that series so there’s no chance of having a uniform collection on my shelves without buying half the books a second time. Which is probably the other reason they do it.

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        4. londonedit*

          I don’t work in fiction, so it’s probably slightly different. But generally if it’s a literary sort of book, you’ll publish in hardback first, because you can charge more for a hardback, and many people like to have a hardback edition. When I say ‘you can charge more’ I mean ‘the publisher will get slightly more money when they sell it to Amazon for a stupidly high discount’. Then, maybe a year or 18 months later, you do a paperback edition – with non-fiction often that’s updated somehow, maybe a new foreword or an updated chapter or something. You also then have a chance to put a new cover on the book – hardback covers tend to be more serious and worthy, paperback covers tend to be a bit more fun and eyecatching. It’s basically just another chance to give the book a bit of a push and another life.

          I would like to say that there’s absolutely zero real money to be made in publishing – so it’s not ‘publishers wanting to rake in the cash’ or somehow wanting to ‘scam’ people into buying a more expensive book, or whatever. We’re just trying to give the books a chance – some people will buy the hardback edition, some will wait for the paperback, and that gives us two sets of buyers to appeal to and two bites of the cherry in terms of publicity etc (though publicity for a paperback edition of an existing book will be far less than for the original edition).

          We also sometimes do our books in ‘trade paperback’ format, which is the size of a hardback but in paperback format. Our books are fairly specialist and tend to sell well to travel retailers like airport bookshops, and they won’t take hardbacks. So if we’re doing a book with particular travel appeal, it’ll go straight into a larger-format paperback rather than hardback.

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      5. Maxwell Perkins*

        And “returning” a mass market paperback means ripping off the cover, mailing it back, and tossing the rest.

        Reply ↓
      6. IainC*

        My first job was temping in a WHSmith stockroom, ripping off the front pages of books. The publisher didn’t want the books back, just evidence they were made unsellable.

        That is where I first encountered Terry Pratchett. So many unsold books. I read a few pages during waits, and became a concert.

        Reply ↓
          1. IainC*

            This was muuuuch earlier – Light Fantastic and Colour of Magic.

            They were the Carry On Fantasy of his novels though.

            And I agree Soul Music wasn’t peak Perry. But that’s a very high bar!

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    3. RabbitRabbit*

      I worked in a printing factory one summer and there were piles of books that were sent for pulping for extremely minor printing errors. I swiped books for myself during that time; they didn’t have covers to mark them as to be destroyed but I just put them in binders.

      Reply ↓
      1. amoeba*

        Are those sold in the US as well? In Germany you can get them as “preisreduziertes Mängelexemplar” for a nice discount – translates literally to “reduced price faulty copy”. But I think this is special, anyway, as we have the “Buchpreisbindung” – meaning, basically, books cannot be sold at any other price than the one specified by the publisher, neither at a discount nor more expensive. The faulty ones are exempt from that, so you can sell them more cheaply.

        Reply ↓
        1. amoeba*

          I also just realised that’s not very common internationally (anymore?), Germany and France appear to still have it, not sure about the rest of Europe!

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    4. Jo Marching*

      Ooh I have one for publishing but I’m going all the way anon. I think some readers know this, but blurbs (when authors write recs for other authors) are nearly always political. It doesn’t mean an author liked a book if they promote it or blurb it (like, go to their events, co-host events, post on socials about it), it generally means they’re industry siblings (same agent / same publisher) or is someone they want to cultivate for future. It’s also pretty non-optional, so don’t blame the authors. I actually like the movement away from blurbs, because it’s hard on newbies … I was always told they’re really for booksellers, and that’s the only person who cares about them.

      Reply ↓
      1. Elizabeth West*

        Authors can recommend books on social media now, so getting one for the cover really isn’t as effective, is it? I mean, if I wrote a horror novel and Gabino Iglesias or Stephen King or somebody tweeted “read this,” it would probably sell far more copies than whatever’s on the back cover or the first few pages. I read the synopsis jacket copy usually, but I can’t remember the last time I bothered to read a blurb.

        Reply ↓
      2. Sam I Am*

        This has long been a suspicion of mine, so thank you for confirming! It’s always funny when a successful author gives an effusively gushing blurb to some by-the-numbers thriller and you can almost see the political wheels turning behind the scenes. No, I don’t believe that the twist made you fall off your chair and you stayed up all night to finish it and you’ll be thinking about these characters forever; I believe that someone called in a favor or there’s authorial tit-for-tat happening.

        Reply ↓
          1. Jo Marching*

            To clarify, we do mostly read them all (or at least skim). It’s just that we go in knowing we’re going to blurb already. We’re looking for things to like.

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      3. Another Author*

        This must be genre-dependent because it’s not true at all in my genre/category of publishing! I’ve never blurbed a book I didn’t love, and I’ve never been anything less than honest. Nobody has ever pressured me to do it just because of a connection, either, not my agent or publisher or other authors — in fact they tend to fall all over themselves with “it’s completely fine if you can’t” style of communication when I get requests.

        Sure, people sometimes go out of their way more for friends or people who’ve done them a solid, but isn’t that true of all industries? I’ve not managed to blurb for a TON of friends though and none have ever held it against me; everyone knows we’re all swamped and have too much to read.

        I’d completely believe this varies by genre/category though; for example nonfiction is a completely different beast with different norms that I know nothing about.

        Reply ↓
      4. Lenora Rose*

        I do know individual authors who refuse to blurb a book they didn’t read and enjoy — you can usually tell because even if there’s a single line on the cover, inside the book (or on the back) is one of those paragraph long blurbs that actually references story details in some way. But even there, they were probably handed the book and asked for a blurb because of the industry connection in the background.

        And yeah I get cynical about any really big name author whose name pops up on dozens of books.

        (It can also lead to some, ah, interesting results, such as Nalo Hopkinson printing a whole run of stickers with a corner of her book cover for Blackheart Man so she can REMOVE the Neil Gaiman blurb from its earlier print runs when she does signings. Noteably, that blurb was replaced by one by Kate Elliott in more recent versions — I am also more inclined to hope Elliott read the book.)

        Reply ↓
      5. Anonyyyy*

        This isn’t quite true…

        I’ve turned down blurb requests (I’m a YA/MG author). However, I also received my first blurb from a very well known author due to a connection between said author and my agent. So that one was a bit political. But it’s not a blanket thing, the way you’re making it seem here.

        That said, I agree blurbs are dumb and I am thrilled they’ve been declining a bit!

        Reply ↓
    5. Burnt Out Librarian*

      This. Also libraries weed. And it’s a good thing we weed. Books need to be removed from the collection or you’ll never find anything!

      Reply ↓
      1. Librarian of Things*

        If only we could get our weeds to those pulpers instead of the landfill. A small portion of ours go to World of Books, ThriftBooks, or Sustainable Shelves, but an awful lot just go straight to the trash.

        Reply ↓
        1. Sharpie*

          I’ve added a couple of nonfiction books to my personal library, and a hardback fiction book, that are ex-library books, and I’m glad I found them. Via Amazon and can’t remember the sellers – I think one of them may well have been World of Books.

          Reply ↓
            1. amoeba*

              There’s a biannual book sale at the English library in Geneva, or at least there used to be when I lived nearby – it was great, I was always walking out with a bag full of books! I mean, a lot was really weird and outdated stuff, but there were always treasures to be found.

              Reply ↓
        2. zuzu*

          Faculty members have a lot of Big Feelings about seeing evidence of weeding in a big academic research library even when they don’t set foot in it, so it sometimes has to be done over the summer or by trickling out the books to the dumpster a little at a time under cover of darkness.

          Reply ↓
      2. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

        Yes! So true!

        We were doing an extensive weeding project – removing second copies of 50 year old computer books (we kept the first copy for history of science & technology reasons) and duplicate journal runs were two of my projects, and we had to keep the recycling bins inside until the trucks arrived or else faculty would pull the books out of the containers and either bring them back to the library or write an op-ed for the student and local papers about how terrible the library was.

        Reply ↓
        1. Magnolia Clyde*

          In the same boat here! We’ve always had to consider the optics of our big weeding projects. At least once, we waited until the end of term (when far fewer people were on campus) to move the books out to the recycling bins.

          Reply ↓
          1. Madame Señora*

            I worked at a library while it was doing a project that wasn’t even weeding. We were optimizing the shelf space. The result was that there were a few empty shelves, but the exact same number of books. I got screamed at by a patron who demanded we put back all the books. No matter how many times I told him that nothing had been removed, he was just raging at me and everyone else in the vicinity.

            Reply ↓
          2. Unauthorized Plants*

            Our strategies for disposing of books are communicated solely via Oral Tradition, documented absolutely nowhere. And I will provide no more details here. ;)

            Reply ↓
          3. border parasol*

            I’m a librarian for a community college and we always deliberately wait until the summer to do a big weed. Thankfully, one of our campuses is doing some reno, so we’ll be able to use their big dumpsters that (hopefully) people won’t be poking around through as much.

            Reply ↓
            1. I Have RBF*

              Back when I went to college they’d have a used book sale and dump the weeded copies, and anything that didn’t sell was recycled.

              Reply ↓
            2. Sharpie*

              My local council-run libraries in my hometown used to put their weeded books on a table for sale at a pound or two for hardbacks and a few pence for paperbacks. I picked up a couple of books that way, as did dad, and the money went to a good cause.

              I say used to as I moved away a few years ago and no longer go to any of those libraries, they may still do it, I just don’t know.

              Reply ↓
        2. Madame Señora*

          We’re in the middle of a big weeding at the high school where I work. We are not allowed to donate old books anywhere because there’s been so many outcries about books stamped with the school board’s name ending up anywhere else. It’s always the same op-eds or social media outrage screaming about “Look at this school board wasting resources with YOUR tax dollars! They’re BANNING Lord of the Flies because of woke ideology gone mad!”

          So we always pulp old books and never donate anything, even if they’re still usable.

          Reply ↓
          1. Thegs*

            Man, this makes me sad. I find old library books in the thrift store from time to time, and it’s always fun to see what caught the hearts and minds of the past by counting the checkout stamps. It should be just the next step in a more sustainable lifecycle for mass-market, non-rare books. That suck that you have to deal with it, or even take it into consideration.

            Reply ↓
        3. Fleur-de-Lis*

          I had a locking recycling dumpster in a parking lot when we weeded around 20,000 books from our bloated and aged collection over the course of 18 months. If it weren’t locked, the outcry from the people walking their dogs on campus and poking around in stuff that is Very Much Not Their Business would have been extremely difficult to manage politically.

          Reply ↓
          1. Burnt Out Librarian*

            I never could get my supervisor to propose my idea of using biomedical waste bags to dispose of weeded books. Technically it wouldn’t even be an incorrect bag to use– the amount of old boogers and baby barf in childrens’ books can’t be overstated.

            Reply ↓
            1. JustaTech*

              In your supervisor’s defense, disposing to biohazard waste is *hella* expensive. There’s special pick up and all kinds of hassle.
              Though it could be worse – it could be sharps. Or, heaven help us, radiation waste.

              Reply ↓
        4. zuzu*

          I once worked at an academic law library where we were losing nearly a quarter of our space to the law school for faculty offices and classroom space, so we had to do a massive weeding project of our print journal collections. They went to the dumpster, because no one wants them.

          Of course, one of our faculty took a photo from his office window of all the journals in the dumpster and posted it on social media bemoaning how terrible it was that we were just throwing away materials.

          The irony? The only reason he was able to get that view of our dumpster from his office window was that his office had been carved out of our library space in an earlier annexation of library space by the law school, during which we managed to shift but not weed our collection — but as a result, when the later annexation came, we had no more room and HAD to throw things out.

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      3. In the middle*

        THIS! THIS! THIS! Almost every single library you go to is NOT an archive. Archives are repositories. They hold things just to hold the thing. Public and school libraries are NOT. We have living collections tailored to the needs of our patrons.

        We need to get rid of old books. Books that aren’t accurate (a book written in 1965 about MLKjr… on the shelves of my middle school library in 2010), books that no one is interested in anymore, books that are falling aparts, books that have mold. We need to make room for new books.

        We give the old ones away if we can, maybe sell them, but a lot of times they need to be recycled or tossed. And that’s ok! If a book gets popular again, we can rebuy it, if one person is interested, we’ll interlibrary loan it from somewhere else.

        Reply ↓
        1. Scarlet Mask*

          I think for me this is the thing people would be surprised about. I weed a lot and I am happy to do it. It’s necessary as well, unless you have a whole, whole lot of stack space. I think that the general public thinks librarians would never want to get rid of books and/or that we will just treasure the moldy hardcover that someone wants to donate because they think it’s “rare”.

          Reply ↓
          1. Wolf*

            I am one of the volunteers for our town’s “Little Free Library”. That means cleaning and tidying the bookshelves, and yes, occasionally throwing books away. Some are gross (sticky, moldy, smelling awul). Some are useless (a guide to MS Word 1995 for senios). Some are even harmful (medical advice for raising babies in the 1950s… it had a “just give them a spoonful of whiskey to make them sleep when they’re toothing” advice).

            Your local little free library is not an archive. And not every book is a valuable.

            Reply ↓
        2. Books are cool*

          Is there a process for large, well-funded public libraries to donate their duplicate (weeded) books to under-funded libraries or under-funded school libraries?

          Several years ago I read an article about a rural high school that had not been able to purchase books for the previous 10 years.

          Reply ↓
          1. Anonymous Badger*

            There’s not one in place in any of the libraries my partner’s worked at, no. But once he became a library director, he did set up a system for donating some of the books they were weeding out of their collection to the local prison in the case that they were just duplicates or largely being pulled for low circ.

            Reply ↓
            1. ms_not_mrs*

              This!! Please contact local prisons or jails. I’m a former prison librarian and those donations are SO appreciated because their libraries have basically zero-dollar budgets.

              Reply ↓
              1. Fleur-de-Lis*

                Before we put books in the recycling dumpster, we sent photos to local prison librarians and delivered boxes to them. It was so good to be able to get stuff to them that simply didn’t move in our library any longer!

                Reply ↓
              2. goddessoftransitory*

                You have to be careful with that though; prison and jail regulations can dictate what’s allowed physically. When I worked at Borders, we had to warn people that most facilities wouldn’t allow hardcovers, for example; both for precaution against it being used as weapon and to eliminate smuggling contraband.

                It was tough when a new Harry Potter came out and they couldn’t buy the latest release to bring to someone until it came out in paperback.

                Reply ↓
          2. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

            My library actually isn’t allowed to toss books, because they’re state property (it’s a whole thing), so they have a process they all have to go through if we get rid of them that involves pulling title lists/etc. electronically and having the books hauled off in batches of about 200. They go up for sale at a discount. It is a pain in the ass, though, especially if your librarians fail to do any weeding for years and years and then realize oh, yeah, we have no space.

            The thing I REALLY wish people knew is that most academic/university libraries DO NOT want your donations of textbooks/most books. Occasionally a retiring professor will have a handful of books that we can add, but for the most part, unless you’re including a detailed title/author/ISBN/etc. list, it is far more work to handle a bunch of old book donations than it is worth. Especially because used books are often damaged/dirty in some way.

            Oh, and another thing–water is much, much more damaging than fire to a library. If you get a book wet, 95% of the time, we’re going to get rid of it because even if it dries out okay (rare), it’s going to develop mold, and you don’t want a random moldy book in the middle of a shelf getting other books moldy.

            Reply ↓
            1. Middle Managing Cog*

              Longtime volunteer for a community Friends of the Library Sale:

              No one wants your old textbooks, atlases … and most espeically your old National Geographics and Readers Digests. No one. Please do not donate them to the library, who will then have to tote them to the Friends, where they won’t sell and can barely be given away.

              This goes double if these books/magazines were stored in a basement. Triple if the basement was unfinished. Quadruple if the basement belonged to a chainsmoker.

              (maybe I need to do my own post on “Working in a library or bookstore is not a glamourous job where you read and chat with patrons all day.”

              Reply ↓
        3. BeckerCheez*

          As an archivist, one thing I will say is that while archives are repositories, we too do not keep everything. We have collection policies and have to focus on what we collect. We keep older books related to certain topics, or they’re rare. We even do weeding in manuscript and archives collections because no, no we don’t need to keep every invoice, receipt, bank statement, or random note written on a napkin.

          Reply ↓
          1. Acid Queen*

            Another archivist chiming in–the amount we pay in shred/destruction is insane when added up. Our policy is to “securely” destroy things because they contain private info or identifying information. Seeing news articles of “…Local persons found this neat pile of stuff in a dumpster.” is my living nightmare. But also those shred trucks? I feel like they’re just giant wood chippers in a box truck.

            Reply ↓
        4. Sally Forth*

          So true! As a library tech for a school district I got called into libraries twice to do a massive weed after overly possessive librarians retired.
          A teacher argued with me when I was de-accessioning social studies books from the 60s and atlases published before the breakup of the Soviet Union, addition of Nunavut as a territory in Canada, and unification of Germany. He argued that kids needed these for “compare and contrast” exercises to develop critical thinking skills. So I gave him the whole cart for his classroom library.

          Reply ↓
          1. MigraineMonth*

            Gotta say, old atlases are pretty cool. Completely agree that you can’t keep them all and they should probably go to the classroom library (or online archives), but it can really help to understand history. Sometimes current events, too (*looks at Soviet Union territory, then at places is currently invading/running influence campaigns*).

            Reply ↓
            1. Arts Akimbo*

              I had a little hardbound pocket atlas from 1910 that I treasured! It got lost in a move and I am still bitter about it.

              Reply ↓
      5. Reluctant Mezzo*

        Our library farms them out to a) Goodwill, b) to the local jail and/or c) Friends of the Library Sale.

        Reply ↓
    6. Funbud*

      Well, considering most of the crappy books I see on sale at Barnes & Noble, I am not at all surprised. I always wonder “Who reads this crap?”

      Reply ↓
      1. lunchtime caller*

        Every author who doesn’t get published thinks we gatekeep publishing too much, which every consumer, bookseller, etc knows the truth you state here: there are WAY too many books published!

        Reply ↓
    7. Maxwell Perkins*

      Also magazines. If you print 100 magazines and 25 sell on the newsstand, you are a *rockstar.* Sometimes the publishers will accept “returns,” which means they just send back the covers and recycle the rest.

      Reply ↓
    8. Teapot Connoisseuse*

      My husband works in a book distribution warehouse and our local charity shops do quite well out of books that he’s brought home bc they were otherwise going to be pulped.

      Reply ↓
    10. Yet Another Office Manager*

      My little nonprofit published a book with a major publishing house some years back, and it ran out of copies the first two runs, so they made successive runs larger. Fast-forward several years, and they offered us 1000 unsold copies at a discount to sell ourselves. We regretfully declined as we didn’t have storage space.

      Reply ↓
  4. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Railway IT. There’s systems from the 70s, 80s and 90s that we still keep running. Mainframes because it’s simply too much money to replace them. Old Windows 3.11 boxes that are the only thing a particular bit of engineering kit will connect to.

    So there’s the shiny edge of the railway with touchscreens and updated departure boards, but behind all that is some stuff that’s nearly as old as I am..

    Reply ↓
    1. LingNerd*

      Having lived in Boston, I’m not surprised. Those trains were ancient and I assume everything else was too. And even where I live now where the rail system is only 20 years old, some of the fancy display boards will occasionally break and just show an error dialog box that’s obviously from an old version of windows

      Reply ↓
      2. Elizabeth West*

        They’re slowly replacing them, but I think the Orange Line is the only one that has all new carriages. I haven’t ridden all the lines yet but the Green Line is rickety as hell.

        I hope they never fix the Boylston squeal, though; I think that’s hilarious.

        Reply ↓
        1. 653-CXK*

          You are correct!

          The MBTA is replacing all of the Orange and Red Line trains (we call them “cars,” which goes back to the days of the trolley cars) with new cars. There will be 152 Orange Line and 266 Red Line cars, replacing all of the older units >= 30 years old. The OL cars were over 40 years old when replaced; the youngest Red Line car is 31 years old (1994) and the oldest 56 years old (1969).

          Reply ↓
      3. Great Frogs of Literature*

        The Mattapan Line trolleys do (or at least did; I heard that they’re trying to replace them) get spare parts from a historic trolley museum in (IIRC) New Hampshire.

        Reply ↓
        1. Elizabeth West*

          I hope they make the new ones look “old.” I don’t want every single thing to be slick and modern-y. Trolleys that still look antique are fun, especially if they come out on the street where you can see them.

          Reply ↓
        2. Anon for This*

          The MBTA has an honest to god smithy with two blacksmiths who make parts for the Mattapan trolleys.

          Ride ‘em while you got ‘em. When the green line type 10 super trains arrive they’ll be replaced with either GL type 8 or type 9 low floor cars.

          (also, everyone is very excited that after 45 high street was built there were no mow vacuum tubes controlling the commuter rail switching for tower 1 outside of south station)

          Reply ↓
          1. Don’t make me come over there*

            I used to take the T from Kendall to the airport and always chose to transfer to the Orange line so I wouldn’t have to haul my bag up on those Green line cars !

            Reply ↓
          2. Yet Another Office Manager*

            I knew someone two decades ago who worked at the Cleveland Circle repair shop for the Green Line, same deal with making parts.

            Reply ↓
        3. mystiknitter*

          I was astonished that some of the above-ground rail lines I rode in Japan (Hakone and Hiroshima esp) were eerily similar to very old Green Line trolley cars from the 70’s – the windows you could raise or lower (delighted by native hydrangeas reaching into the cars near Hakone), the bench seats, the driver’s area and controls. It was a rocket ship back to 1975. Remember the old wooden escalators at Washington St and Harvard Sq?

          Reply ↓
    2. Sandi*

      I’ve heard the same with banking, that if you know and like fortran then that’s how to make a lot of money.

      Reply ↓
      1. BurnOutCandidate*

        Also COBOL.

        Until very recently, most ATMs ran on IBM’s OS/2 operating system from the late 80s/early 90s, which was intended to replace DOS, but Microsoft took the ideas from it to make Windows.

        Reply ↓
        1. Heffalump*

          I’ve heard that the onboard electronics on General Motors cars around that time also ran on OS/2.

          I actually ran OS/2 on my home computer from spring 1992 to spring 2003. I was sorry to give it up, but support was drying up. I was getting support from a tech in my area. He once said that he had set up 110 OS/2 desktops for a local savings and loan. At one point I asked him how many private individuals among his customers were using OS/2, and he said I was the last man standing. When he shuttered his business to go to work for Microsoft, I figured the writing was on the wall, but I also found it pretty symbolic. Rather than give in to Microsoft, I switched to a Mac.

          I’ve never been a developer, but I understand that the API (applications programming interface) for OS/2 was the same no matter what hardware it was running on, which wasn’t true of Windows, at least at that time. I wonder what OS/2 for smartphones would have been like.

          Reply ↓
      2. Hello, Nurse*

        Social Security Administration is running on computers from the early 50s. Many government agencies are nearly as old, but attempts to upgrade fail (often after $100 million+ expenditures).

        Reply ↓
        1. Wendy Darling*

          Migrating a system that old and that critical is so, so hard. I see DOGE claiming they’re going to migrate the SSA off COBOL in ~4 months and cringe because my company spent 4 months migrating a major marketing function to a new platform and it ended up not being long enough. And that was just the marketing department of a medium sized corporation!

          Reply ↓
          1. Mainframer at Work, Web Designer at Heart*

            Yeah, honestly they might as well say, “We’re going to build a spaceship and go to the moon using only high schoolers and household objects” because that’s just about as realistic as migrating away from a mainframe in anything under a year MINIMUM (and that’s if the system is simple and not very large).

            Besides, when most companies say they’re migrating off of the mainframe, what they mean is they’re going to develop a bunch of middleware that looks shiny for end users, but the backend is still the existing infrastructure, lay off half of the mainframe staff, and make the remaining mainframers maintain those new, tenuous connections alongside keeping the actual mainframe running (ask me how I know).

            Reply ↓
            1. higheredadminalumna*

              GUIs at their finest (fondly thinking of the legacy systems that underpine traditional Ma Bell systems)….

              Reply ↓
          2. I Have RBF*

            CMS (Medicare) was in the middle of a years long project migrating their system off of COBOL on a mainframe to Java on the Cloud. It had already been going on for several years when I (briefly) touched it, and I know it isn’t done by now.

            Anything like Medicare or Social Security written in COBOL is a nightmare to translate and shift. Going from linear code to object-oriented code is a boondoggle – it requires re-engineering the who damned thing. People who can read and understand COBOL and then re-implement it in Java in Containers are very rare.

            I can guarantee that the DOGE kids do not have the skill to do that. They are talking out of their asses and trying to implement an entire system with all of its edge cases, sanity checks and error correction from scratch, live, in production. That way lives madness and burnout, and is stupid.

            Reply ↓
    3. Nicki Name*

      This can be generalized to most industries, except in some cases the bottom layer goes back to the 1950s and relies on people doing critical tasks by hand.

      Reply ↓
      1. StarTrek Nutcase*

        Even in 2018 (when I retired & possibly still), the State of Florida statewide financial system was DOS! So all agencies used it for budgets, expenses, employee info, reports, etc. Only hard copy manuals existed and weren’t even the latest DOS version used (it was a decades earlier version). Thus the various manuals’ screenshots didn’t match your computer screen. Any many reports were still only set for large dot matrix printers (11×17) despite few state offices having any of those printers remaining. So you printed on 8×11 paper but lines of text wrapped making it harder to read and whacky columns. (Luckily, around 2005, a
        new vendor system was created that at least made MOST purchasing & payables user friendly for staff & vendors.)

        The legislative stupidity – to think it wasn’t cost effective in 2000 to switch out of DOS but somehow 20 years later it would be easier & cheaper – was pathetic..

        Reply ↓
        1. goddessoftransitory*

          My dad worked for a VA hospital for a while and the amount of ancient systems they had running was INSANE. Not only did they not have the money to update anything, hardly any of them could talk to any other system, so there were layers of employees whose entire job was to make the COBOL computer spit something out, than translate it so the TRS-80 setup could handle it…

          Reply ↓
    4. AnonForThis*

      Can confirm, work infosec for a freight railroad. Internet-facing systems that are never patched because they are too old and fragile. Service accounts with 6 character alphanumeric passwords because the servers can’t handle anything more complex. On-premise backups to tape libraries. So, so many mainframes.

      Reply ↓
      1. Atalanta*

        I knew a guy who did a lot of pentesting on rail equipment and he would talk about how delicate he would have to be so he didn’t break anything. It was always interesting hearing him talk about it.

        Reply ↓
    5. USTransplant*

      Work in mental health care.

      Psychotherapy truly is the Wild West despite the ‘regulations’ in place. Lots of people who are licensed have next to no understanding of basic human psychology because they’ve done a two year program that just focuses on teaching how to do therapy instead of the why behind it. Want someone who truly understands human function, find a PhD psychologist. Also in person>live virtual>phone>text based.

      Reply ↓
    7. AnonAnon*

      Exactly! This is why Y2K was such a “thing”. No one thought these systems would be around and/or didn’t think we would live to see the year 2000. LOL

      Reply ↓
      1. Quill*

        And now some of the Y2K updated systems are having to be updated *again* in some places because they didn’t fix 2038 while they were in there… guys I’m pretty sure we knew we would still be using computers in 40 years the last time you did this!

        Reply ↓
    9. pennyforum*

      AFAIK, Same with a lot of air transport (planes/airports/airtraffic control)
      The whole world uses systems that interconnect.
      If you wanted to upgrade/swap you’d (in theory) have to stop all flights around the whole world/ prevent anyone around the world making bookings until the data was moved over and correct.
      Too much risk, so your flight booking etc are all still linking to COBOL systems

      Reply ↓
    10. Anita Brake*

      You know, I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t even aware that railroads have I. T. I guess I just thought it’s all mechanical. Just an interesting thing to be aware of!

      Reply ↓
    11. Alem*

      A friend of mine who grew up in a small town once received an emergency job offer to fix the town’s water billing software, which had developed a problem just before they needed to send out quarterly bills to all the residents. They called my friend because his father (who was then already deceased) was the one who originally wrote the software.

      Reply ↓
    12. Anon for this*

      I also work in railway IT (almost certainly not in the same country as you, though) and I found this one shocking in both directions when I went into it. On the one hand, there are systems so old they’re not even digital. A human being doing manual stuff is involved in a lot more places than I was expecting. On the other, I was expecting going in that it’d be all outdated software and monoliths and that absolutely wasn’t the case, the developer experience has been way more modern on the whole than I was expecting. All of which adds up to a system where on the one hand, some stuff might be done by physical switches or person A phoning person B quarter of the way through the 21st century, while at the same time the software for idk ordering food for the train’s snack trolley might be running on the fanciest shiniest modern web framework. It’s something of a contrast.

      Reply ↓
    14. Regina Philange*

      Hahaha definitely thought Railway was some kind of programming language until I saw the comments about good old Charlie on the T.

      Reply ↓
    15. Beth*

      In 2000, when I worked for the annual census, I learned that the Census Bureau was holding tight to its antique computers — because they knew the computers were utterly incompatible with any other system, and that was one of their lines of defense against hacking and privacy breaches. “You couldn’t even take our data from our cold, dead hands, because YOU DON’T KNOW HOW OUR SYSTEMS WORK BWA HA HA.”

      Reply ↓
      2. Quill*

        This is the perpetual defense against IT updating things in a lot of science labs: not only will a new computer not work with the machine the department spent ten thousand dollars on, the old computer that you have to physically badge into the building to access because it doesn’t have internet and prints to a 30 year old printer physically plugged into it is more secure!

        Reply ↓
  5. L-squared*

    Most sales people don’t like wasting time trying to squeeze blood from a rock. Meaning, if you don’t want to buy something, just say no. Don’t just ignore our calls and emails. If you say no, we may ask your reasoning. At that point we may bring up something you weren’t aware of (IE this competitor you are with locks you into a 5 year contract). But then leave it alone.

    If someone tells me no, there isn’t really any reason for me to continually try to change their mind. I’d much rather have that than radio silence for months. This is especially annoying when you reach out to US about buying, then just go silent.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ginger Cat Lady*

      You’re definitely in the minority. Most sales people do not take no for an answer. Which is why we ignore. If we respond, they latch on and don’t let go. We don’t want to get into the whys because sales people always turn it into a “let me work around that”
      Why don’t you take ignoring as the no it is? If someone doesn’t respond, DROP IT.
      Honestly, people can’t win when it comes to dealing with sales people.
      I’m going to keep ignoring sales people. Sorry that’s not what you’d prefer.

      Reply ↓
      1. L-squared*

        Because there are a lot of people who aren’t responding for valid reasons. IE waiting on budget information, other fires to put out.

        The number of people who eventually respond with “thanks for staying on top of this, sorry I haven’t responded, but X, Y, and Z has been going on” is huge.

        If you can’t be an adult and just say “no thanks”, that seems like an issue with you

        Reply ↓
        1. Librarian of Things*

          As a public library director, I’d say 70% of my e-mail is unsolicited sales pitches. Maybe 10% of THAT is something relevant (I sure get a lot of “sell your business” or “get venture capital” e-mail). My address is out there in the world easily findable for vendors and scammers alike.

          If someone is using a legit mailing service with an unsubscribe link, I will unsubscribe. My hope is to save my inbox a little and not waste a legit salesperson’s time. But if it’s a sketchy link or “just reply ‘no’ if you want to stop getting these messages,” I delete them. I don’t have time to engage with someone who either is irrelevant to my non-profit’s needs or just wants to scam us.

          There are a few of those certainly-a-scam venture capital e-mailers with .ai domains that I just have a rule to send them straight to trash without them entering my inbox.

          I do try to stay on top of it if I am the one who reached out originally. L-squared, if ever you’re selling something I need, I promise I’ll try to respond in a timely way if I’m the one who contacted you first!

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        2. Sharon*

          Am I required to write back to every company that sends me junk mail? Unsolicited calls/emails are the same thing. I have no obligation to engage.

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        3. NothingIsLittle*

          You’re really underestimating the number of your associates who take “no thanks” as a challenge. I used to say, “actually, we don’t have any budget for that,” and still have people harass me about how they can negotiate a deal. I told you my budget is $0, I can’t change that, so why can’t you stop calling?

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          1. 2 Cents*

            Yep, or I don’t make those decisions, no I can’t connect your with my boss (lest I’m out of a job because of it), we don’t actually do what your product helps with.

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        4. Rage*

          For some bizarre reason, at my current employer I *always* get a sizeable percentage of the cold-calls. My name and extension are not on our website, I have zero to do with purchasing, and while I might agree that my current title “Contracts Administrator” might make someone think I would have something to do with any of that, I promise you that my former title (“Special Ed Services Coordinator”) did not (and it was even worse then).

          I have explained to people that I am not involved in [insert query here: hiring, construction, software, general supplies, medical supplies…], I have told them who they need to contact instead, I have told them “we literally are not a construction company, please stop asking us to bid on your projects (4 states away)” – yet they persist.

          I had one guy from AT&T call me every day for about 2 weeks, and 3 times on the very last day when I lost it with him, demanded a supervisor, and reamed him out for 30 minutes. The worst part was is that we might have actually considered his proposal if he: 1) would agree to put it in writing (“We have found that most people do not want to deal with contracts.”); 2) would leave me alone for 24 hours so I could talk to my CEO about it; 3) stop telling me how much he respects and values my time, and appreciates that I am busy.

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        5. Ginger Cat Lady*

          AND THERE IT IS.
          Sales **always** resorts to insults when their bad behavior is pointed out.
          I am an adult, I owe pushy salespeople like you absolutely nothing. YOU can be an adult and leave people alone for goodness sake.
          If you get ghosted, just go away. No one likes sales people like you.

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        6. Irish Teacher.*

          If you can’t be an adult and just say “no thanks”, that seems like an issue with you.
          Honestly, “no thanks” often doesn’t work. I realise that we very much remember the bad behaviour and I do believe that the salespeople who drop it when somebody says “no” are in the majority, but for one thing, we don’t know who are going to be the intimidating ones and also, while I agree that if somebody has contacted you and you call back, they should reply, I don’t think that anybody is ever obliged to respond to somebody who contacts them out of the blue to try and make money out of them.

          I’m going to give you an example of a situation I ran into. I got a call out of the blue from my mobile provider. I answered it, thinking it could be something important but instead it was a pretty ridiculous sales call: “buy this phone unseen, even though you have said you are happy with your current phone.” I pointed out that the “deal” they were offering me was nearly twice what I was currently paying and she cut me off with a curt, “well, if you’ll just listen you’ll see the benefits.” She went on to list benefits that were no better than what I had for nearly twice the price, then proceeded to act shocked when I again said “no” and asked in the tone of a principal telling off a student, “well, can you tell me why you don’t want it?” I repeated that I wasn’t even in the market for a phone and she said, “well, what if your phone were to break? Wouldn’t you want a new one then and this offer might not be available then?”

          Never mind that even if my phone did break, I still wouldn’t want to sign up, unseen for a specific phone I was unfamiliar with and a “deal” that would double my costs. I would want a new phone in that situation, but not that one.

          I complained to the company, largely because I was concerned for people who might be easily bullied. I think if I had received a call like that when I was 18, I would have found it very hard to say no.

          And yes, I know that is not normal, but you can imagine why people, having had a couple of experiences like that, might decide not to waste their time listening to sales pitches and essentially being insulted and talked down to because they don’t let themselves be bullied into paying more than they want to. Most salespeople wouldn’t do that but you don’t know which are the ones who will.

          And even apart from that, again, people don’t owe a favour to strangers who call them up out of the blue and yes, listening to a sales pitch about a product you have no interest in before saying no, thanks is doing the person a favour.

          I do think it’s a bit different if the person has called to express interest but if a salesperson calls somebody out of the blue, they have no obligation to stop what they are doing in order to tell the person “no thanks.” That is not “being an adult.” It’s doing a stranger a favour.

          Reply ↓
          1. Plate of Wings*

            You’re so right, even the post OP admits “no” doesn’t work, because they say they when they get a “no” they then ask about why and bring up hopefully relevant information!

            Reply ↓
            1. I Have RBF*

              Yeah, when some sales droid wants to know the “why” on my “NO”, I will either a) tell them “because I said so”, and/or b) just hang up.

              If I tell a sales person “no”, that’s the end of it. There is absolutely nothing that requires me to justify my decision to a stranger. NOTHING! If they won’t stop calling and pestering, I will block their number.

              If you don’t take my “No” I will never consider you for a “yes.”

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            2. Quill*

              One of the things you do have to be mentally prepared for if you go into sales: to 95% of people, you are junk mail.

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        7. law*

          Okay the more you dig in your heels about this, the more you’re just validating my previous experiences with the majority of salespeople–not just MLMs and scammy ones, but general salespeople that are supposedly not pushy.

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        8. NotAnotherManager!*

          I get so many cold calls, and they absolutely do not leave me alone when I say “no, thanks” or “I do not have purchasing authority.” or “I am not involved with that service/software.” If I respond AT ALL, then I get repeated follow-ups asking me to put them in touch with or provide the contact info for the responsible person at my org (which I would not do even if I knew who it was) or the next sales person to pick up my account starts the cycle over (because now my contact info of marked as valid).

          I also do not take competitor feedback seriously given the number of competitors I’ve seen totally talk out of their asses about their competitors’ contracts, service offerings, etc. I get that you’re taught ways to overcome resistance and close the deal, but they’re transparent to a savvy buyer and often are more off-putting than the cold call. That competitor you think requires a five year deal also just cut me a three year one because five was a dealbreaker for us.

          I don’t owe you anything. I didn’t express an interest in your service, I didn’t ask for outreach, I didn’t sign up on your website – you probably bought my contact information from a marketing service that gathered it from industry conferences I attend. If you have complaints about how cold-called customers don’t respond to you at all, you need to take that up with majority behavior of your industry and not chastise the people you’re trying to earn money off of.

          If you can’t take a hint that NEVER returning your email means I’m not remotely interested in what you’re selling, I really struggle to see how that is a me issue.

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        9. zinzarin*

          Please don’t tell people that their experience isn’t true or valid.

          In my personal life, I’ve had very few problems with sales people, but that’s the opposite in my professional life. There are companies that I *will not* give my contact info to because I know it will result in unending weekly check-ins regardless of what I say from that point forward.

          “If you can’t be an adult….” We’re not children; don’t infantilize us. This is an appropriate *adult* response to aggressive sales tactics. Congratulations on being one of the good ones, but understand that you’re in the minority here. Your industry is full of people who don’t take “no” for an answer; we’re not immature for ignoring them.

          Reply ↓
        10. HBJ*

          Yea, this isn’t true at all. I had some sort of security system people come knock on my door. I told them I wasn’t interested (no reason given. Just “no thanks.”) They said oh, it’s such a good deal. I said no again and that we didn’t own the house. “Oh, we can do rentals too.” Finally, I said I needed to talk to my husband about it. And then they started asked why I couldn’t just make the decision myself and if I needed my husband’s permission. Umm, that was a brush off because YOU WOULDN’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER. And I fully realize that “permission” line was intended to get me riled up to say, “of course I don’t need a man’s permission to buy something. Here’s my credit card.” But yes, I do in fact need my husband’s “permission.” And he would need mine if they came when he was home alone because no one should be buying a full home security system without first talking to THE OTHER ADULTS WHO LIVE THERE!

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        11. Phoenix Wright*

          Given how you replied to someone simply disagreeing with you in this comments section, I certainly wouldn’t trust you to take my no for an answer when the stakes are as high as your entire job depending on my yes.

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        12. Workerbee*

          “Being an adult” means not having to respond, even to a direct question, even to someone who expects you to sit there and take what they have to say simply because they want to say it.

          My brother-in-law and other assholes always get astonished when I just…don’t engage, and actively leave the scene. In your case, you’ll never hear from me at all, and you should consider that a good thing.

          Reply ↓
        13. Teapot Connoisseuse*

          You clearly haven’t met the door-to-door sales guy who told me to “Enjoy your expensive electricity!” when I politely refused to switch suppliers. There was only one adult in that interaction, and it wasn’t him.

          Reply ↓
          1. Teapot Connoisseuse*

            Oooh, and the other guy who wanted us to sign up for an expensive water filter system, who made some crack about the “expensive” car in our drive (a pre-design revamp Nissan X Trail which was a few years old by then and bought before a major change in our financial circumstances) after I said we couldn’t afford it.

            I remain polite, but firm with salespeople, despite nonsense of this nature.

            Reply ↓
        14. Rincewind*

          Actual conversation I’ve had, multiple times, with software sales people:
          Me: (being polite) “Your software is interesting but I’m definitely the wrong person to speak to about purchasing. I don’t make those decisions.”
          Salespeep: “Let’s have a call to talk about that!”
          Me: “You’re not getting it. I don’t have any input on sales decisions. I just work with the allowed software.”
          SP: “I’m sure we can meet all of your concerns with the software!”
          Me: (this is probably an auto reply bot) “I cannot make sales decisions. I cannot even use open source software. I am a junior level software engineer at a multi national corporation. I cannot help you.”
          SP: (definitely a bot) “Let’s set up a call!”

          I ignore all sales messages now unless they come with breakfast and a free Uber (I actually got one of those!)

          Reply ↓
      2. Bast*

        We have had issues with people selling solar panels in our area and then refusing to leave, or showing up multiple times after being told to not come back. I saw Ring footage someone posted in the neighborhood of a man being told the homeowner wasn’t interested and to please not come back (you could tell that this was not the first time homeowner had been harassed) and the salesperson made a point to go back to their vehicle, smoke a cigarette, and stare directly at the house as a challenge as if to say “I’m going to stay here just as long as I want.” And then they show back up a day or two later. I’d love to say this was an outlier, but this has also been my experience as well — some (many) cannot and will not take no for an answer. I have also been repeatedly harassed not just by solar panel companies, but other places (time share sales come to mind) where a simple, “No thanks, not interested.” does not work. Telling them to take you off their list does not work. They will keep calling, sometimes 2, 3, 4 times a day. The only way to not be disturbed is to not answer.

        Also, just as a note on the solar panel people — police will not do much because they have bigger fish to fry. If you call, they will show up an hour or so later, at which point, solar panel people are gone.

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        2. Delta*

          My neighborhood gets a bunch of window sales people. One time I tried to politely let them know I wasn’t looking to replace my windows for another couple of years. They refused to take my no, got extremely pushy, and at one point even called someone else and put me on speaker phone to set up an appointment for a free estimate. I should have just shut the door on them, but it was my first time in that situation and didn’t feel like I could. It went on for at least 15 minutes (maybe longer) and I was late for something because I couldn’t get them to go away fast enough.

          That window guy ruined any politeness I had for unsolicited salespeople. Now if I accidently open the door for them, I cut them off to tell them no, and slam the door shut.

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        3. Zombeyonce*

          I have a No Soliciting sign above my doorbell and it’s so helpful. I still get some salespeople ringing the bell but I open the door, point the the sign, and close the door. My husband thinks that’s rude (my opinion is that they were rude first by ringing anyway), and doesn’t know how to quickly say no, so he still spends way too long at the door when they come by.

          I do love the screen call feature on my phone to do the same thing for spam callers.

          Reply ↓
          1. Elizabeth West*

            I put up a sign at my old house and stopped opening the door. There were a few people who would try, but after a while, it began to trickle down to nothing. By the time I moved, it had completely stopped.

            “I’m not working and I don’t have any money” usually worked pretty well if I got caught outside.

            Reply ↓
      3. AnonInCanada*

        Tell me about it! A thread above this one talked about the truck brokerage industry being shady. I can sum up both that thread and this one with three letters: TQL. How many times do I get called by one of their sales reps who leave voicemails saying, “Gotta load? Gotta load?” (Alas, despite me blocking their numbers, their ability to leave voicemails don’t get blocked.) They’re relentless and won’t take no for an answer, in spite of me telling them not to call again. All because we used them once, about 5 years ago when we needed a load here desperately and with (you know what) causing havoc we turned to them as a last resort.

        Reply ↓
        1. Galloping Possum*

          OMG, fellow TQL harassee. Even after telling them parent company has forced us into a contract with another broker, they still. won’t. stop. calling.

          Reply ↓
      4. Glad I'm not in the rat-race any more*

        Oh geez, I used to work in women’s clothing retail for a NATION-wide chain, and it was ASTOUNDING how many cold-calls we got on the store’s phone line from phone and internet companies, exterminators, rug-cleaners, etc. asking to “speak to whomever is in charge of your X system.” I’d flat-out tell them we are a nation-wide chain and they’d have to call the VP of the-folks-who-set-up-new-stores or the-folks-who-hire-services in NYC, because it was the only way (most) of them would take no for an answer. I say most because I had one rude SOB ask me for that VP’s number! While I had a line at the cash register waiting for me to hang up, yet. I told them it was probably pretty easy to find on our website http://WWW.[out-of-business-now-company].com, they should maybe Google it, and hung up without saying good-bye.

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      5. MyBitchFaceNeverRests*

        I can’t even keep the lawncare and pestcare sales people off my porch with not 1 but 2 NO SOLICITING signs that they have to pass by to get there. When I point them out, they usually say something like, “Oh well I’ll only take a minute of your time,” or “Well since your neighbors use our service I’m not really soliciting, per se” (WTF?). Drives me up a tree. I’ve started using my ring cam and simply not answering; I don’t care if they can see me walking around through the window. Sometimes I’ll talk thru the ring, “Excuse me, did you not see the No Soliciting signs posted? We are not interested.” Then they’ll try to talk thru the ring doorbell to me! But muting is easy :)

        Reply ↓
      1. L-squared*

        I’m in a field where reputation and stuff matter, and people tend to come back over and over.

        Me personally, or even my company, being known as pushy and annoying does not help anyone in the long run.

        If it is a product you will only buy one time every 10 years, I can see the logic. I’m in a business where people are buying products from us every year.

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    3. T.N.H*

      This rubs me the wrong way. I just don’t owe you a response even after I have filled out a form. This isn’t a personal relationship worth preserving. Even taking the time to give a no and why sounds like a waste (and that’s not a small ask).

      Reply ↓
      1. L-squared*

        I mean no one owes anyone anything.

        I don’t owe the clerk at the grocery store a thank you or eye contact, but its still rude to ignore them speaking to you.

        Reply ↓
        1. T.N.H*

          That just doesn’t compare. If I fill out a dozen inquiries and then never return the call of the 6th sales person who has bugged me that day, I don’t think that’s the same as not answering someone in person who just completed a transaction with you.

          Reply ↓
          1. L-squared*

            The fact that you are saying you are filling out inquiries, but people getting back to you about said inquiries is “bugging” you is very telling.

            And again, I’m just saying, its rude either way, you are just justifying it in your mind why one is rude and the other is perfectly valid. Both are people just doing their jobs.

            Reply ↓
            1. T.N.H*

              Sorry, this was extremely hypothetical although I have of course been on the receiving end of these sales calls. TBC, I don’t mean one reach out in response to a form is bugging. I was referring to repeated calls over the course of days/weeks/months. That to me is so much ruder than a non response.

              Reply ↓
            2. Annony*

              Your responses here are also telling. I’m thinking you are pushier than you care to admit to yourself.

              Reply ↓
              2. ConlanMetalRose*

                This! L-squared’s responses across this thread make me feel that they are not one of the good ones. If you are cold calling or cold emailing me and I did not reach out to you or invite you to contact me, you should not be surprised when I don’t pick up, don’t respond to your email, or if I do respond am very short in my response (i.e. We are not in the market and if that changes I have your contact information). I do not owe you a response under that scenario and my ignoring you is my response.

                I hate people who tell me that if I just responded that I was not interested, the calls or emails would stop. That is simply not my experience, because if one does stop, more pop up from the same field, and why should I give someone I did not contact and do not want anything from the time of day?

                I have taken to seeing if there is an unsubscribe option and doing that when possible, but not everyone does, so some emails just get deleted or marked as spam or junk and I do not feel bad about it.

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            3. kanada*

              frankly, commerical sales people have themselves to blame for this by insisting on being the gatekeepers for any useful information about their products.

              Reply ↓
          2. MyBitchFaceNeverRests*

            If you filled out inquiries, then you are soliciting THEM to call YOU. You asked for them to do so and then you’re annoyed when they do what you ASKED for? That’s just… bizarre and rude.

            Reply ↓
        2. BethRA*

          The person at the grocery store provided you with a service you wanted or needed (or plays a role in doing so).

          Someone cold-calling or emailing me about a service or product I didn’t ask for? Not so much. Responding to you may not seem like much effort. To you. But looking at all the unsolicited pitches in my inbox? All that “not much effort” starts to add up.

          Reply ↓
      2. JO*

        so to clarify, you fill out a form that inherently will prompt a follow-up and then get annoyed when it actually happens?

        Reply ↓
        1. dorktastic*

          Often, I fill out a form to get access to *something* (a PDF resource, a blog post) that is being used as a sales funnel for a product I am not interested in purchasing. I do not feel bad for not responding, and I am super annoyed when there is no easy way to unsubscribe or I get repeated follow ups.

          Reply ↓
          1. MyBitchFaceNeverRests*

            … this is exacty why I have multiple emails and 1 of them is for exactly those situations. I ONLY use it for “fill out this form w/ your info to get the downloaded white paper” or whatever. Once in a while I have to log in to get a verification code or something and I am always amazed at the thousands of emails there are in there and I’ll do a bulk delete until the next time.

            Reply ↓
    4. I'm A Little Teapot*

      In an ideal world, sure. In the real world? The pushy, annoying salespeople who ignore no’s far outnumber the ones that respect them.

      Reply ↓
    5. RCB*

      I think the problem is that you’ve just confirmed why we ghost sales people, because you said that if we say no, you might ask why (you’ll definitely ask why), and then you’ll give us reasons why that isn’t correct and how you’re different… I 100% understand that you’re saying that you are clearing up misunderstandings but to all of the rest of us you’re not taking on for an answer and are continuing the sales pitch, and I know the truth is somewhere in the middle, but we don’t care enough to find that middle ground on something we were cold called on in the first place, we just want to move on with our never-ending to-do list.

      Reply ↓
      1. Debby*

        And I do think how the sales call was initiated and by whom makes a HUGE difference. For example, when I receive an unsolicited phone call, I will tell them “No thank you” and then hang up-even if they start to talk. To me, that is ok because I didn’t give them permission to call me. However, if I call/go into a place of business, then I feel a different response to the sales person is warranted. I initiate the contact, so I will communicate with them. I agree to not leave them hanging either.

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      2. Tokei*

        Right? “We know how to take ‘no’ for an answer! After we tell you all the ways that you’re wrong about our product and your choices, of course.”

        Ignoring calls and emails is a ‘no,’ and you’re not entitled to the “why.” I know it’s annoying to have to make X attempts to an unresponsive customer before you cut bait, but they’re not making a bad/wrong choice by not inviting you to interrogate their reasons for turning you down.

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    6. kanada*

      hahaha, I’ve had salespeople straight up lie to my face and tell me I requested a callback after I’ve told them not to call me again.

      Reply ↓
      2. Helen Waite*

        That happened to me, most notably the day I moved into my home after a fire and the months-long construction work! I hadn’t been at that number for nearly a year and I got the “You requested a callback at this number” song and dance. The phone I had been using was a borrowed cell phone.

        The number was a landline on a disabled phone jack. They called nearly the second the jack went live. On one hand, I was angry that they lied to me in such a verifiable way. On the other, I want to know how they called me so quickly after the phone was plugged back in.

        Reply ↓
        1. Librarian of Things*

          They’d probably been calling all along while the phone wasn’t plugged in, too. Just, this time, they got through.

          Reply ↓
      3. Head Intact*

        I accidentally picked up a call from a headhunter, who for started by apologizing for not reaching out to me for so long. I had never talked to him before and had no idea who he was.

        Reply ↓
    7. Anon in Midwest*

      In my role in marketing and advertising, I get 5-10 sales emails per day from people trying to get me to use their ad buying products, or attend their webinar, or have a conversation about my company’s goals so they can put together a plan for us to use their agency, etc

      It’s exhausting to even file them all away, much less respond to all of them. It would not be a responsible use of my time. I consider all of them essentially business cards that I can look at in the future and reach out to them if I have a need, which does sometimes happen. But I don’t owe the cold callers/emailers time out of my day.

      Reply ↓
    8. L-squared*

      To be clear (since I can’t edit posts), I’m not referring to cold calling people.

      I’m talking about people who I’ve had multiple conversations with. They reach out for our product. I do product demos, put together quotes, answer questions. Then they just stop responding. THAT is my problem.

      Ignoring cold calls or cold emails is completely understandable.

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        Yes, if you have formed a business relationship with someone (multiple conversations) after expressing interest in their product, it is rude to ghost them.

        If a salesperson cold-calls you, sends you spam or seems to be running a scam, it is safest to end contact immediately.

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      2. HBJ*

        What’s your definition of stopping responding? We had a very similar experience to what you’re saying – at a trade expo, put down our number, asked for a quote, talked to the rep for quite a while, said we were interested but not quite sure when we might be ready to buy.

        After the show, she emailed the quote and we said thanks and we’d let her know when we were ready to purchase. And then she kept emailing every week or two and then every month to so. We liked her, but how many times are we supposed to respond to her emails with the same “we’ll let you know when we’re ready to buy.” FWIW, after ignoring her emails, we followed up about a year and a half later to ask for an updated quote because we were ready to buy. Her repeated emails weren’t needed for us to remember (after about eight months, her emails had stopped. So we’d gone without contact for a year or more when we reached out again.)

        Reply ↓
        1. L-squared*

          I guess to that I’d say, give her an actual timeline for when you’ll know, or at least some progress will be made.

          If you don’t know for sure, its fine to say “its definitely not happening this quarter, maybe check back in Q3”.

          But it sounds like you’d let her know when then just left it out there.

          Think about it this way. If you are at a restaurant, the server comes over, you ask questions, and say “we aren’t ready just yet”. Are you going to be angry if they come back every 5 min?

          Reply ↓
          1. Ha2*

            The difference being that in a restaurant, the waiter knows that the table will be ordering soon enough. Otherwise they wouldn’t be there.

            In the sales example “we don’t know when, possibly never” is a pretty reasonable answer for “when some progress will be made.”

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          3. HBJ*

            we didn’t know. We hoped it would be soon. Much less than a year. But it wasn’t. As I said, we literally told her we’d get in touch. And that should be enough, in my opinion.

            Also, why should I tell her to get back in touch? We didn’t need her to. We remembered and we followed up when we were ready.

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          4. Calamity Janine*

            i know the frustration here springs from being given silence as an answer, but sometimes… silence *is* the answer. no news can be good news, after all, and in this case, no news can also be bad news. or just neutral news. the thing being communicated is an absence of news, hence the absence.

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    9. Susie*

      When sales people drop in without appointments, or email repeatedly without an express of interest, this is why people ignore sales people. My time is a valuable resource, and someone who drops in is saying their sales pitch is more important than what I am doing in that moment, which means they don’t actually understand my needs as a possible client. So if you’re getting ghosted, maybe you need to evaluate if you’re being mindful and respectful of the industry you’re catering to, and you’ll have a better response from buyers.

      I’m saying this to help, not to be critical. Most of us can smell a sales pitch and we just want to understand the performance and the limitations.

      Reply ↓
    10. Chick-n-boots*

      Are you in a sales job where your customers are mostly businesses/organizations? Or in personal sales where you are selling to individuals? Because I think there’s a huge difference between those two audiences and the approaches. Based on some other comments you’ve posted down thread I’m guessing you are in that first category but I think most people hear “sales people” and assume the latter – and that’s the category I think a lot of people (rightly?) have moved to ignoring because engaging with a “no” is just not effective.

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    11. Llama Llama*

      The guys knocking on my door to sell internet to me (that I already have! with their company!) would disagree with that.

      Not answering the door is your best way to leave you alone.

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        I kept getting calls from Charter asking for someone else, which was surprising because 1) I’d had that number for over five years, and 2) Charter was my internet company so must have had the phone number as belonging to me in their database. After the fifth or so wrong number, I explained this emphatically to the salesperson and asked them to please stop calling.

        Salesperson: “So you’re not Chris?”
        Me: “No. I’m not Chris. There is no Chris at this number.”
        Salesperson: “And you’re a Charter customer?”
        Me: “Yes, I am.”
        Salesperson: “In that case, are you interested in bundling cable, internet and a landline for the low, low price of only $99 per month?”

        Reply ↓
        1. Sparklefizz*

          I’m still getting calls for the previous owner of the number I got eight years ago, mostly real estate agents wondering if she’ll sell her house. I’m so close to telling them to just stop by with the paperwork.

          Reply ↓
          1. Zarniwoop*

            That would probably finally get you off their list, once it’s their time being wasted instead of yours.

            Reply ↓
      2. sdfghj*

        Try cancelling your internet! I told them I was moving(!) to a place where I did not control or pay for the internet, and apparently this did not appease them.

        Reply ↓
    12. law*

      If you say no, we may ask your reasoning. At that point we may bring up something you weren’t aware of (IE this competitor you are with locks you into a 5 year contract)

      The thing is, MLMs and other predatory salespeople* use this tactic as well, to the extreme. And it’s not on me to waste my time to figure out if you’re just someone legitimately wanting to help steer me into an honest sale but will back off, OR you’re going to relentlessly hawk the B2B equivalent of Optiva supplements at me until I block your number and email address.

      *”Push past their excuses” is something that pick-up artists and stalkers do too, by the way.

      Reply ↓
    13. Rainy*

      Please tell the ed-tech sales sector this, because they have absolutely not gotten the memo. The amount of thoroughly unhinged spam I have gotten from ed-tech sales people is astronomical. One of them was so persistent and obnoxious after being told no that I figured it was gloves off, so every time I got a new email or phone call from her, I’d sign her up for a new mailing list or submit her information to online forms known to be as persistent as she is, like MLM recruiters and those people who try to sell hair growth solutions to men.

      Reply ↓
    14. Dido*

      I’m not taking any time out of my day to explain to people who cold contact me what they need to do better. Pay for market research

      Reply ↓
    15. Workerbee*

      Nah, if you cold-email or cold-call me and I don’t respond, and then you follow up with ever more increasing “I didn’t hear back from you” and “Just tell me if you don’t want me to contact you,” all of that is 100% on your side. So from my perspective, you sales people really do like wasting time – MINE.

      Reply ↓
    16. Century Kestrel*

      I can understand that it’s annoying to send emails and calls into the void while you’re just trying to do your job and that it *feels* very rude to not get a response, but I don’t think it actually is. “Rude” is what you call someone who goes against commonly accepted social norms, especially in a way that’s hurtful to others. If this thread proves anything it’s that people, overwhelmingly, consider there isn’t a widely accepted obligation to answer unsolicited sales communications. I would say this goes for a lot of unsolicited communication, as a matter of fact. Silence is a valid answer, whether it’s in response to a sales pitch, pick-up attempt or request to hear all about our lord Jesus Christ.

      Reply ↓
    17. AnSteve*

      I wish this was true. I had one caller get told no from me boss all ways ranging from a polite no to “if you fracking call one more time I’m passing your company information to Legal.”

      After all that the guy called our website tech support number to demanding to be transferred to someone higher than him. I laughed at him and said “bye”. Last thing we heard before disconnecting the line was “I’m just doing my job man”

      Reply ↓
    18. Names are Hard*

      I have never had a sales person take a no as a no. And they keep coming back after receiving a firm no. If you are actually leaving people alone after getting a no, I’d say you are in the .0001 percent of your profession.

      Reply ↓
  6. Dr. Rebecca*

    Professors do not make a lot of money. Many people who teach at the college level are living below the federal poverty line. Making high five figure/low six figure money through a teaching-only or teaching + research position is very rare, and getting rarer.

    We love our students, but also people without much life experience (ie: most traditional college students) who are left on their own at an unfamiliar place do some dumb shit, and our jobs would be easier by far if some of y’all prepped your kids better for independence.

    Reply ↓
    2. HailRobonia*

      This. I have a friend who is a professor and he accidentally handed out his annual salary update letter to someone in his class when he was handing back their papers. The students were shocked that he made less than their annual tuition.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jenn Supple*

        Professor here at a small, private college. We make the same annual pay as Costco top-scale clerks with less benefits.

        Reply ↓
          1. Hey Nonny Nonny*

            I literally have paras who choose Target because they get injured less and get a discount. Pay’s about the same.

            Reply ↓
        2. Shellfish Constable*

          Once in a moment of despair at my salary and its euphemistic “compression” I toyed for just a moment with the idea of applying for a job at Buckee’s, where the manager of the carwash was making nearly 50% more than me.

          Also, workin’ at the carwash is notoriously fun…there’s even a song about it!

          Reply ↓
          1. Dr. Rebecca*

            I could’ve made more as an entry level cashier at the local grocery store than I was making adjuncting at the university across the street from it.

            Reply ↓
          2. RamieGrl*

            I’m in Oregon and I LOVE Buc-ee’s. Shoot, I’d apply for a part-time 2nd job if they put one in Portland, it looks like a fun place for a job. But those sandwiches, my god…

            Reply ↓
            1. Rainy*

              My dad is hilariously and eternally mad at Buc-ee’s because they won’t let him take his dog into the shop with him.

              “You expect Felix to sit in the truck by himself? LIKE AN ANIMAL?” –my dad, every time someone mentions any convenience store

              Reply ↓
              1. Shellfish Constable*

                I’m with your dad. Also, based on the behavior I’ve seen in some gas station convenience stores, I’m pretty sure my dogs are better behaved than a lot of humans!

                Reply ↓
                1. Rainy*

                  Felix is a herding line Shetland sheepdog so yeah, his manners are impeccable and he definitely has better hygiene than the general run of convenience store bathroom users.

          3. Dogwoodblossom*

            My brother worked at a carwash for a while and he said the song overplayed how fun it was. He got free air fresheners though.

            Reply ↓
      2. Mathemagic*

        I have a STEM PhD and took a job in industry when I was wrapping up. Immediately started making more than at least 50% of the tenured professors in my department at a research school in a major city.

        Reply ↓
    3. Snarkus Aurelius*

      Gawker did a first person essay series on this topic about ten years ago, and it was dismal. I cannot get over how little instructors make versus the skyrocketing cost of tuition. Where does it go?!

      I remember my parents being pissed at being charged the same amount of tuition whether it was a TA or full tenured professor.

      Reply ↓
      1. Hey Nonny Nonny*

        In k-12, I have a couple districts where the superintendent makes more than the state superintendent of public instruction. They’re not wealthy districts, either.

        But more prosaically, a lot of it goes to materials, support, and operations cost. MSOC is different between k-12 and college in some ways, but liability insurance still costs a lot and rising, power still costs a lot and rising, paying off the debt of not replacing outdated tech and materials because you didn’t have the money then and you still don’t now but now it’s on fire still costs a lot and rising,

        But if you really want to know costs for your state-owned schools, it’s all public record. Take a look – you’d be surprised.

        Reply ↓
        1. Clisby*

          At least where I live, salaries of state employees making at least $50,000/year are public record – posted online. Below $50,000, the employee’s classification (like a GS level for the feds) is public, so you know what range their salary falls in.

          Reply ↓
          1. Hey Nonny Nonny*

            Where I’m at, you can get the numbers for K-12 and college admin and pro staff; faculty at both is more obscured but you can find it, it takes digging and some interpretation of data sets.

            Titles, on the other hand, are very hard to figure out. We have admin folks with front-line titles and the other way around, and they vary from district to district. Makes it super hard to draw comparisons between districts/colleges.

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      2. Ms. Yvonne*

        I remember being pissed as a first time TA who did more lesson planning than the tenured prof who taught it. We ALL did our own lesson planning in a class of ~500 kids, so e.g. my kids got my specialty (economic geography) while other got everything from the angle of their TA (psychoanalysis and film, for instance) … bec it was a very general first year social science course and TAs came from many backgrounds. He was such a blowhard, that prof. And this was in a unionized TA environment where I clued in too late that I could grieve it. All that to say a secret of undergraduate education is that there is sometimes very little consistency in the same first year course.

        Reply ↓
        1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

          This was true of a grad level course. Library Science degree required a technical course, library management through technology. My class made simple HTML pages and Excel sheets. My friends took it next semester with a different instructor and were creating bar code systems. It was more in line with the Information Systems track of the degree. And the classes were labeled the same.

          Reply ↓
        1. FormerHigherEdPerson*

          Not to anyone below the VP level in administration, I’ll tell you that! Student Affairs (housing, bursar, orientation, activities, health center, ministry, etc…) make peanuts. At a director level with 15 years of experience, I was paid $65k.

          Reply ↓
        2. Majnoona*

          Tenured professors are paid a bit better. But we get raises based on research (at least at R1 institutions) not teaching. Even a terrible teacher would not get dinged – at most the chair might promise to talk to them about it. Also nobody claps for you when you get tenure. It’s a bureaucratic process that goes thru several university levels. Most people’s understanding of faculty comes from their experience as students, i.e. being taught. We care but it’s not what we’re paid to do. Also our offices are not as big as on TV

          Reply ↓
        3. JustaTech*

          In almost every state in the US the highest paid state employee is the football coach at the largest state university. Some places it’s the basketball coach.

          I have a lot of *feelings* and *opinions* about this, but they’re unproductive.

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      4. Goosielou*

        As a professor, I don’t know that that emotional response is fair – some TAs are bad instructors, but many are both more passionate about teaching and more up to date on current field and pedagogy standards than professors closer to retirement because they’re deep in the front lines of their field and have less of an expertise gap with their students. Being tenured doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good instructor.

        Reply ↓
      5. Rage*

        I’m in my last semester of my Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

        My “fees” are more than 30% of the tuition. And yet:
        1. The teaching clinic at the university cannot get a new filing cabinet, so they have 1 in the storage room that is so crammed full of old client files the drawers do not close.
        2. The video camera in the play therapy treatment room at said teaching clinic (where I spend 90% of my time right now) has been broken for 3 semesters. First, the button on the wall that turns the recording on/off doesn’t work at all (so I have to go into the system and manually schedule recordings). Last semester, it didn’t record at ALL for a month or so. Second, though it is recording now, it’s video only – NO AUDIO. So I can’t even have a conversation with my clinical supervisor about my verbal responses in sessions! (I reported the issue the first week of the semester, and it is STILL not recording audio.) Third, because they are doing so much construction, they have eliminated at least 1 parking lot, and closed 2 or 3 others, so that when I go to my Tuesday afternoon class, the lots nearby my building are all full and the closest student lot with open space is on the other side of campus. I have had to resort to parking in the public parking garage – where I have to pay, even though I already paid for a parking pass for the student lots. And then I still have to walk 10 minutes to the building I need to go to.

        The bit about the video recording is what really ticks me off, because that’s directly impacting my ability to learn – which is what I freaking paid for. I’m considering waiting until my degree is conferred and then demanding a refund on some of the fees because of that.

        Reply ↓
      6. 2 Cents*

        In my area for K-12, where every little hamlet *needs* to have its own school district, people complain about what the teachers make … not realizing that the 4 administrators in charge make nearly as much as the 100 instructors put together (because math is hard). So yeah, if there were more consolidation of administrative duties, there would be savings, but the people who would make that decision are the ones who would be out of a job so…

        Reply ↓
    4. Hey Nonny Nonny*

      We have contingent members working up to five jobs and still living at lower middle class levels. Academia is hard to get into unless you have the money to support yourself, which often means a supporting spouse, which keeps the profession (at least in my state, which is still majority-white, around 65%) very white just based on the sheer socioeconomic factors around who makes enough in a HCOL state to majority-support a family. (I have k-12 members in early learning who make so little they explicitly state they work to pay the gas for their husband’s truck so he can get to his job that supports the family, and that’s not much of an exaggeration. Head Start, your government’s fraud and waste, folks.)

      Our member colleges’ students are over fifty percent non-white, however, which makes for a lot of challenges around race on pretty much every axis you can imagine.

      Reply ↓
    5. Nat20*

      Plus a lot of courses are taught by non-tenure-track faculty, adjuncts, and graduate students, who are all paid far less than professors, and professors don’t make that much.

      Reply ↓
    6. Karo*

      and our jobs would be easier by far if some of y’all prepped your kids better for independence.

      My child is only 1 so I have some time before this is fully relevant, but do you have any examples? Like are we talking “making sure they know how to do their laundry” or are we talking “making sure they know how to think for themselves”?

      Reply ↓
      1. Dr. Rebecca*

        Both. Think for themselves/have a good sense of self, so they don’t fold like a cheap suit the first time they encounter negative peer pressure (which–yes, I’m aware of high school, but there’s a LOT MORE OF IT in college). But also, practicalities: we need them to be comfortable doing laundry, finding and prepping food, showing up on time to their obligations without complaint, etc.

        Most importantly, however, is that they need to be comfortable troubleshooting their lives. The biggest problem that ends up landing in my lap over and over and OVER is reflected by the phrase “I’ve tried absolutely nothing, and I’m all out of ideas.” Almost all universities have a massive web presence that is searchable, and will direct students to assistance with financial aid, mental health, physical health, social activities, how to use the learning management system, etc. But the shear numbers of students who show up in my classroom, desperate for answers on one or more of these things, who have not tried to find out… And they’re not even asking me for help–I’m happy to help, and I’m one of the school’s resources, so they can/should–they are suffering silently until *I NOTICE* that there’s something wrong, and reach out to help them.

        Reply ↓
        1. FuzzBunny*

          Amen to all this. Adding on:

          * Teach them basic professional norms. Example: When a student has a question, and your teacher answers it, say thank you afterward. This happens rarely enough that I notice it when they do.
          * Give them opportunities to problem-solve. If your kid keeps forgetting to bring their water bottle to school, get them to generate a potential solution. A minor example, but the point is you aren’t just giving them the answer.
          * Give them opportunities to speak to strangers. Students are often super anxious about any communication other than email/text, but they’ll never get over that discomfort if they don’t practice. Have them order at a restaurant, or ask the librarian a question, or whatever.

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          1. Candace*

            100% to all of this. I teach at a community college, and the students who have basic levels of politeness make all the difference. They are also few and far between. For example, show them how to be the student who responds to a greeting at the beginning of class and doesn’t have to be told every. single. time to put other materials away because it’s time to get started.

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            1. KathyG*

              Please, please, please include in that “basic level of politeness” the vital life skill of being polite and pleasant to the people working at the lower levels of the hierarchy: assistants, secretaries, janitors, cashiers, etc. Not because they’ll go the extra mile for you if you do (although they probably will), but because they are doing necessary jobs and deserve some common courtesy too.

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          2. Sylvia Fisher*

            I came here just to say this last one. My college students seem mostly terrified to talk to strangers. As a former Shy Kid, I get it, but what I’m seeing is new. However, once they figure out that they, too, can make small talk with someone they just met, it’s like a light bulb turns on.

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          3. Quill*

            NAVIGATION: Please teach your kid to read a map. Whenever I volunteered at my mom’s k-8 school there would always be middle schoolers who were unable to find something the equivalent of 3 blocks away (I helped with field trips a lot) because they couldn’t read a simplified map of the nature preserve.

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          4. NotmyUsualName*

            So much this. We get students who are so afraid to ask questions that they just stop going rather than ask a question. We have office hours, tutoring centers, advisors, etc and once students ask that first question, they seem to open up and are fine, but 1st year they get paralyzed and just stop doing.

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        2. Kimmy Schmidt*

          As an academic librarian, co-signing this. Some students hit that panic button immediately for anything remotely new – having to locate an office they’ve never been to, learning how to ask questions or to ask them at all, critical thinking in an assignment that doesn’t give them exact step-by-step instructions, troubleshooting or learning to click around in software, fearing they’re going to do something so catastrophically wrong that they just do nothing instead.

          Reply ↓
        3. toolegittoresign*

          I work in developing websites for colleges and universities. As you note, these web presences are massive. And, as a rule, are extremely difficult for your users to navigate. Most of these websites require an intuitional structure knowledge most students simply do not possess. It’s not like how it was back when I was a student and I could look at my hard copy student handbook, flip to the index, and find what I was looking for. There is no site index. The search functions and SEO of most pages is nonexistent or a nightmare of duplicate content. Looking for help with financial aid? Good luck — there’s 10 pages with that same title for every school within your university. Have a problem in your dorm? Well maybe you should talk to facilities, or maybe residence life, or maybe your RA, or maybe public safety? You certainly can’t tell from the site! And tutorials for anything technical like the online learning systems? Not easy to understand.

          You would think most of our billable time would be spent building the site. No.
          It’s doing an inventory and lots of discovery to figure out how to create a website students can actually use and get answers from.

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          1. Dr. Rebecca*

            In general, I have found that googling “my university’s name” + “vague description of what I need” + “-ai” because the world’s gone to shit will get me very close to where I need to be on the website if I don’t want the hassle of navigating it from the launch page.

            As for your examples, re: a problem in the dorm–that’s not the fault of the website or the university, that’s because it’s a question with a nuanced answer which depends on what the problem is. And triaging that type of answer (res life or your RA for low-level interpersonal conflict, public safety for an emergency or danger, facilities for a work order, etc.) is the type of thing I’m talking about students needing to be proficient in. As is “ten pages with the same title” which then equals “schedule an appointment with someone in that office instead of just searching the website.”

            I’m not saying the website is the be-all and end-all, I’m saying they don’t even make the attempt. And all of these things are basic problem solving: try to find the solution on your own, and if you can’t, then talk to someone whose job it is to know the system better than you.

            Reply ↓
            1. toolegittoresign*

              the type of boolean search approach you’re talking about is a skill you have developed over years of googling things and knowing how to do research. Even most of my college-educated friends will turn to me to help finding information online because I have better search skills than they do. Not all of these students know HOW to search for things efficiently. And I know that first-hand because we’ve conducted research amongst college students and high school students to see how they’re using AI. They actually use it a lot to find out HOW they need to search for what they need in a search engine.

              For those of us who have been along for the ride for the evolution of the internet have no idea how difficult some of these things are for people who were born with access to iPads. Apple’s intuitive function has ruined them in terms of needing to develop search skills. And they don’t get a boolean search class like I did in college.

              Reply ↓
              1. toolegittoresign*

                Additionally, if you ask an AI bot how it found information, it will often tell you it used a boolean search approach and then followed up with several other searches. But this isn’t something most kids are taught. And it’s an essential skill they need. No one thinks to sit their kid down to say “let me teach you how to use google”

                Reply ↓
            2. Elsajeni*

              I think “being comfortable with the idea that you might ask the wrong person first” is also an aspect of this — okay, you asked the RA about your leaky air conditioner and she wasn’t able to help (because it’s a facilities issue, but you don’t know that yet). Can you ask her if she knows who you SHOULD ask? Or can you figure out a second possible option on your own? This is a way that shyness or social anxiety manifests for me personally — I HATE asking anyone for anything unless I’m 100% ironclad sure that they’re the right person to ask — and I feel it’s related to what Kimmy Schmidt said above, where some students (and some people more generally) are so afraid that they’re somehow going to do something Wrong that they do nothing instead.

              Reply ↓
              1. toolegittoresign*

                well most of these kids do try to go online first to see who they’re supposed to contact. If they don’t find an answer, their impulse is to go to someone they see as being knowledgeable and approachable with their question. If a student is asking their professor about their leaking air conditioner, it doesn’t necessarily mean they never bothered to try to figure out who to talk to. These are people who prefer to search Instagram and TikTok for restaurants, recommendations, tutorials, etc because they want to get information directly from peers or people they follow and seem trustworthy. Asking your professor about something is similar to that in that you’re assuming the professor has institutional knowledge and can at least tell you who handles that, residence life or facilities. And, honestly, it seems like a lot to say “Hey, Professor G, my AC is leaking and I went on the website to see who to talk to about it but I couldn’t figure out which page as with right one, and then I tried googling it but I just got a lot of ads for AC repair and no usable results, and so I was wondering if you knew who to talk to?”

                Reply ↓
          2. Commenty*

            At the community college where I attend night classes, every course syllabus has info about where students can access resources/help, and the professors go over it briefly in the first class. I like that.

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          3. AFac*

            At our place, the main websites are advertisements to future students, donor pathways for past students, or shiny objects to distract brand management.

            They are not built for current students, current faculty and staff, or anyone who needs more concrete information than the name of the institution. There are supposedly other websites for that, but since those websites aren’t allowed to be linked to the main websites, good luck finding them.

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            1. toolegittoresign*

              This is sadly so common, and that’s why it really grinds my gears to hear people complain that students come to them with questions. The student is coming to you because they need help and feel comfortable asking. If you’re not the right person, that’s okay! Just tell them that! And if you get a lot of the same question, that suggests an issue that’s not the students, but inability to find that information. So go to the dept/office responsible for it and say “students keep asking me about X. Do you know why they may not be finding that info on the site?” Assuming these kids are lazy is not really assessing all possible explanations for the issue.

              Also, people do not realize that if you’ve been using Google for 20 years as an adult, you’re probably better at using it than a 20 year old! It’s so widely assumed that every young person is a whiz with technology because they grew up with it. But growing up with it and knowing how to use it for work or research are VERY different.

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        4. Rapunzel Rider*

          This goes beyond just students but reminding them that they are not the only person a staff member is assisting so please be patient and polite. Yes, we understand how important things are for you and promise it is important to us but there are 50 other people ahead of you in the queue calling us to ask about the status of your form with a deadline in 3 months that you just submitted an hour ago does not get you jump the line status. All calling to repeatedly pester us does is get you a reputation and ensure that your items are always processed according to standard procedure because the staff does indeed talk and we do not want to reward you and have the behavior continue because “someone did it before”.

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      2. bananners*

        I am not OP, but it is all of the above. Critical thinking, check. Time and task management, check. Respectful discussion and active listening. How to write an email. How to make a phone call. Reading the Syllabus is One Weird Trick to being successful in class.

        Reply ↓
        1. Shellfish Constable*

          I actually have a PhD Comic at the end of my syllabus whose moral is “It’s In the Syllabus”…and they all think it’s funny until I point out that even after reviewing it together, in detail, on the very first day of class, they totally haven’t read it.

          I’m happy to help if they’re genuinely confused, but, honestly, it speaks to the lack of critical thinking skills and problem solving abilities a lot of them have. Like, before you email your professor in a panic and accuse them of “never telling you” about something like a due date or an expectation…maybe read the syllabus.

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          1. bananners*

            I talk about this with my kids, their friends, my colleagues, anyone who will listen: if someone is giving you the playbook – USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. And it’s not just the syllabus. It’s the employee handbook. It’s a political party manifesto. It’s someone’s previous actions. Pay attention, take notes, and you will have a really good idea about how to get things accomplished.

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      3. Former Adjunct*

        Make sure you child can think for themselves is very much on that list. The other things that drove me nuts were learned helplessness and a strong sense of entitlement. I used to say that successfully making a photocopy should be a graduation requirement. Why? Because SO MANY students, if you locked them alone in a room with a copier and told them to make one, would curl up in the fetal position in the corner and refuse to even attempt to figure it out.

        Help your kid learn to help themselves, explore, take some risks without guaranteed rewards, think. Get them to understand when they can forge ahead and when they need to wait for guidance. Let them know that questions are good, but there very much are such things as Stupid Questions. You’ll be setting them up for success in life in general, and that will translate to higher education.

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        1. Shellfish Constable*

          “… there very much are such things as Stupid Questions.” OMG YES.

          The entitlement is hard, too. 99% of my students are lovely and it is the honor of a lifetime to help guide them as they forge ahead in life. But there is a loud minority who, I dunno, think I work for their dad or am their barista or something? I usually gently push back on these attitudes, but, holy cow, they’re going to be the reason for a bunch of letters on here if their parents/support system don’t teach them some of these things in high school or younger.

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          1. Rainy*

            Entitlement to my time is one of the ones that really cheeses me off. I’ll have students show up early for an appointment *they made* and then get mad that I won’t just see them whenever, even if there is literally someone else in my office (or if I am finally eating my lunch in the 7 minutes before their appointment starts).

            It’s not all of them but it is WAY more than it used to be, and it’s super annoying.

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        2. CorruptedbyCoffee*

          I worked in a tiny library for a few years where 80% of the job was helping adults make copies and I can say with authority that adults viewed making copies as just short of witchcraft, and even with easy, step by step instructions and me there to help would often throw up their hands, claim it was just too complicated, and demand someone else do it for them. I was truly shocked at the number of adults who couldn’t follow basic directions.

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      4. Elly*

        Not who you are replying to, but I work in university admissions. Some suggestions – make sure they:

        * Can talk to people they don’t know
        * Can speak on the phone
        * Don’t hide behind you when approached by strangers (in a context where this is expected!)
        * Know their address, details of their health conditions, are aware of any accommodations they receive
        * Check their emails regularly (or whatever we will have replaced them with by 2042!) and answer their phone when it rings – and, crucially, act on whatever they are told
        * Have at least one non-academic interest that they participate in so they have a way of making friends
        * Know how to cook and clean for themselves, and the importance of doing it
        * Know how to make a doctor / dentist / optician’s appointment
        * Are self motivated to study – you do not do them any good by hovering over them reminding them to do their homework every 30 seconds. A bollocking from a teacher aged 14 about missed homework will be much better for them than failing to hand in a summative essay at university.

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        1. Frieda*

          As a parent of kids in their early 20s, and a college professor, I’d add:
          – help them develop basic organizational skills and a willingness to read instructions and documents important for their well-being (like: Here’s a syllabus for a course. Here’s the exam date. Can you make a list of the topics, readings, and important ideas/people covered in the time between this exam and the last one? A *shocking* number of my students think that somehow the syllabus is for other people, surely not them, the students in the course.)
          – nip avoidant behaviors in the bud. Teach them some skills for beginning a task that’s making them anxious or that feels challenging. (This is my parent experience as much as my teacher experience!)
          – when you see deficits in your kid’s development, seek help if you can’t figure out what to do – there are so many resources available to help a child/tween/adolescent who is struggling
          – destigmatize mental health care and disability accommodations. Even if your kid never needs therapy or an accommodation, if they understand that some people do they’ll be a better classmate and member of the community.

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          1. MigraineMonth*

            Yes to destigmatizing mental health care in general. Especially if college is their first time away from home for a significant amount of time, it’s quite likely they’re going to need support dealing with homesickness, anxiety, stress or depression. That’s normal.

            I had to have a serious talk with one of my roommate’s friends who was so stressed and anxious she wasn’t sleeping and made repeated references to ending her life but insisted she didn’t need any help (and especially any medication) because she was “normal” and her parents wouldn’t understand.

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          2. Media Monkey*

            not a professor but a parent of a 16 year old who is in her first year of 6th form college (UK so equivalent to the last couple of years of US high school).
            please talk to your kids about what to do in usual situations and then let your kids do things for themselves. my daughter has so many friends who can’t problem solve if there’s a problem on their usual route to school or who have never gone to the nearest big town on their own, or who don’t know how to buy a train ticket or when to tip or how to use an ATM machine.
            also talk to them about money – how much things cost, how to budget, what interest is, loans, credit cards etc. because if you don’t, that’s something that they will learn from sales/ advertising which is not a good thing!

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        2. Be Gneiss*

          I have a college freshman and a high school senior, and one thing I’ve done when they were in the stage just before they had to do something on their own was to create opportunities to see how the thing works. For example, it’s hard to call to make an appointment for something when you don’t know what things they will ask. So before they started driving, I’d put the phone on speaker to make a service appointment. They could hear what the conversation was like, and what kind of information they would need to have when they called. Or I’d take them to a doctor or dentist appointment, but let them check themselves in at the reception desk. I let them deal with their own things related to school (changing their schedules, getting assignments in advance of an absence, getting doctor’s notes), and just made sure they knew I was there as backup if they got stuck. My daughter says she’s the go-to in her friend group because she knows how to do stuff – and if she doesn’t know, she knows where to call, or how to look it up.

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          1. Jules*

            I have a HS freshman and we celebrate every time he masters a “soft skill.” He’s been ordering for himself in restaurants since he was 4, he can make a phone call and set up an appointment, he can talk to strangers. He started a neighborhood business and perfected his sales pitch.

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          2. I am a translator*

            This is such a good idea! Not knowing what will happen in the phone call is a huge daunting obstacle!

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          3. Quill*

            Dad used to drive me to the back of beyond and make me find my way home with a paper map when I was doing my learning hours for my driver’s license. I recommend it to anyone who has teens.

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        3. goddessoftransitory*

          “Can speak on the phone.” OMG YES.

          I answer phones for a living and I have talked to so many younger adults who seemingly have never used their phones for making a phone call in their lives, and regard my voice as little short of a demonic spellcasting.

          I get texting! I do! I’m not saying anyone has to enjoy talking on the phone in general or that it’s as central to our society as it used to be. But it IS still a thing and stumbling, stuttering and leaving dead air after each question isn’t going to make them look professional or competent on important calls.

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      5. MourningStar*

        THIS IS MY MOMENT. CW: lots of mentions of mental health triggers.

        I’ve spent almost 20 years working with college students, but not on the academic side. By far the largest challenges have been 1) taking accountability and 2) resilience.
        Bringing up the combination of those two can make people nervous. It can make people feel like I’m saying “kids aren’t tough enough, they blame their problems on nonexistent mental health problems that we didn’t have when I was young” shakes fist at sky”, and that isn’t it at all. What I am saying is the ability to look at problems and approach them with an air of curiosity – and be willing to include the option that maybe you are the one that made a mistake. The ability to construct and deliver an impactful apology. The ability to understand that you have done harm, and that harm must be repaired before it can be forgotten. This also allows a person to stand on their own feet and request respect back from others, and know to walk away from people who don’t provide that respect.
        As to resilience – life is hard as hell, and kids these days have so much more awareness of that difficulty. They are kind and empathetic, they are intelligent and thoughtful. But they also need to be taught how to stand on their own feet and reason through difficulty. They do that by being allowed to ask for help when they need it – and not having being provided to them (at age-appropriate intervals).
        Lastly. Talk to your kid(s) about mental health. At length. About your mental health, about theirs. About good and bad mental health, about good days and bad. About anxiety and sadness, about therapy and how sometimes we talk to people if we need to. There is almost nothing harder than talking to a depressed college student than hearing “yeah, I’m depressed, but my parents can never find out.” The one thing harder than that is cleaning out the room of a college student that has taken their own life.

        So love the hell out of them, and raise them to be adults, not children.

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      6. Hell in a Handbasket*

        To me the big one is to make sure they’re managing their own time, schedule and work. It’s crazy to see an 18-year-old high school senior whose mom is still getting them up in the morning, keeping track of their homework assignments, telling them when to go to practice, doing their laundry, making their lunches, etc. What’s going to happen when they leave for college?

        My philosophy with my kids is that by senior year they should basically be operating as though they’re in college in terms of all the items above — with us parents as a backstop in case things go really wrong. But in order to achieve that, you have to gradually add responsibilities throughout childhood and allow them to fail as they learn (when the stakes for messing up are much lower).

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        1. SummitSkein*

          My mom has often told me that her biggest marker of success as a parent was when she realized that I no longer needed her. It meant that she’d achieved the goal of raising me to be a self-sufficient human, which is what parenting should be about. That has always stuck with me.

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        2. toolegittoresign*

          I will also say — if your 18 year old can’t wake up in the morning, can’t stay organized, can’t keep a schedule, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep in mind this may not be a character flaw but a real neurodivergent situation that a professional will need to help them with.

          I went years being told I was lazy and made to feel like a terrible person because I had so much trouble getting out of bed in the morning or getting anywhere on time. It wasn’t until I was in my late 30s that I decided to talk to my doctor about it. Turns out I have narcolepsy. So all that time if my parents had spent less time shaming me and punishing me over perceived “laziness” and had listened to me and talked to a doctor, I might not have had such a hard time in college and my early career because I needed 10+ hours of sleep a night to even function.

          A lot of these issues you describe have such a stigma of “spoiled” or “lazy” in our society and it’s why so many people are walking around with undiagnosed mental health and neurological issues. Explore all medical options and don’t use guilt and shame as a way to try to get your kid “in line.”

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          1. Shoshona*

            Along these lines (but hoping for much more supportive parents—I’m sorry this was your experience!), I’d involve your kid in their care and IEP processes by the time they’re teenagers, and teach them how to advocate for the accommodations they need. Many universities have an infrastructure for seeking accommodations, but students have to initiate it. If they’ve never been involved in their own care and accommodations, that can be a significant hurdle. I proactively work with students who don’t have formal accommodations, but not everyone does—and it’s harder to do when you have a huge class unless students take the first step of advocating for themselves to me.

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          2. Walk on the Left Side*

            THANK YOU. As someone who didn’t get proper medication for my ADHD until my final semester at college, and then only because I point-blank told my prescriber at [school] medical that we’d tried everything else and she should just at least TRY giving me Ritalin…it was amazing when I could suddenly function.

            (By the way, my “out of shape” inability to run the mile in gym class when I was 14 also turned out to be — get this — exercise-induced asthma. Diagnosed over 10 years later. Surprise!)

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        3. Zephy*

          +1000000. I also work in higher ed (financial aid), and the number of students I have who straight up refuse to speak to me because “my mom/dad handles that” is frankly appalling. It’s not many, but it needs to be far fewer.

          Even if Mommy/Daddy is ultimately paying for all this, *you* are the student and *you* are ultimately responsible for making sure your education is paid for.

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      7. Not an academic anymore*

        Some of both. Basic life skills like “can set an alarm clock and get up when it goes off,” “can reasonably estimate how long it will take them to do a task and plan their time accordingly,” “can handle their laundry/food/hygiene/finances/etc well enough to keep their life from imploding,” and “can keep track of assignments and deadlines” are things that many college students struggle with. A lot of college students come in without some or all of those skills, and it makes their lives a lot harder. (And can trickle down and make their professors’ lives harder too, as they deal with students coming in late, missing class, falling asleep in class, missing assignments, submitting work that isn’t actually the assignment because they didn’t read the syllabus, submitting assignments late, missing exams, and then begging for ways to make it up and get an A at the end of term.)

        And then, yes, having strong skills like reading, critical thinking, an ability to ask good questions, and a sense of curiosity about the world will help them succeed in the classes themselves. Their teachers can help teach and grow those skills, but it does help to have a solid foundation.

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      8. NotSoGrumpy Prof*

        It is also as simple as “Try Googling it first.” The number of students who ask me truly stupid questions — like when is spring break, or where is X department — is astounding. I don’t know those answers! I google them.

        Learning how to troubleshoot when things go wrong. Don’t just email me that you can’t find the reading. Try a basic google. Search the library website. Only then should a student reach out.

        Learning how to deal with “failure” — which at this point means anything lower than an A. The number of students whining because they “followed directions” but earned a B is pretty astounding. They assume that they can do the bare minimum and deserve an A.

        Get over “social anxiety.” Anxiety is a real, diagnosable condition that interferes with a person’s ability to do basic tasks. Students confuse nervousness for anxiety; it is normal to be nervous when trying a new thing, but that does not mean it should be accommodated away. I get students who refuse to speak in class because “social anxiety” but it turns out that they are actually pretty good at it and become comfortable with it. Our youth (and I’m not much older than my students) need to re-learn how to step outside of their sheltered comfort zones, how to try new things, and how to get over themselves. Accommodations are for things that genuinely interfere with a student’s life, not for things they’ve never done/are nervous about.

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        2. Beth*

          Agreed on much of this, but just noting that social anxiety disorder is a clinically diagnosable disorder just as much as generalized anxiety disorder is. You’re right that a lot of people misuse the terms to mean “I’m nervous about this” instead of “I have a clinically diagnosable level of anxiety that interferes with my ability to function.” And it sounds like the students you’re talking about probably did fall in that bucket. But wanted to note that the condition is real!

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        3. stratospherica*

          Yeah, I think the best thing that my mother taught me from Generally Being Too Busy Keeping The Household Afloat To Deal With Me was resourcefulness. If I needed to do something I’d see if I could do it myself. If I couldn’t do it myself, I’d experiment to see if I could figure out to do it myself. If I couldn’t figure it out, I’d look it up. If looking it up bore no fruit, I’d then ask my mother. It’s something I’ve carried with me to this day and it’s surprising to see people at work (even people who are above me on the ladder!) asking as their very first action.

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      10. Irish Teacher.*

        I’m a secondary school teacher so no expert, but looking at some of my 6th years, my main concern about them going to college would be…their reliance on authority. The kids I worry most about are the ones who at 17 or 18 are still like “I’m going to fail such a subject and it’s all the teacher’s fault. (S)he never checks my homework to make sure I do it, so I don’t” or “I don’t have to do any study tonight ’cause my mam’s not home so there’s nobody to make me” or who immediately start messing if the teacher is 5 minutes late for class.

        If a 17 or 18 year old is more concerned about “my teacher will give out to me if I don’t do my homework” or “my mum and dad said I won’t get a new mobile phone unless I pass this test,” than they are about the fact that they have, in a couple of months to do an exam that in Ireland single-handedly determines their entry to college and where getting 5% less than they need in any one subject could mean they have to rethink their future plans (admittedly an extreme case, but not impossible), then I do worry how they will manage being solely responsible for their own lives in a mere matter of months.

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      11. law*

        Admin support staff in higher ed here. I’ll second everything that the professors have said about getting your child comfortable with having a good sense of self, troubleshooting their lives, etc. Some other things that are more specific to my areas:
        –deadlines, tasks, and rules exist for a reason and not following them has real consequences up to and including: not being able to register for a class on time (if at all that semester). Or maybe the admin having to track your student down over and over about something that they have been contacted about numerous times, and now the faculty advisor and/or DEAN are now getting involved.
        –That being said, admin assistants in higher ed also want to help your child succeed and students shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to them. Like Dr. Rebecca mentioned, there are a lot of resources at university for student support but it can be overwhelming. But if a student asks me, “how do I find…?” I can at least see if I can find out the answer. For example, not every student is aware of their right to accommodations or how to initiate that process. Faculty are not always aware of the process for that either (I just walked a faculty member through assisting a student with an accommodation request).

        If your child is going into a curriculum that involves any type of regulatory compliances before they can start classes or clinical rotations–i.e. a healthcare curriculum that requires vaccines or background checks:
        –again, those requirements all exist for a reason and those deadlines are not suggestions we made up for kicks and giggles. Any penalties (like fines or heck, being dismissed from the program altogether) associated with missing those deadlines exist for a reason. Often times, those regulations are set by the state AND the clinical sites that the students will be going to. So it’s not JUST the university or college that is requiring that Hep B vaccine or that flu shot or those FBI fingerprints.
        –Also, if that information has to be submitted in a particular way, then it has to be submitted in a particular way. End of. So like, teach your kid how to read directions and follow them, please.
        –Get your kid vaccinated too. Duh.
        –Set them up with the critical thinking skills and reading comprehension necessary to understand that if they’re enrolling in school for a healthcare profession, then yes, they do need various vaccines and titers. If they don’t want those vaccines or titers (barring a true medical allergy or severe immuno-compromised state), then they should consider a different, non-healthcare-related career. But the only reason they should be declining those vaccines as adults (such as flu–ideally they were vaccinated for MMR in childhood barring any underlying health issues) is because of a true medical allergy–anaphylaxis level–or immunocompromised health, as verified by a licensed medical practitioner (from an accredited medical school–not on Instagram).

        And if your child graduates, pass their boards, and are employed in that profession, they’ll be facing those same requirements at every employer in that profession–and said employer will not be nearly as forgiving as your child’s alma mater about missed deadlines or incorrect paperwork.

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      13. We Are All Accountants Except Me*

        As someone with slightly older but not college age kids – kids are apparently getting to school now unable to hold a pen/crayon or unable to sit properly on a chair because they’ve spent all their time slouching with a screen. They don’t understand instructions like “line up in front of me” because they don’t understand what “in front” means (or beside or next to etc). They don’t know how to try to regulate themselves if something has not gone their way. These are five year olds so no one expects them to be perfect but the decline of gross and fine motor skills is so noticeable they have a special programme designed to nurture these things. My oldest and youngest are about five years apart and it’s been a steep drop in the capability kids come to school with in just that time (not all kids obviously, but a significant proportion).
        It’s pretty alarming really.

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      14. Shoshona*

        I would also add that students’ reading comprehension and understanding of social norms have declined since the pandemic. This impacts not only their comprehension of assigned readings, but also emails and announcements communicating important information like deadlines, how to approach assignments, responses to direct queries, etc. Teaching a student how to approach regular communication (including how to write an email, to read the whole email, even to check their emails and course announcements, how to read a syllabus, etc) will go a long way.

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      15. Calamity Janine*

        this is me talking as someone who was only a student and is not working in this field, but hopefully this is still useful –

        the connecting thread i saw in classmates flailing around struggling with these things was… privilege. sometimes in ways that were really easy to spot – if you think laundry is the thing the maid does, you’re going to be thrown for a loop when there is no maid assigned to your dorm room – and sometimes not quite so much. it’s an odd way to think of intense handholding from parents being a “privilege” because of the harm it does, but on some level, having a parent who can spend so much time and focus on stunting their child’s independence is a type of privilege that not all families have the option to pursue. it’s a “privilege” like how if you had money in Victorian England you could afford lovely green wallpaper made with arsenic that kill you, but still.

        the idea that someone will always be along to fix it for you requires enough privilege to make that a possible outcome.

        being aware of your own limitations means you’re ahead of the game. even asking what you should do to prevent this, instead of wholeheartedly embracing the notion that Kiddo exists to have needs met by other people and not themselves from now until forever? you’ve basically already won. you’re working from a mindset of “how can i help my child grow”, and not a mindset of “how can i PREVENT my child from growing”. keep up that mindset, and you’ll be working in the exact correct direction.

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    7. post script*

      And adjunct professors are not even paid minimum wage for the hours they work. Some colleges pump out grad students in small, competitive fields and point to adjuncting as a career path – half the classes are taught by adjuncts. You can’t actually survive long on adjunct wages but there’s always another wave of fresh graduates behind you to take your place.

      Reply ↓
      1. FuzzBunny*

        And adjuncting is definitely not a guaranteed route to a full-time position. I’ve heard too many well-meaning people say, “well, once they see how good you are, I’m sure they’ll hire you full time!” Nope, nope, nope.

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      2. AJB*

        I just started teaching a couple of adjunct courses and I can’t imagine doing that as a replacement for my full time job. I’m a teacher so my pay sucks anyway, but I consider my adjunct pay a “bonus” and we use it for extra things we would usually save up for (like new furniture). In my area, professors are paid slightly more than K-12 teachers, but at the larger universities, the benefits are SO much better. If I were to move from K-12 to higher ed we would probably end up saving several hundred dollars a month on health insurance. And, many colleges offer a certain number of hours of free tuition for dependents of staff which would also be a huge savings for our family when our kids get to that age.

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    8. pomme de terre*

      Co-sign on the second paragraph from a student health staffer. Teach your kids how to grocery shop, how to do laundry, how to do basic housecleaning chores, how to make a doctor’s appointment, and how to get a prescription filled. Also use a harm reduction approach when it comes to substance use and safer sex; the ones who have no idea about either are the ones who really wild out when they get to campus.

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    9. BurnOutCandidate*

      My dad was a college professor. When I was older I knew we qualified for food stamps and reduced price lunches at school, but my parents didn’t like being seen as poor. Sometimes my mom would go to the food bank for the government cheese.

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    10. Justin*

      Precisely why after getting a doctorate I’m glad I was lucky enough to find a much higher paying desk job and teach and write on the side for fun.

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    11. NauticalByNature*

      Came here to say this! And also if you’re an average college student in the US you are far more likely to be being taught by a part-timer working a million teaching jobs at a million schools hustling for each one. If you are thinking of getting a PhD, do it because you want a PhD, not because you want to be a professor. I had a friend who graduated in a year where there was *one* tenure-track position in her field in the US.

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    13. Zona the Great*

      And on the flip side of that, people don’t understand why this is so. I have a friend who thinks critical academic research should be done in the private sector. Like Elon. She trusts Elon’s findings.

      Reply ↓
    14. Dobermom*

      YUUUUUUP! I’m but a lowly adjunct, and I joke with my classes that “two of you pay for me” (in a class of 25). I teach 6 courses/semester across two different colleges… but that wouldn’t be enough to live on, so I still have a “day job,” too.

      Reply ↓
    15. Charlotte Lucas*

      I was adjunct faculty for 2 years. I made more money working at an insurance company in customer service.

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    17. Texas Teacher*

      My kids high school math teacher also teaches a couple of adjunct courses in the university. He used to be a full time professor but needed to earn more.
      And it’s not like public school teaching pays a bunch but it’s decent!

      Reply ↓
    18. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

      And many professors forget that the staff at their universities usually make half of what they make (adjunct profs being the exception there, and it’s honestly insane to me what adjuncts do for what they’re paid).

      Absolutely seconding the note about people needing to prep their kids better for independence. PLEASE let them fail at things and figure out things when they are in middle school and high school! That’s when they are kids and the consequences are much, much lower then than when they’re technically adults away at college.

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    19. Mrs. Tittlemouse*

      I work a decently paid job in industry, but took an adjunct teaching gig as a temporary second job for the resume boost.

      It looks nice when a human sees it, but it was funny to watch all my LinkedIn job offers change from white collar office jobs in my field to data entry and retail. Took a year to go away, too.

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    20. goddessoftransitory*

      I couldn’t believe, when I was a student, how many of my fellows had never written a check (early 90s) or had a savings account, made their bed, or done laundry. It was like watching little lambs gamboling near a cliff, especially when the credit card people would set up their kiosks in the student union and reel them in like trout.

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    22. Lexi Vipond*

      Really? Academics here like to complain about how poor they are and even go on strike over it, but professors’ pay starts somewhere around the 90th salary percentile, so (especially given US contempt for UK salaries), forgive me if I’m sceptical of self-reported poverty.

      (Even if you call everyone a professor regardless, junior lecturers are paid more than 1.5x my salary, and I’m nowhere near the poverty line.)

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      1. PurpleCattledog*

        Low pay is not the case in my country either. It’s funny – US often look down on us*, but from all I’ve heard our conditions and salaries are far superior.

        I do know people who think we are poorly paid, but usually they have skewed expectations of income – they don’t know what minimum wage even is, and have these perceptions that anyone in “industry” is on very high incomes,

        * I don’t mean the whole country.

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      2. amoeba*

        Pretty sure academic jobs are, actually, better paid in Europe! I know some of the numbers from my previous institutions and at least here in Switzerland, those are certainly higher than what I’m making as a scientist in industry. (They are also much, much harder to get, at least in my field, it’s *incredibly* competitive!)

        One big complaint in Germany was that a lot of the salary relies on negotiation, and that typically only takes into account how much third-party funding you bring in – good teaching isn’t really rewarded at all, which obviously isn’t great for students.
        But in general, professors make good money. Even postdoc salaries are honestly not horrible – little bit less than a comparable industry job, but you can certainly live comfortably.

        The problem, of course, is (as everywhere, I assume) that there are so few tenured positions, and everything below full professor is generally temp contracts and pretty precarious. Having more scientific staff that’s actually permanent would be amazing, but Germany has *really* been cutting those positions for the last decades. So staying in academia generally means hoping you get one of those really rare professorships or dropping out after multiple postdocs, etc.

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      3. Grump Curmudgeon*

        Well, let’s be transparent about adjunct pay: I teach three classes a semester at a state university in the USA. I clear about $1200/month ten months a year.

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    23. JS*

      As a staff in Higher Ed, we don’t make a lot either and we have to deal with this cr*p too. And parents, stop trying to live your kid’s life for them.

      Reply ↓
  7. Kowalski! Options!*

    Most of the work involved in developing training (in person or online) depends on the ability to say “no” diplomatically in a hundred different ways.

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    1. couldhavebeenanemail*

      Amen. Also, 80% of training that higher-ups as for could probably be replaced with a solid checklist.

      Reply ↓
        1. Justin*

          The problem I have is sometimes when people ask for training to be developed, they don’t realize what they actually need is a checklist (or even a short explainer video), and that the issue is that their department is bad at communicating with clients.

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      2. Bitte Meddler*

        I’m dealing with this right now, as an internal auditor. Management is saying that training needs to be developed for people in X department so that when they review a document they’ll know if it is complete and accurate.

        But a checklist would accomplish the exact same thing. “Are these 15 things in the document? No? Then it’s not complete and you need to go find the missing things.”

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    4. I'm not on a boat*

      Yep.

      In my industry (a very highly regulated one), I’m not the person who designs the training…I’m the one who reviews it for compliance with laws, regs, and internal policies after the instructional designer has had to say no many times to whatever manager or executive requested the development of the content.

      And then I have to say no a bunch to the ID, all while knowing the requestor put a lot of pressure on them and it isn’t really their fault.

      But I love (most of) the designers I work with, and I have no problem saying “I’ve got your back. Let’s meet with the department head who is pushing this nonsense. I will tell them in no uncertain terms that they can’t do this because of the risk it creates”.

      The IDs appreciate me, and even most of the execs I say no to respect me…even if they don’t love me.

      I don’t give a fuck what your title is or how many levels above me you are on the org chart. It’s literally my job to prevent the company from doing reckless and dangerous bullshit.

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    5. Junior Dev*

      Can you expand on this? What kind of training? Is it reaching people to say no or are you, the developer, saying no a lot?

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      1. L&D Gal*

        I can only speak for myself, but in learning and development, it means being able to say “No, not yet.”
        If you come to me and say “my call center staff is awful. They need training on how to do better customer service!” my first job is to figure out what’s actually going on. I have to conduct my research through interviews, surveys, etc, b/c what you’re asking for might not actually fix the problem. Maybe they don’t need more training, but rather they need a better phone system. Or they need a new manager. Or they need training on the new software, not on customer service.

        So when I say “no” it’s because I need to determine the root cause, or the training is going to be useless and won’t solve your problem.

        (and sometimes I get to tell the manager that THEY are the problem, and that’s extra special fun)

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    6. HalesBopp*

      This + the concept that not everything needs to be a training! And that not everyone *needs* every training. Every time we have an issue crop up, folks are quick to jump on “there needs to more training.” That is occasionally true. More often than not, the issue can be better solved with a strong communication plan, well-documented policies and procedures, and some brief instructional videos.

      The amount of time I spend explaining “scrap learning” :'(

      Reply ↓
    7. Former Gremlin Herder*

      After a few years in L&D, I would add the addendum that you also have to say “training can’t fix poor management/bad working conditions/insane turnover.”

      Reply ↓
    8. Fed up L&D*

      I just escaped a project where the SMEs responsible for supporting development/approving the training product weren’t the same as the ones responsible for the assessment (if there is a stupider project structure, I don’t want to know about it…).
      The amount of pointing at the learning outcomes, asking when the information in that question was covered, and having to explain that “common sense” to a 20 year industry vet isn’t what you expect of someone who’s just done a 15 minute pre-101 level eLearning course… *sigh*.
      Even when a training product is actually the right answer, clients still suck. We’ve all do e bad training & hated it! Listen to the training expert when we say that what you want won’t meet your needs!

      Reply ↓
      1. Hiding from my boss*

        blub–sorry to hear that. my firm has become SME-happy, and the lack of coordination among them is shocking. its more like a silo farm.

        Reply ↓
  8. Carcarjabar*

    Accountants aren’t necessarily “good at math”. We use calculators 100% of the time. The math is not complicated.r

    Reply ↓
    1. NotmyUsualName*

      Can verify. I was a tutor for awhile for the MBA entrance exam and was tutoring someone who had been an accountant for 10 years. She did not know what a fraction was and couldn’t do any basic work with fractions.

      Reply ↓
        1. NotmyUsualName*

          She was a spectacular case. I finally had to stop taking her money and told her to enroll for a remedial algebra class at community college and put off the MBA for a year.

          Reply ↓
      2. Massive Dynamic*

        Agreed. Am a CPA, couldn’t do math in my head if my life depended on it. But oh man can I do spreadsheets.

        Reply ↓
      2. HQetc*

        As a former math major, yes. The fact that my humanities friends would always ask me to figure out the bill always made me giggle. Like, y’all, I haven’t used an actual number in years. It’s all greek letters now. (But I’d do it anyway because my phone had a calculator, and I understand, but do not have, The Fear of arithmetic that US schooling can impart.)

        Reply ↓
        1. Mallory Janis Ian*

          Ha one of my friends works in the math department at the university where I also work, and she thought that she could ask the math professors to help her with percentages when she was working on the annual report. Nope. They looked at her and said, “That’s not math; that’s arithmetic.”

          Reply ↓
      3. Delta*

        I have a degree in applied math, and yesterday I said “So 88-71 is … like 18? No, 17? Maybe? Someone with a calculator handy double check that”.

        (Spoiler alert: it was 17)

        Reply ↓
      4. Midwest Manager too!*

        I work with a large number of Math PhDs. They can’t balance their checkbooks, and admit to this fact! Arithmetic is not the same as Math.

        Reply ↓
        1. amoeba*

          Yeah, I mean, I’ll say that mathematicians are certainly good at math, like… by definition! However, calculating things with numbers really has *very little* to do with actual math (logic, on the other hand…)

          Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          This is me! I literally couldn’t pass out of the 3’s times table (in timed multiplication tests) in 5th grade. As soon as they gave me a calculator, I skipped a grade in math.

          Reply ↓
        2. KathyG*

          I had a math professor who once said about himself (while correcting an arithmetic error in a long formula), “Calculus, yes; Arithmetic, no.”

          Reply ↓
      1. M2RB*

        As a CPA who started in tax prep in public accounting and then moved to corporate accounting, I can’t pick just one “most useful skill”. I can give you five:
        – adaptability
        – curiosity & willingness to listen/learn
        – initiative
        – basic tech skills
        – logic/reason skills (“if this, then that”, understanding materiality and significance, ability to view the big picture AND the details as needed)

        Reply ↓
          1. Strive to Excel*

            It really is. You have to be able to troubleshoot complex spreadsheets, meaning you need to be able to assess for a gut-level “this doesn’t look right” and then trace your error back to it’s starting point. You have to be a self-propelled researcher; you know how there’s the joke that IT people are all professional Googlers? Accounting is very much the same way. If you’ve got a question there’s a fair chance someone out there has written a brief on the answer (a lot of CPA firms put really good dissections of regulations out there). But you need to have the skills to go and find it. And you have to document your work to the point where someone just coming into the field should be able to look at what you did last year and at least somewhat figure out what you did to make it work.

            Reply ↓
          2. FD*

            I’m a staff accountant, but a lot of the stuff that I’ve specialized in as an accountant in the last couple of jobs boils down to either pulling the data in complicated ways or troubleshooting why numbers are not what they should be.

            I do hobby programming and it’s basically the same skill set. Being able to think through a sequence of steps and what will happen if you do them. You need to be able to do that forwards and backwards.

            Forward when you’re trying to do something, and backwards when you’re trying to figure out why something is the way that it is and fix it.

            Reply ↓
      2. Carcarjabar*

        The ability to think through problems…. I liken accounting to putting together a puzzle or solving a word problem. But in terms of actual math, it’s not difficult. Engineering math is way more complex.

        Reply ↓
        1. KathyG*

          Engineering math in Engineering SCHOOL can be complex, granted. Doing most Engineering after graduation, not so much. That’s what tools like spreadsheets, SPSS, and Mathematica are for.

          Reply ↓
      3. Spero*

        Not an accountant, but I work in a program audit/quality role where about half my coworkers are accountants…you would be shocked by the amount of our job that is purely organizing. Alphabetizing things properly. Sorting them into the appropriate buckets or files because somehow someone picked a wrong bucket and then people thought everything in that bucket didn’t happen and it was never paid for. Updating procedures to how things are actually organized vs the idea that was proposed for organization before it was actually implemented. Not being so bound to how you THINK things should be to ignore how the people actually doing it are going about things. So the co-existing capacities for organization/making everything follow the rules but also being willing to change/update the rules as needed from actual peoples feedback/choices. Too many people only have the first skill and it limits how far you can rise in the field.

        Reply ↓
    5. TeenieBopper*

      My perception of accounting is that the math is pretty easy. Like second grade; maybe fifth if you deal with interest and have to multiply decimals. But the expertise is more like law– can you claim that on your taxes? Are we allowed to to this? What accounting tricks can we use to show a profit on paper? That sort of thing.

      Reply ↓
      1. Carcarjabar*

        Accounting is an excellent baseline for law school. Quite a few of my undergrad classmates went on to become attorneys. (One is a personal injury attorney that probably makes more $$ than the rest of us combined).

        Reply ↓
      2. Paint N Drip*

        basic accounting is arithmetic, I do some bookkeeping and have very little natural capacity for math but no issues – CPAs are getting into the law-adjacent mindset, but that requires years of basic accounting work and then a formidable exam

        Reply ↓
    6. Non-Controlling Controller*

      Accounting is putting things in buckets (classification), and applying non-speicific rules to unique fact patterns.

      Very little is black and white, and most not in accounting don’t realize the amount of judgement required.

      Reply ↓
    7. Decima Dewey*

      Not an accountant, but I used to work for an accounting firm.

      A lot of the Tax Department’s time was not spent in finding loopholes for their client, but talking the client out of the bright ideas they had which would have sent them to Leavenworth.

      Reply ↓
      1. M2RB*

        A lot of the Tax Department’s time was not spent in finding loopholes for their client, but talking the client out of the bright ideas they had which would have sent them to Leavenworth.

        I giggled at this, because YES. Being able to say “No, you idiot, you cannot do that without going to jail,” in a professional, polite manner that doesn’t drive away your clients is so important.

        Reply ↓
        1. HB*

          Going to add… the most difficult/time consuming part of a tax return is NOT the tax law. It’s the information gathering. We start with just figuring out if you gave us the same tax forms, information, etc as you gave us last year. Sometimes that’s too hard for people. We also ask you a bunch of questions designed to figure out if you had any changes from the prior year, or one off taxable (or reportable) events – the chances of a client answering those 100% correctly is pretty slim, but we’re mostly looking at what you say or scribble down while trying to answer it.

          And when we ask you questions we have to figure out if what you said is the same thing as what you meant to say, and if what you meant to say means the same thing as what *I* meant when I asked it.

          And finally we have to put on our psychic caps to see if some random document or comment might actually point to some some massive transaction you didn’t tell us about because you thought it wasn’t relevant, all while dumping 10,000 other documents/receipts/bank statements from 10 years ago which *are* actually irrelevant.

          And bank reconciliations. If you own a business how do you not know how to reconcile your checking account?

          Reply ↓
      2. Mrs Kung Pao*

        Also not an accountant, but a bookkeeper for a small business, and I frequently have to talk to our accountant, and definitely 90% of what we talk about is how to explain to the owner that what he is asking is illegal, and/or, we don’t care if he THINKS that’s how something should work a certain – it doesn’t!

        Reply ↓
    8. M2RB*

      I am a CPA with a Master of Science in Taxation and 20+ years of accounting experience. I am good at Excel, not math. I loathe geometry and calculus. Give me algebra and logic problems all day long, but keep those functions and integrals awayyyyyy from me.

      Reply ↓
    10. xx*

      Civil engineers learn how to be good at math while studying all the theory in college. Then we slowly forget it all and just work with geometry. I’ve spent the last 5 months creating methods to measure areas and volumes.

      Reply ↓
    11. I'm A Little Teapot*

      Yep. I do not do mental math. I rarely do it manually either. You want accurate math? Give me a calculator.

      Reply ↓
    12. Strive to Excel*

      The best comparison I have is that it’s a lot less fancy math and a lot more of how well you can show your work. It is 1000% showing your work.

      Reply ↓
    13. Svitkona*

      Agreed. I was recently part asked to sit in on an interview for a new accountant on our team. This guy was an engineer with no accounting experience, but we were interviewing him on the recommendation of one of our subdivision controllers who knew him personally and told us how smart he was. Talking to him, he did seem smart. No problem with how he spoke or presented himself. He just didn’t know accounting at all. He wanted to move out of engineering, I don’t remember why, but when he said he liked math and so was interested in moving to accounting, I knew that not only would we need to explain to him all the most fundamental accounting rules, he wouldn’t be happy in that role. Accounting is not math.

      Reply ↓
      1. Carcarjabar*

        Did he get the job?? My spouse in a brilliant engineer and great at math (His HS calculus teacher once said “He’s the only person who slept through my class and made an A”). But he’s definitely not qualified for an accounting position.

        Reply ↓
        1. Svitkona*

          No, we gave it to a recent accounting grad. We had trained non accountants for other roles on our team before, but this particular one needed someone who at least knew basics (like debits and credits, LIFO vs FIFO, and other really basic rules he just wouldn’t know about)

          Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        I spend more time looking up synonyms for a word in order to give a variable or function a really good name than I do adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing.

        If performance is really important you *do* need to be able to compare two ways of doing things (hmm, we either check each of the items in the list once or we check each item in the list every time we add a new item to the list… the first one is harder to write but it’s going to be more efficient), but I think that’s overvalued in the field. I’d take someone who can write well-organized code over someone who writes the most efficient code 95% of the time.

        Reply ↓
    15. Insulindian Phasmid*

      Similarly, as an editor I’m not very good at spelling and I get tripped up by grammar all the time. I just know enough to google it if I’m not sure. Often even if I AM sure.

      Reply ↓
      1. Teapot Connoisseuse*

        I’m a much better editor and translator since I grew out of my youthful arrogance that I knew everything and my way was the One True Way.

        Reply ↓
    16. Coverage Associate*

      I would love to see an interview with people in STEM fields and accounting that don’t like arithmetic, or didn’t like math class in grade school.

      For example, I always thought you had to excel at algebra and calculus to get to the higher level math classes to be a math major. Also, civil engineers who can’t draw, but of course they don’t use pencils anymore, just like lawyers don’t use them.

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        Hmm, I’m not sure if I’d fit the bill. I’m in STEM and I am extremely bad at mental math and computation, but I excelled at algebra and calculus. I was the person in the class who grasped mathematical concepts really quickly (as long as someone bothered to explain them) but was bad at memorization and took forever to complete a worksheet. For example, I could derive the quadratic formula more easily than remember it.

        Reply ↓
    17. Bitte Meddler*

      When I told my friends I was going back to school for an accounting degree, they all laughed and laughed and laughed because I’m so bad at mental math that they won’t let me be the scorekeeper in our weekly Scrabble games.

      But give me a calculator or Excel, and I’ll whip out some extremely complex calculations for you in a matter of minutes.

      Reply ↓
    18. Fly on The Wall*

      LOL. I report to our accounting manager and they’ll be the first to admit their greatest tools are the calculator and excel.

      Reply ↓
    19. Mid*

      For anyone reading this who works in accounting, is it worth it to go back to school and get my CPA (and a Master’s)? And if I do go back to school, is it an industry where school prestige matters (like law), or can I just get the cheapest degree from whatever school and be okay?

      I have a Bachelors in non-accounting, and to get my CPA I’d either need a BA or an MA in accounting, so an MA seems to make more sense. I currently work in Accounting (specifically in Billing) so I’m very familiar with the reality of the day to day work, and I enjoy it. I wouldn’t say it’s my passion, but it’s something I find very satisfying, and seems to be a fairly stable field of employment. I like spreadsheets, I like solving puzzles, etc. But I’m also worried about the timeline (working full time with part time school would mean it would take at least 3 years to finish my degree, possibly longer because I’d likely need to take pre-req classes.)

      Reply ↓
      1. Massive Dynamic*

        It really depends on what type of accounting you want to do, and also how you feel about work/life balance. Public audit and tax accounting is HARD because of the crappy hours and meh pay. Many people do this for a few years and parlay that into a great corporate accounting career as a controller. I’m in public but in advisory and it’s much steadier hours. I need to do a smidge of overtime this week and next but I am coming off of three light weeks in a row.

        I also highly recommend finding a firm that only works with a specific industry, because then you have a specialization (especially if you go to advisory).

        If you go back, prestige of the school doesn’t matter as much. I got my license by doing extra units at JCs because I didn’t need to also end up with a Masters, just needed the total units for a Masters. Getting licensed is the important thing.

        Reply ↓
        1. Mid*

          Ideally, I’d like to eventually work in forensic accounting (and I understand it’s not as exciting as the name makes it sound) because I like deep research and puzzles and looking at large amounts of data to figure out what’s going wrong, and I have a legal background. I have no interest in working in tax accounting. Audit is also something I’m interested in, and I know there are a range of roles in that area (internal vs external, public vs private, etc.)

          I also didn’t realize you just needed the total hours, it didn’t matter if you have the degree! That’s a very helpful distinction.

          I appreciate the advice, thank you!

          Reply ↓
      2. BeenThere*

        As someone who’s made a that move (billing to professional accounting), they’re not entirely the same and aren’t viewed equivalently, i.e. companies don’t consider billing experience to be accounting experience. The work is much more deep into fundamental principles, assertion, and judgment, whereas the most I did in billing was figure out how things should be allocated. I don’t think school prestige matters so much but if you care about name brand and a future career with big companies, check that the Big 4 companies recruit at your school. If you don’t care about that and just want to change professions, it would make more sense to avoid the cost and take classes at a local community college to fulfill the state CPA educational requirements. For me personally it’s a more stressful and mentally taxing but also more “thinking” job than billing was.

        Reply ↓
        1. Mid*

          That’s what I’m hoping for–the parts of my billing job that are more accounting-y and more thinking are what I like. Billing is very rote and getting boring quickly, even though I’m in a fairly interesting niche for billing. I don’t think my billing experience is equivalent to accounting, just that it gives me a solid understanding of what accounting is actually like on a day to day basis. (Mostly, it’s more interesting than my current job!) I don’t think I necessarily want to work for the Big 4 (I’ve had some friends do that and they were all miserable. Well paid, but miserable. I’d rather make less money and actually enjoy my life.) So, I think I’ll likely just go for the cheapest option for my education, and see if my local CC offers acceptable accounting courses.

          Thank you for the advice! It’s especially nice to hear from someone who has done the same shift I’m hoping, from billing to accounting.

          Reply ↓
    20. Hiding from my boss*

      oh bless you. i should recommend calculators. i work w people who have problems adding and subtracting. “No i can’t fix it for you, you’re supposed to tell me what you did, and that’s what these numbers represent.”

      Reply ↓
  9. AKM*

    I’m an academic staff member in higher education (which means I work directly with students and faculty—not facilities, payroll, or any of the countless other staff roles—don’t even get me started on that tangent). I say this with all the love and respect in the world for my colleagues: universities are held together by cardboard, duct tape, and sheer willpower. They have just as little idea what they’re doing as any other industry.

    Reply ↓
    1. jjax*

      I say this with all the love in the world as I have spent the last ten years in academia… I hope anyone who has more than an undergrad education can see that higher ed is as clueless and as led by internal bias and warped ideas of “tradition” as literally any other profession. Most people are just doing their best, but “their best” is a nebulous, fuzzy, amorphous blob of stuff once you pile everyone’s “best” together in one place.

      Reply ↓
      1. Covidexpert*

        I found this to be more true at private universities than at the state University. I taught at for many years.

        Reply ↓
        1. jjax*

          I’m not in the States so we don’t have the same higher ed structure, but in my experience, it’s broadly true pretty much everywhere. How it manifests is the thing that changes by institution.

          Reply ↓
      2. Angela*

        Agree, and…I have yet to work in *any* job in *any* industry where that doesn’t seem to be the case. WHAT ARE WE ALL DOING????

        Reply ↓
        2. FricketyFrack*

          I work in municipal government and have days where I feel like that. I’m just typing the right series of magic words into paper to make things happen and somehow that like…does something? Witchcraft, tbh.

          Then I see people working in the Public Works and Building departments and they know actual concrete stuff like how big a pipe needs to be for a specific use or what kind of wiring is appropriate for a commercial structure of a certain size and I’m even more amazed because they do such practical things that keep the roof from collapsing on us all while I have another meeting to talk about more magic words? I don’t know anything!

          Reply ↓
          1. Mrs. Tittlemouse*

            Welcome to the law, please use responsibly. It’s a fiction we agree on so society can exist.

            Reply ↓
      3. Yankees fans are awesome!*

        That’s pretty cynical. I find most people in higher ed. do try their best, and while some outcomes leave more to be desired, most of the time, at least in my experience, things work out really well.

        Maybe the places you’ve worked at really suck, but not mine.

        At all.

        Reply ↓
        2. amoeba*

          I’ve worked at really well-organised universities! I think actually caring about teaching instead of just wanting the best research/reputation/most funding is really, really helpful there…

          Reply ↓
    3. Corrupted User Name*

      I work for the health system of a large, public university and this is 100% true. A friend once expressed surprise when I said that different teams all use different systems for very similar functions. She said something along the lines of “I thought that everything would be centralized since you are so big!”. I literally laughed out loud.

      Reply ↓
      1. Annika Hansen*

        I have worked at a large public university for 25 years. We have actually centralized more over time, but we are still not even remotely centralized. We once had 80 different email systems. Now I think there are 5. Small universities seem much more centralized.

        Reply ↓
    4. DEJ*

      I once saw something on social media that said ‘the person who really runs the University is someone named Peggy with a title like Administrative Assistant II.’ Not inaccurate.

      Reply ↓
        1. Academic Physics*

          I know I’m so grateful the ‘Peggy’ I inherited my position from still likes us so he comes back to get coffee with me every now and then! I’d be failing much harder otherwise.

          Reply ↓
    5. bananners*

      I worked in healthcare administration before coming here (now 13 years at an R1) because I thought things would be less chaotic here. ha. hahaha. hahahahahahha.

      Reply ↓
    6. Holly Gibney*

      I’ve worked as academic staff for a few years and I’ll add to this that faculty has absolutely no idea just how much we are expected to do, or even WHAT we do!

      Reply ↓
      2. bananners*

        Right now my university, panicking over the state of federal research funding, is creating an advisory team to the president… made of faculty. Holding listening sessions….for faculty. Only mention of staff is to say “don’t worry fellas, we’re going to figure this out. keep your chin up.” Like bruh, the staff are the ones who know how all this works.

        (But I will say, my faculty boss is one of the good ones, which is why I work for them)

        Reply ↓
      3. Administrative Assistant II*

        As academic staff for more than a decade myself, I just want to add that students/parents should take anything faculty say about university admin with a HUGE grain of salt. I went straight from undergrad to working in my alma mater’s student services, and one of the superstar profs that my still-in-undergrad friends all loved and lauded came in one day to literally scream full-volume at my boss because the prof missed an external funding deadline that we’d already moved heaven and earth to get them an extension for, and my boss was unable to alter the space-time continuum because–according to the prof–they “didn’t care about students enough.”

        I’m trying to keep this as anon as possible, but another example I’m personally familiar with was a high-profile case in which students had a mass campaign to protest a faculty member not being granted tenure, even though that faculty member had MAJOR problems and was widely known for being horrifically abusive to junior staff. (Like…whatever you’re thinking, I promise it was more extreme than that.) But the narrative the prof had been pushing was that the cruel university bureaucrats were being discriminatory because the prof had such revolutionary progressive ideas and was speaking truth to power.

        The thing is, that very prof was one of my key faculty advisors when I was a student, and was always incredibly nice and helpful to me! His classes were eye-opening and life-changing, and I probably would have gone to the rally and signed the petition! But then I actually saw how the prof acted to people he didn’t have a “benevolent sage/mentor” relationship with, and I realized it would be utterly unconscionable to take away the ability to fire this person.

        Basically, there are absolutely wonderful faculty members, but that rarely correlates with who can be charming and charismatic enough to inspire a Dead Poets Society loyalty.

        Look, I’m the last person who would ever say that university leadership always makes good and fair decisions (we’re currently trying to unionize, so I’m feeling especially punchy at the moment), but it’s extremely difficult to assess that stuff from the outside. If your sentence starts “Why doesn’t the university just…” I PROMISE we’ve already thought of that and there’s a specific reason why we don’t. It might not be a good reason, and it’s almost certainly not the best possible solution, but it was devised to address complications you aren’t even aware of because academia is so freaking weird.

        Reply ↓
        1. UniversityAdmin*

          Oh god, we had one faculty member who loudly and frequently referred to administration as “useless lumps,” because we wouldn’t let him violate safety laws in his lab. Actual laws, not even institute-level policies.

          Reply ↓
    7. clever alias*

      My sister in law had a very complex conspiracy theory about the school her daughter attends. I laughed in her face and told her in no way is a university coordinated enough to facilitate a complex conspiracy theory. I then shared this anecdote with one of my deans who also laughed, said he used to work at said university, and confirmed it is also a mess.

      Reply ↓
      1. Kimmy Schmidt*

        Anytime I hear a variation of the “higher ed is indoctrinating your kids!” conspiracy I’m like buddy if I could indoctrinate anyone it’d be to get my colleagues to read their emails.

        Reply ↓
        1. false name*

          Every time I get nervous about sending an email to my department’s faculty, I remember, “No one will read this anyway.” and hit send with aplomb!

          Reply ↓
        2. NotmyUsualName*

          ahahahahaha

          I want to title all my emails to faculty as “Grading syllabus”, “Budget syllabus”, etc since they complain so often about students not reading the syllabus but can’t be bothered to read an email.

          Reply ↓
      2. MigraineMonth*

        I think that part of the appeal of certain conspiracy theories is that they assure us someone is in control. Maybe it’s the Illuminati, or the lizard people, but at least *someone* is in charge and it’s not all of us just scrambling about doing our best but having no idea what we’re doing.

        Reply ↓
    8. L&D Gal*

      My former job at a *VERY* prestigous private university dealt directly with student events and programming. In order to reserve an event space on our $80k/year tuition campus, I had to FILL OUT A PAPER FORM, FAX IT OVER OR SEND IT VIA CAMPUS MAIL, and then wait to get a confirmation PHONE CALL from events services.
      When I asked about making a fillable PDF or (gasp!) doing an online form, you would have thought I suggested we go kick puppies.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        We actually do have an online room reservation system at the university where I work, but I can only use it to reserve rooms in my own building because when I first started my job, I was told that I’d need to email every single department that might have a room that I’d potentially want to book to get permission to have access to their rooms. Needless to say, the ones I did email totally ignored me and I gave up. Since I only need to book rooms outside my building a couple of times a year, I just rely on my boss, who has access to most rooms in the booking system.

        Oh, and when I first got access to the system, IT messed up my settings and I couldn’t even view (never mind book) the rooms in my own building and it took weeks to get it sorted out.

        And then there’s the time they messed up the settings for the rooms on our floor so anyone in the building could reserve them (they’re supposed to be restricted to people on floor because we have limited meeting space) and all kinds of random people from elsewhere in the building reserved rooms and showed up for meetings. Your system sounds terrible, but online room booking is not without problems!

        Reply ↓
      2. My Dear Wormwood*

        Our previous vice-chancellor came to us from industry and made is his mission not to turn a huge profit (gasp!) or increase “efficiency” by laying people off (double gasp!) but by rationalising and simplifying all the forms so we’d have time to *do our actual jobs*. We remember him fondly.

        Reply ↓
  10. T.N.H*

    One of my jobs is managing influencers and it’s A LOT of work. I think there’s a stereotype of an influencer being someone who sits around all day and goofs off then gets paid to put up a 30 second video. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you’re making actual money doing this, you’re working full time or more.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ostrich Herder*

      As someone who did some early “influencer” work in a niche sphere – yes. I just dabbled, it was enough to pay my utility bills in college and that was about it. I knew people making decent money for college students, hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per post. But when they did the math on their time and expenses, it almost always worked out to less than minimum wage.

      Reply ↓
    2. Richard Hershberger*

      I pointed this out to my then-tween kid when she told me her career plan was to be a You Tuber. Even apart from the financial realities, it looks to me to be an exhausting grind.

      Reply ↓
      1. T.N.H*

        Being a YouTuber is maybe even harder! A lot of people have to do both to make ends meet (meaning traditional social and YouTube or podcasting), but there’s a whole extra layer of marketing that goes with it (and you have to be SEO/GEO/Media savvy to tap into that).

        Reply ↓
        1. stratospherica*

          And being a streamer too. I don’t have nearly enough energy to constantly be “on” for hours at a time.

          Reply ↓
      2. Bast*

        Yes, my 9 year old has the dream of becoming the next Preston Plays. For those who don’t know — someone who creates You Tube videos of himself playing games, mostly Minecraft. He doesn’t seem to understand it’s a lot more than just playing a game and uploading a video. I guess it’s the equivalent of how we all wanted to be pop stars and sports stars when we were younger.

        Reply ↓
      3. goddessoftransitory*

        Just dealing with the taxes would be enough to put me off. Yes, wannabe influencers, the money you make on Patreon is taxable income!

        Reply ↓
        1. T.N.H*

          That’s true! But it’s no different from any other business income. You get a 1099 if you meet the minimum.

          Reply ↓
    3. Svitkona*

      I saw someone online talking about how they replaced the income from their job doing Only Fans. Now they make a ton of money doing that. The thing that got me was when they said they spend 19 hours a day creating content. Assuming my bills are met, I’d rather have the 8-5.

      Reply ↓
    4. A*

      I find it really amusing how people use “influencer” with scorn like it’s an insult.

      It’s a marketing and sales job that has been around since forever just in different forms. Every time people use influencer as an insult it reminds me of Pete’s parents from Mad Men.

      Reply ↓
            1. Your former password resetter*

              Only because they have 30 seconds of screen time during a clearly marked “advertisement” segment.

              they’ll happily fill all your shows and videos with subtler ads.

              Reply ↓
            2. Head Intact*

              When I left my job at a top 3 website in its category, we were working very hard to make our ads look like not ads. It’s endemic.

              Regarding TV (and movie) advertising: product placement.

              Reply ↓
            3. amoeba*

              Europe has laws that ensure you have to label advertising – yes, even small-ish profiles who just get a few free samples to post about them or whatever. Most people do, at least the ones I follow!

              Reply ↓
        2. T.N.H*

          I’m sure there are tons of unethical influencers out there but you’re required to disclose paid promotion almost everywhere today.

          Reply ↓
          1. Zephy*

            Required to, sure, but you can meet that requirement with a little “#ad” buried in your tags, you don’t have to look directly into the camera and say “this is an advertisement for Bounty paper towels” before wasting 8 rolls of paper towels to make slime or whatever your shtick is.

            Reply ↓
            1. A*

              Again, this is what advertising is. Influencing is no different than any other form of advertising but man oh man do people ever hate it.

              Reply ↓
                1. jjax*

                  I’m not sure I agree with that. The whole idea of product placement is based on that lack of transparency and has been around a long time. TV shows and movies have long taken advertising money to have products used in them without explicitly stating that they’re advertisements. Did the cast of Friends really enjoying drinking Snapple so much? Do the characters in the new Barbie movie really like driving GM cars?

                  I get what you mean, that some influencers can feel really shady in how they subtly market things, especially to kids. I just think it’s a new way to do a really old thing.

    5. Solidarity*

      I’d be so interested to learn more about your role as manager – are you the one negotiating brand deals, do you handle/assist with content production/posting, something else?

      Reply ↓
      1. T.N.H*

        A little bit of both. I don’t work on any of the actual filming or posting but I help write scripts, hooks, come up with ideas, and respond to tricky comments. Unlike influencing, this is definitely not a full time job (unless you work for an agency or have a ton of clients) and it’s only a part of what I do.

        Reply ↓
    6. Glad I'm not in the rat-race any more*

      My next-door neighbor and her high-school-aged (at the time) daughter had a screaming fight in their backyard about daughter wanting to be an influencer and Mama wanting her to go to college since she had good grades and it could be financed. Mama won, but I think it was the threat of relieving Daughter of her personal transportation if she thought she was gonna hang around the house rather than further her education or get a “real” job. I’m not dissing someone who makes bank as an influencer, but I do know it consumes their entire life, they don’t get to enjoy ANYthing because everything has to be monetized.

      Reply ↓
      1. T.N.H*

        Eh, this isn’t my experience. It’s a lot of hours. But the influencers I know do tons of things that have nothing to do with their brand and don’t post about them.

        Reply ↓
  11. Fat Mermaid*

    There is a large private sector for librarian jobs. People think of librarians they think either public or academic librarians, but most large corporations/hospitals/law firms/etc have libraries and librarians, not to mention the publishers themselves. Even the American Kennel Club has librarians.

    Reply ↓
      1. Potato Potato*

        Thank you for the mental image you sent to my head- dogs walking around, holding onto to baskets of books to reshelf

        Reply ↓
        1. HailRobonia*

          And lobbying the administration to rename the card catalog the dogalog.

          (Yes, I know that card catalogs are rare these days)

          Reply ↓
    2. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

      And it’s very institution-dependent, but some of these institutional libraries & archives are open to the public by appointment, or at least receptive to inquiry from researchers!
      (I’m a university librarian, but my students do some really niche research that occasionally brings them in contact with various special collections)

      Reply ↓
    6. ReallyBadPerson*

      One of my close friends is a retired prison librarian. Her chief role was helping inmates get what they needed to finish their education (high school or university).

      Reply ↓
      1. ms_not_mrs*

        I’m a former prison librarian as well. Most of my job was helping people find recreational reading. This is technically still a government job, but it’s in a sector that most people kinda forget exists, if they can help it, even though my state’s prison system is the second-biggest agency financially.

        Reply ↓
    7. Mockingjay*

      My first summer job in college was working in the engineering library of a municipal water and sewer agency. Fascinating. I learned all about the federal and state statutes that govern water quality and disposition, the engineering it takes to design something as simple as a sewer pipe (because it’s going to be in service 75 years minimum), and even got to observe public hearings that were required when the agency announced a new infrastructure plan or a rate hike.

      Reply ↓
    8. Texan in Exile*

      Chloe on Chicago Fire has an MLS and she is in charge of research at a consulting company.

      I remember seeing a job ad for McKinsey Consulting decades ago that was paying $90K for librarians.

      Reply ↓
  12. Bunny Girl*

    I work in fish and wildlife, but I am in grad school pivoting away from it because even with a Masters or PhD, most in this field aren’t paid a living or acceptable wage. This isn’t really a secret, but it’s definitely something I see most starry eyed hopefuls coming in to the field not realizing until it’s too late. You’re told this is a passion field and that oh no one comes in to this field to be rich but that’s just something people tell you so they can exploit you without worry.

    Reply ↓
    1. Sloanicota*

      Especially with the huge government losses going on :( I don’t know who is going to pick up all the great, existing naturalists/biologists, never mind future generations of them. It’s not a position that a lot of nonprofits have on staff, in my experience, because it’s always been”liaise with FWS” for that expertise.

      Reply ↓
      1. Bunny Girl*

        Yep. I said below but I am getting my masters in ecology but I’ve been super lucky that my project was super lab heavy, so I have a lot of skills to fall back on and can change. Even a general lab tech in most states pays more than a wildlife biologist ever would.

        Reply ↓
    2. ID*

      And it’s been that way for a long time. My brother became a stay at home dad with his (2) masters in aquatic ecology and fisheries management 30 years ago rather than be paid a ridiculously low salary.

      Reply ↓
      1. Bunny Girl*

        I believe that. Luckily my masters was very lab heavy and I do a lot of very general things so I’ll be able to find a job in a forensics or human health lab that pays better. There’s a job posting I had saved for a while just because I had to laugh at it sometimes. It was a job requiring a Masters/preferring a PhD, but the pay was $18/hr. They were dead serious and it was not a typo. Because I asked.

        Reply ↓
    3. Eeyore is my spirit animal*

      I will always be grateful for my professors who frequently and bluntly said jobs are rare and the pay is lousy. If you want to own a cozy house in the woods, go into a different field or marry well. You won’t be able to afford that on a biologists salary.

      Reply ↓
      1. Sloanicota*

        Yeah, I appreciated my college professor giving me a heads up that a bachelor’s degree in biology was not particularly useful. There was such an insane clamor about STEM STEM STEM that I was just assuming it would be better than a degree in English or whatever. Not so much. (Not worse, just not much better).

        Reply ↓
    4. Daffodil*

      I also work in fish and wildlife for a state agency. Our agency has basically said that the federal layoffs will be good for us because it will be easier to fill our vacancies :/

      Reply ↓
      1. LifebeforeCorona*

        Only if you can find people who like being outside in all kinds of weather. My neighbour is one and relocated to the North to get work in his field. Because it’s remote his days are spent outdoors working alone most of the time.

        Reply ↓
    5. Happy Biologist*

      I’ll be the one to go (sort of) against this.

      I have 2 degrees in biology and work for state government in a low cost of living state. I’m not making a whole lot, but it is enough to be comfortable and I make more than most other people in my agency. That includes people who are in the pay band above me and have significant more experience than I do – they still don’t make much more than I do.

      I can say the feds are known to make more than us at the state level, but in light of what’s currently going on, I’d still take my job. There are lots of things that go into finding the right job for you and your loved ones.

      Reply ↓
    6. Ms Murchison*

      The second half of your post sounds exactly like librarianship. I wonder how many industries in the US pull that BS.

      Reply ↓
    7. Quill*

      Yeah, when I did environmental science we were told some relatively unrealistic things about our employability at all, never mind in the actual field. Some of that was based on the idea that the political landscape would ever allow for environmental science state jobs to increase. Or that companies would prefer someone with an actual degree in envisci to do corporate green initiatives over someone with a marketing mba.

      Reply ↓
  13. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    Health and wellness apps: everybody likes to report a figure of “engagement” to their clients, indicating how frequently, deeply, etc people get into the system and use it. After all, you’re not going to get an insurance company or an employer to pay for a benefit if nobody uses it, right?

    Everybody has a different calculation for engagement. Most app makers tweak the definition periodically to make themselves look better. More than a few app makers just fudge or make stuff up out of thin air.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Cosmic Avenger*

      Oh! The mention of “engagement” reminded me of one:

      Web analytics are not answers. They don’t actually tell you what you should do with your website, or give you insight into what your users are thinking.

      They are tools that tell you what your users are doing, and along with knowledge of best practices, your content, and your audience, they allow you to make educated guesses as to what improvements or changes you might want to make, which you then need to test and check if it changes user behavior, and how.

      Reply ↓
    2. Bitte Meddler*

      Thanks for reminding me to launch the stretching app that my prior company’s insurance company is still paying for. (Shhhhh… don’t tell them!)

      Reply ↓
    3. Bike Walk Bake Books*

      This likely explains the nagging things on the home page of the app I’m using. No, I don’t want to set goals. No, I’m not excited about you congratulating on meeting my sleep goal I didn’t set since you don’t actually know that I read for over an hour after you think I’m asleep because I set the phone down. No, I’m not going to update my weight; I don’t care how many calories I burned. No, I’m not going to put all my health records on my phone.

      Just tell me how many steps I walked today and keep track of my bike miles ridden. That’s all I ask, health app. And you can’t even do that without me turning off the step tracker when I turn on the bike tracker, which should be a simple toggle, then having to turn the step tracker back on when I get off the bike.

      I do like the splash of confetti on the screen when I get a certain number of steps, though (the one goal I did set because I wanted to, not because the app prompted me).

      Reply ↓
  14. KayZee*

    Higher Ed. When you see tons of international students on a college campus, it’s because that’s where the money is. They pay cash!

    Reply ↓
    1. NotmyUsualName*

      Yes! The current “news” is filled with people who think international students are subsidized by the US or the colleges. No, they pay not only cash, but sometimes pay a premium international rate, higher than out of state tuition. International students subsidize a good chunk of the other scholarships that colleges give out.

      Reply ↓
      1. Red Sox are the best Socks*

        I know of seven colleges in the country that offer financial aid to international students, and they’re all women’s colleges.

        Reply ↓
    2. ThatGirl*

      Yep international students are vital to keeping small colleges going because there’s no financial aid. Which is yet another reason these crackdowns are scary.

      Reply ↓
    3. Justme, The OG*

      My coworker used to work with international sponsored students. They pay so much more than domestic students and it’s cash money.

      Reply ↓
      1. No Direct Reports*

        When I was in grad school for my MBA, so 1999-2001, my in state tuition was about $5k per semester, so $10K a year. International students in my class paid $26k per semester. Mine could be paid through cash, check, student loan, credit card, and sometimes promises to pay. The international students had to pay in cash, and in addition had to show proof that they had a full years worth of cash in their bank accounts before they could register. This was only the tuition – it didn’t include what they paid for room and board or transportation, and I went to a school in Atlanta, so high rent and very little reliable public transportation.

        Reply ↓
        1. LifebeforeCorona*

          One of our universities went hard recruiting international students. The parents paid up front and the kids didn’t even have to speak English. Some of them spent their first year taking ESL lessons before they could even take a class.

          Reply ↓
    4. Lady Glitter Sparkles*

      OHHH! I was just thinking about my time at University the other day. We had A LOT of international students. The school was private, religious, for-profit, and dry….. I wondered how much extra money they made with the very high number of international students they accepted.

      Reply ↓
      1. Alicia in Hinterland*

        Pepperdine? My parents went there in the 60s and had a large contingent of foreign students in student body.

        Reply ↓
    5. MCL*

      Though how long that supply will run is questionable. We had over a dozen international student visas revoked out my big state university yesterday, and the fear is really real. If I were a non-US citizen I would be very hesitant to come to the USA to study right now.

      Reply ↓
      1. STEM support staff*

        The revoked visas for international grad students are legitimately going to deal a death blow to some of my US R1 institution’s essential labs. I’m talking everything from vaccines to new materials engineering. AY25-26 is going to be a bloodbath. Leading scientists here have been using the phrases “extinction event for science” and “new dark ages.” (I don’t necessarily agree, or rather I think it’s a bit more nuanced from an international perspective, but that’s definitely the prevailing mood.)

        Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          I don’t think *science* is going to die, but I doubt the US is going to stay prominent if we continue to demonstrate that the best and brightest in the world would be better off going elsewhere.

          Reply ↓
    6. SteveG*

      I’m a scientist (biologist in my case but I think it’s the same in other areas) and I think most people don’t realize that there’s a creative component to it. Fundamentally, we make up stories about what’s going on. Then we make up ways to test it, and then do the tests, which is where it differs from a “creative field,” but there has to be a step where we look at the situation and make something up. I’ve struggled with teaching this to young (like college freshman) students, who are used to science class being the returning of learned facts. They seemed scandalized that I wanted them to just make something up!

      Reply ↓
    7. Throwaway Account*

      Yes, and my small, private uni depends on them and they appear to be going to other places given the current climate. It has us all very worried.

      Reply ↓
    8. MAL*

      My job used to be managing everything related to international students at a small university. When I worked there, the population was about 14% international students. It’s now close to 30%. I’m not in a position to know if they’re now seeing a decrease in applications, but for a university that’s already been laying off faculty and staff, the heavy reliance on international students is concerning.

      Reply ↓
    9. Pomodoro Sauce*

      Ah! I was on a committee for academic integrity in grad school, and we were firmly instructed to find ways to sand down the punishments for plagiarism because several international students had been expelled for repeated offenses and it was affecting recruitment within their countries of origin.

      Reply ↓
      1. Bay*

        I really hope American universities can get more proactive about teaching international students the expectations around plagarism and original work from the beginning; it varies hugely from country to country and a single ‘don’t copy other people’s work’ isn’t going to register as serious for students who have never seen it enforced before coming to the US

        Reply ↓
    10. ReallyBadPerson*

      Yep. When I was in grad school, my university took regular recruiting trips to rich Asian countries. All of the kids who came over paid more than full price.

      Reply ↓
      1. Red Sox are the best Socks*

        Yup — my last place had just started asking all departments to find more space for full paying international masters students last year.

        Reply ↓
    11. LifebeforeCorona*

      It’s become a whole issue here in Canada. When the govt. tightened up on international students some colleges had to cut programs because they weren’t getting the tuition money to fund them anymore.

      Reply ↓
    12. Jinni*

      Oh, I once knew of a private school that invited international students at a premium rate, but then didn’t include them in anything – no school attendance numbers, not the yearbook, not the website, not graduation. I don’t know if they still do it, but it was…interesting.

      Reply ↓
  15. Nonprofits can (and should be) profitable*

    Being a non-profit doesn’t mean your organization can’t have a surplus at the end of the year! It’s just that unlike a for profit, where a surplus (read: profit) is paid out to shareholders, or the owner keeps it, a nonprofit’s surplus is kept by the organization. (Maybe put in their Board designated reserve, or approved for use in the next fiscal year, etc.)

    Reply ↓
    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I worked somewhere that actually gave bonuses to staff the year we had a surplus and we all nearly died of shock.

      Reply ↓
      1. Dust Bunny*

        I work for a nonprofit and we usually get a bonus at the end of the year. Not a lot, because money is always tight and I assume they keep some of it for unexpected expenses next year, but a hundred bucks or so.

        Reply ↓
      2. Mallory Janis Ian*

        I used to work at a cooperative food warehouse with a membership, and during profitable years the members would get a return on their equity, and the staff would get bonuses.

        Reply ↓
    2. Eldritch Office Worker*

      Yes! Nonprofits don’t have to run on a shoestring budget either. They can pay well and have nice amenities for their staff.

      Not all of them, but probably more than you think.

      Reply ↓
      1. Justin*

        My nonprofit pays extremely well and gives us a bonus. It made me realize my previous nonprofit jobs were just lying to me.

        Reply ↓
      2. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Yeah, I worked for a small consulting firm for a few years where the owner was very cheap and never wanted to pay for anything that he absolutely didn’t need to. Cue my working for a nonprofit the next year and I asked if I could get a different desk chair and a second monitor and they were like, absolutely, not a problem! The two NPs I worked at were very good about making sure we had what we needed to do our work, whereas the for-profit boss was always trying to get us to pinch pennies in every way we could. Note: he was a decent boss in a lot of ways but his cheapskate-ness got pretty frustrating sometimes, especially the time he wanted me to spend days trying to figure out how to do something that we could have paid someone else to do in about half an hour just because he didn’t want to spend the money to have an expert do it. Not to mention the website I was supposed to be using for this was a nightmare and had all kinds of errors on it.

        Reply ↓
    3. Elle*

      I was going to say the same thing! If they pay poorly, don’t offer benefits, expect you to volunteer, pay for stuff run the other way.

      Reply ↓
    4. Somehow I Manage*

      YES! I actually was at a non-profit that had done really well both advancing its mission and putting some money into a reserve fund, and at one point the board told us we needed to spend more money because we had too much sitting there.

      Reply ↓
    5. Spero*

      I agree with this. I work for an income generating program within a non-profit. We have a profit/surplus each year and then that basically becomes the next year budget for another program within our agency. The other program is one that everyone in the community loves and is the most frequently cited program of everything we do, but nobody will fund it in terms of grants, etc so it’s funded by a small number of private donations + our program’s profit.
      It’s also an interesting position politically in that nobody knows about/talks about our program, but we are paying everyone’s bills behind the scenes for the things that get the most attention!

      Reply ↓
    6. Fly on The Wall*

      When my partner took a job at a non-profit his parents were very concerned and the comment was ” but don’t you need to get a paid job?”. Another person wanted to open a daycare at a church, when she was told it would have to be a non-profit daycare she got angry because she “needed to get paid to put food on the table” LOL. So many misconceptions of non-profits.

      Reply ↓
    7. Green Goose*

      At my former non-profit the C Suite had sickening salaries. I saw one of them was making over $350k per year so I can only image what the CEO made.
      I think there is an assumption that nonprofits pay poorly, which can definitely be true but some people get rich working at them like my old leadership team.

      Reply ↓
  16. ITintheER*

    Broadly, in my experience with health IT, a lot of the vendor’s technicians who work extensively with EMRs and hospital IT teams will tell the hospital IT team to “blame them” for unpopular changes to the record despite the fact that those changes were the the responsibility of the hospital IT team… because they like and have close working relationships with the hospital IT team and don’t want clinicians to be mad at them.

    Reply ↓
    1. DataSlicentist*

      I’ve run into this too. “That’s just the way Epic does it!” and I’m like….that’s one way Epic allows you to configure it, yes.

      Reply ↓
      1. Katydid*

        I had a Doctor once tell me I need to “Tell Judy” that he didn’t like the changes she was making in Epic. Sure let me get right on the horn to my direct line to the CEO of Epic. As if our version of Epic was standard and we had any choice in the matter. We were a small rural hospital buying it from a larger hospital because we weren’t big enough to buy direct.

        Reply ↓
        1. StarTrek Nutcase*

          I handled Medicaid billing for a dental clinic that was part of our state facility that specialized in special needs kids & adults most of who were indigent. The head dentist kept insisting that I contact & push Medicaid to get various regulations changed because the regs didn’t make special provision for our unique clients. Yeah, the federal government was going to rewrite regs for .01% of total population of dental patients! Unfortunately, he was used to prior biller committing fraud or simply not billing Medicaid or private. He also thought he should be as unregulated as he was on his biannual trips for Dentists Without Borders. But good intentions don’t negate malpractice or fraud especially for un- or under-served populations.

          Reply ↓
      2. AnonForThis*

        God, the medication alerts configuration. “We should turn down the sensitivity to reduce the number of alerts so users pay attention to all the alerts and don’t get alert fatigue” we’d say. “You might think it’s safer to alert on every single medication, but it *really isn’t*” we’d say. “Please, for the sake of your clinicians and your patients, do not set it up this way” we’d say.

        Nurse: “Why am I getting 5 alerts every time I try to administer a medication?”
        Me: “…that’s just Epic. Maybe you should complain to someone about that!”
        Nurse: “Why is it telling me that the patient is over 60? I *know* the patient is over 60. This is the geriatric unit; all of the patients are over 60.”
        Me: “Yeah, um, frustrating. I’m writing down here that you find it frustrating.”
        Nurse: “It’s telling me the patient is over 60 for EACH medication??”
        Me: “…heh, Epic, am I right?”

        Reply ↓
        2. Nightengale*

          they keep adding new and de-proved ones though. The past few weeks I started getting weight alerts, telling me my patient weight is outside the expected range. OK but now can I go through and prescribe the medication they need (which is not dosed based on weight)?

          The drug interactions/contraindication alerts are almost never accurate.

          Epic also keeps flagging medications for needing a prior authorization which – don’t. If I don’t catch the flag and uncheck the box, it helpfully sends in an unnecessary PA request. It happens over and over for the same few patients and the same few medications. Amusingly, it doesn’t do this for medications that actually do need a PA. Apparently our hospital subscribed to some list that isn’t actually based in reality.

          Reply ↓
      3. Nightengale*

        I have used Epic at 3 different institutions. The things that our health system blames on Epic when I KNOW Epic can actually do the thing. . . Of course, our health system also didn’t train doctors how to write our own smartlists and if I hadn’t learned that at another hospital over a decade ago, I wouldn’t have known it was possible. I had to google to remind myself how because it wasn’t on any of our internally provided Epic resources.

        Reply ↓
  17. Minnie Ed*

    I work in education. I don’t think people would be surprised to learn that teachers are underpaid or that students are struggling. But I think they might be surprised at just how dire the situation is. There are a lot people running schools — and by and large I think they are hard-working and well-meaning — who don’t fully understand how education works and what makes it effective. Now, we are facing a perfect storm of headwinds, from the demonization of truly creative learning and critical thinking skills, to the introduction of artificial intelligence (which I have seen even some teachers start to casually discuss as a way of grading papers), to the massive de-funding and dismantling of the DOE and supporting institutions, to whatever happened to so many students and families during the pandemic, which has hampered learning in ways we’re still struggling to figure out. I’m really worried about the future of education as an industry, as a service to students, and what all this means for our collective future.

    Reply ↓
    1. Teach*

      Yep. I feel like we are watching the collapse of public education in real time. My bright high school kids see it happening, too.

      Reply ↓
    2. gingersnap*

      I work in higher ed and completely agree. We have professors who aren’t paid a living wage and are barely eking by contrasted with multi million dollar athletic programs with staff paid in the high six figures. Add to that the highly paid executive staff and it’s tough to watch.

      Reply ↓
        1. false name*

          Absolutely NONE. And don’t get me started on the administrative side. Cutting actual on-the-ground staff who make peanuts and then posting ads for “Director of Something Stupid” is currently happening at my workplace. Very demoralizing.

          Reply ↓
    3. Bananapants Modiste*

      I have contacts to academia and see a bit of brain drain going on, as in educators (and researchers) going to other countries.

      Reply ↓
    4. Rogue Slime Mold*

      I work with secondary ed standards, and they have gotten so convoluted. There’s so much “While we do not understand the standards, we want this text to reflect that someone who doesn’t understand the topic could glance at it and think this standard is covered.”

      Reply ↓
    5. Not a Vorpatril*

      Also a teacher, and agreed. Bird Lady below also has good points of how our education system is geared towards focusing students towards regurgitation of information instead of understanding the base concepts which will absolutely wreck them when they try to do college level classes.

      And while those teachers who would like to see students be stronger critical thinkers, that requires a rework from the ground up (particularly in elementary) because by the time I see them in highschool (13-18 year olds) they are too stuck in the rut, even the fairly smart ones who are pretty good at school, to really dig into things properly.

      For more notable job info: Teachers are observed and graded on their performance, too. The rubrics tend towards being very biased and sometimes announced, often leading to dog-and-pony shows by the teacher to curry higher scores.

      Reply ↓
      1. Potato Potato*

        I really wish that my schools had prioritized critical thinking. All I can remember is getting punished for drawing conclusions and knowing about context (rather than spitting back information verbatim). It got to the point of me refusing to learn about any relevant topic outside of school, because if I knew stuff that wasn’t in the textbook, I’d get docked points. Graduating was the best thing I ever did for my ability to learn.

        Reply ↓
        1. Not a Vorpatril*

          One of the benefits of what I teach (Geometry) is that it is actually geared for working with critical thinking. The first semester is almost fine tuned towards getting students to understand “why” and, in theory, be able to answer the “why” behind problems.

          Unfortunately, most students absolutely hate that portion and find it incredibly difficult because it does not feel like math to them. And so I often have to revert to having them use tricks to figure things out (also we lack the time to do as strong of a delve as I would like, and there is a lot of basic memorization/crib sheet creation/specific rules required to properly work through proofs for most students) and not bomb the tests too badly.

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        2. Nightengale*

          my high school and college did. My college biology major in particular would often teach a unit on something genetic in say, fruit flies, and then the test questions would be on a similar genetic phenomenon in worms. The point was to see if we understood genetic signaling pathways, not whether we had memorized the names of the genes in the fly. We had short and long answer tests even in science.

          It was very strange getting to medical school and suddenly everything was a multiple choice test. Previously I had mostly only encountered that for the SATs and other standardized assessments. I wasn’t used to choosing “the best” answer – I was used to writing a few sentences explaining the whys behind stuff.

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      2. Irish Teacher.*

        For more notable job info: Teachers are observed and graded on their performance, too. The rubrics tend towards being very biased and sometimes announced, often leading to dog-and-pony shows by the teacher to curry higher scores.
        Thankfully, this is not the case in Ireland. Yeah, we have inspectors, but I have literally had an inspector come into my classroom once in my career so far and…while they tell me what they think of my teaching and write a vague report on the school in general, which usually goes something like “most teaching observed was good, with some examples of excellent practice. A small number of classes showed need for improvement…”

        But generally, nobody observes us after we are fully qualified and we certainly aren’t graded on our performance.

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    6. I'm A Little Teapot*

      I’m worried about the early 20s people I work with NOW, I can’t imagine how much worse its going to be in 15 years.

      Reply ↓
    7. MrSquid*

      In a similar vein, paraeducators and other support staff are probably making less per hour than retail or fast food workers. And likely there isn’t money in the budget to do anything more unless they are getting federal grants.

      Reply ↓
    8. FricketyFrack*

      I was telling my work group recently that I’m genuinely worried about how we’re going to hire in the future as the rest of us age out. We range from 38-53, and the applications we’ve received from younger people have been almost universally terrible. I don’t mean their experience, necessarily, but the spelling, grammar, and editing (which do actually matter a lot for what we do) are very poor. A lot of my peers who have hired late teens/early 20s have said that, while there are some great workers in there, a lot of them just straight up can’t/won’t problem solve. If someone doesn’t hold their hand through a process, they give up, and even if someone does, they don’t seem to retain the knowledge.

      All that to say, the real effects of terrible education are already visible, and I’m expecting them to get worse over the next year. I am so sorry for teachers who are doing their absolute best against a tide of poor administration, parents who refuse to be held accountable, and shit policies.

      Reply ↓
    9. Looking at you, Daniela*

      To touch on the AI part in particular, I volunteer in STEM education. I have had to repeat to the middle schoolers several times that no, when you Google something, you should not immediately go by whatever the AI says at the top of the page. Find the actual source!

      My company is now promoting the use of AI and had a lunch and learn yesterday. The dev team’s presentation was allllll about the many cool things you can do with AI, and I see this in the Teams chat:

      Person1: “It has replaced Google for me. I use it so much.” (was replied to with a laughing emoji and a heart emoji by two different people)

      Person2: (replying to this one) “My twins are in college. They’re using AI a lot for work. Teacher approved 100%.”

      Reader, we work at a large aerospace defense contractor.

      It’s becoming more popular within my own job for people to use the AI to write their first drafts, and all I can think of is this middle-grade book I read from a Scholastic Book Fair called “The Homework Machine” by Dan Gutman. Basically, a group of four fifth-graders band together to make this copier-style machine that does your homework for you. Surprise surprise, around the end of the book, the kids fail a test that they could’ve easily passed if they had actually done their homework!

      What’s going to happen when every student is submitting their first draft for their book report riddled with errors that they might not even know about if they’re entirely relying on the AI? (If they’re not making AI pornography with actual photos of the classmates they have crushes on?)

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        2. MigraineMonth*

          Is there any setting to just TURN IT OFF PERMANENTLY? I forget sometimes, and it’s so irritating to have a possibly correct pop up that I then have to scroll past in order to verify if it’s *actually* correct.

          Reply ↓
    10. Deborah*

      When my kids were in elementary school (like 10 years ago) the principal of their school was a whiz at getting grants and optimizing what you could get for your money. She’d go through a vice principal every year or two because she was basically training them to be principals elsewhere. It was crazy how much her job was all about money and grant writing.

      Reply ↓
    11. Teaching Is Its Own Kind of Dysfunctional*

      I have always said that anyone on a school board or in an administrative position that allows them to make decisions for students and educators should have to teach at least one class every year. Learn how to do it right, see what’s actually happening in the classroom.

      Reply ↓
    12. Notmyjobreally*

      I worked in education and spent summers as a temp secretary. I realized I could make more money and only work 40 hrs a week. Changed professions

      Reply ↓
    13. Anita Brake*

      This. We had a Professional Development meeting where we were advised to, and shown how to, use A. I. to create lesson plans.

      Reply ↓
  18. ShadySlytherin*

    If you owe child support & someone dies and leaves you a life insurance payout, the company will run a national report to see if you owe any child support. If you do, the payout will be redirected to the child you’re neglecting. I’ve always loved this rule!

    Reply ↓
    1. DEJ*

      I don’t know if this is true across the board – some states do have a statute of limitations on collecting past-due child support. But in places where there is no statue of limitations, things like insurance payouts will be redirected towards your past due child support.

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    2. Generic Name*

      And if you have unpaid child support, it doesn’t magically go away when the child turns 18/19. It follows you for life. My husband is in his 40s, and his dad was still paying back child support to his mom until his dad died.

      Reply ↓
    3. FricketyFrack*

      And if you inherit anything, it can be taken. Unfortunately, that usually takes awareness and proactive effort on the part of child support enforcement, so it’s not quite as easy, but I put a lien on a guy’s inheritance (basically 1/3 of a house) and he ended up getting about $3k after they took out his back child support. Of course he wanted to negotiate as soon as he was notified about the lien but A) too late and B) not a chance I would agree to that.

      Oh, and any kind of gambling winnings get run through a similar database. Win a couple grand at the casino but haven’t paid for your kids? Too bad, that’s the other parent’s money now. I always enjoyed people getting spicy with me about it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jan Levinson Gould*

        Your job sounds satisfying! Law suit awards also fall under that category. I was once slapped with a frivolous lawsuit by a low-life former tenant. I found out about the child support arrears quite by accident, but I contacted the mother of his children who he owed back child support to about the lawsuit. The attorney the children’s mother was working with on the child support matter faxed the attorney who filed the frivolous lawsuit against me. The suit didn’t go anywhere as the former tenant died from an OD, but had I settled or owed anything, I would have slept well at night knowing the money was going to the children and not to feed the former tenant’s drug addiction. I did give the children xmas gifts that year even though I never met them – it was a tough year for those kids who deserved better than their father.

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        1. FricketyFrack*

          I don’t do enforcement anymore, but it could be very satisfying. Also, very frustrating seeing how many people would call me and claim that their kid was so important to them but then avoid paying by any means necessary. SO many people will work under the table and shoot themselves in the foot in terms of wages and retirement and then throw a fit that they don’t qualify for social security or unemployment because there’s no record of them working. It’s pathetic.

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          1. Jan Levinson Gould*

            Before my former tenant became too far gone with drugs, he had a w-2 job which also partially paid him in cash and worked many side jobs for cash which was a large part of his income. He was almost proud about taking the extra work in cash to avoid increasing child support payments. Disgusting.

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    4. trailer trash panda*

      Please don’t assume every single parent avoiding paying child support is neglecting their children. My cousin was not awarded custody of his son, despite his baby mama being a drug addict. (Because where we’re from, the mom always gets the kids, no matter how much of a deadbeat SHE is.) He gave food and clothes to his child, but didn’t give her a dime, which would’ve gone entirely to her addiction. Sadly, his kid is now incarcerated for (you guessed it) crimes related to drug dealing (think Breaking Bad), and he’s worked entirely off the books for years as a small town mechanic.

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    5. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

      Huh. I worked at a Life Insurance company for 5 years, paying out death claims, and I never once ran a report like that. Maybe it’s a new rule? It does sound like a good one.

      Reply ↓
  19. Maple Cheesecake*

    It really is true—as long as your badge looks like it belongs, they’ll let you go just about anywhere in a hospital. You’ll get a few helpful side-eyes if you look particularly lost, but otherwise you’re free to go wherever.

    Minus crossing the red sterile line, of course!

    Reply ↓
    1. Nononononsense*

      I was so touched when I was asked for my badge once. I had every right to be there and do what I needed to do, but I could have just walked up to any PC and started accessing patient info, no one would stop me. Except for that one nurse. We had lunch together, my treat.

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    2. Tenebrae*

      It’s true! I got lost once and was amazed at how freely I was able to wander.
      Never attempted to go into the OR or the morgue, though, which I assume are way stricter.

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    3. Three cats in a trenchcoat*

      It always amazed me as a medical student how many places in the hospital I could go as long as I wore my white coat and a badge ( even when I was just lost and not supposed to be there)!

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    4. StressedButOkay*

      Heh, an in-law said the same thing about a hard hat and a clipboard (he was an inspector). The number of times no one asked for id when he showed up on a site and he just walked on in…

      Reply ↓
      1. Teaching Is Its Own Kind of Dysfunctional*

        My dad has done construction all my life, and I’ve never been to a construction site he couldn’t just walk onto. And probably make friends. No one checked anything, no one cared if he was supposed to be there or not….

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      2. Kay*

        Advice given to me was similar – carry a clipboard and look like you are supposed to be there. A safety vest or any other kind of PPE tailored to the situation works wonders. If it is an office setting it is amazing how “carry a briefcase and an air of you aren’t to be trifled with” accomplishes the same.

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      3. Quinalla*

        Hard hat and clipboard get you in almost anywhere. I work on the design side of construction and telling people you are there for an upcoming remodel 95% of the time, they are like ok whatever, no follow up questions, no asking to see the drawings you have, or something to verify you are who you say you are. I used to worry about this a lot when going to non-construction sites, don’t we need to coordinate with someone and let them know we are coming? No we do not haha.

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    5. Elly*

      We recently had a case locally of a guy who had been posing as a doctor in the A&E department for months before someone stopped him. He’d been getting in by people holding doors for him!

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    6. Svitkona*

      Haha, I temped at a hospital once in a patient file room. Worked there for two months. I was told during my last week there that I was supposed to have gotten a badge from HR, but I never did. So in my experience, even without a badge, you can definitely move around with little to no interference (at least for a while)

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    7. Odonata*

      I worked part time as a unit aide (fetch-and-carry girl) for a year. The 15 minute walk to the second sub-basement of the hospital, and 5 blocks through the basement to the far end of the complex, was beyond creepy. Even better was knowing I was going to pick up cocaine or heroin from the hidden pharmacy! And they did check my badge when I got there, but nobody ever stopped me en-route.

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    8. Lizard Lady*

      It can be different for nights. When I worked nights, we were definitely aware of who was where. Though if we were all with patients, someone definitely could have slipped by and we wouldn’t have known.

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    9. 404 employee not found*

      This is so true.

      A family member had a stroke last year and was in a major national hospital (non-US). They had a rule against visits, but his daughter, who is a lab tech at a completely different but also healthcare-related institution, waltzed right in past lots of doctors and nurses after work still wearing her lab clothes (I think they are called scrubs?) and asked where patient John Doe was. A helpful nurse took her to his bedside and left her there.

      Her clothes had the name of the other institution very clearly printed on them.

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    10. Zephy*

      Heck, even if it just looks like you have a badge or other pass of some kind. My mom worked at my high school so a lot of the administrative staff came to know me on sight because I was conscripted to help over the summer with things like stuffing envelopes, removing and replacing locks on lockers, etc. I could basically wander the halls freely if I so chose; if I was carrying books or even just holding a piece of paper, it might as well have been an invisibility cloak. Zero questions. It took the front desk staff a minute to even remember I needed to sign in as a visitor when I came back for my diploma the summer after I graduated, they were just so used to me being there that it didn’t immediately register that I wasn’t supposed to be.

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    11. Meow*

      For my job, I had t0 walk the entirety (like, every step) of a certain hospital like, 3 times. I only got yelled at twice – once by a PT who was being weirdly secretive about the gym, and by food service, for crossing the clean line in the cafeteria.

      Accidentally cross a clean line in surgery? Oh, no biggie, just go back and scrub up, it’s cool. Cross the buffet line in the cafeteria without a hair net? DEATH PENALTY

      Reply ↓
  20. Snarkus Aurelius*

    I’ve worked in politics and government for over 25 years. West Wing was the worst thing to happen to my field. It ushered in a generation of entitled white men who bloviate about things I already know, ironically treat me like a secretary, and act like they’re saving the world. They aren’t interested in learning how a bill becomes a law or how federal spending works or that 99% of what we do is boring as shit. My male coworker once made all of his direct reports listen to him talk about the need for universal health care for two hours straight, as if we didn’t already know anything he said. Thank God I didn’t have to listen to him.

    **Every** movie or television show about what I do is unrealistic, naive, and simplistic except for one: Veep. That show is as close as it gets but minus the humor.

    Reply ↓
    1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      Ever watched the Brit version of that – ‘The Thick of It’? That is rather accurate to our governmental stuff and same writers I think.

      Reply ↓
      3. linger*

        Armando Ianucci. Currently co-presenting a BBC Radio 4 show (and podcast) “Strong Message Here” on use of language in politics. (The title references former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reading aloud a stage direction written into a speech.)

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    2. LinesInTheSand*

      I know a guy who went into political science because of the West Wing and he has carried a grudge against Aaron Sorkin ever since.

      Reply ↓
      1. Half-baked*

        I nearly did this for the same reason, but thank goodness I did a political internship in college and realized OH HECK NO before investing a lot of time in that career!

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    3. Roy G. Biv*

      But I learned how a bill becomes a law from Schoolhouse Rock. “I’m just a bill, yes, I’m only a bill, and I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill.” Am I not qualified to tell you how it’s done???

      Reply ↓
    4. T.N.H*

      I was JUST complaining about this but as a layperson. Every problem on TWW is solved by a white guy making an impassioned speech and somehow that fixes politics (except I guess the Jimmy Smitts season where he gets a turn). The misogyny, racism, and homophobia are so gross. This show does not hold up.

      Reply ↓
      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        Also the actual West Wing was far more diverse in race and gender at the time, which I always found ironic.

        No, you can’t fix shit with an impassioned speech. If I’m working in an office with you, you can assume we have the same ideology. I don’t need a lecture or a history lesson. Chances are I probably know more than you anyway.

        Also West Wing Men, as I like to call them, really do think women exist to be their assistants or have unrequited crushes or both. I remember walking into a conference room early to participate in a meeting led by a West Wing Man. When he saw me, he asked if I was here to help him set up his projector and distribute lunches. I said, “Ah no. I’m a meeting participant, and I have A LOT of questions about your materials. Looking forward to it!” He was pretty shocked.

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        1. T.N.H*

          Interesting about the diversity – I believe it! I know those dudes exist but they aren’t glorified with a swell of orchestral music every time they hit on a woman IRL. That’s what makes it so much worse on a show.

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        2. hi there*

          In this industry as well, and my radar for West Wing Men is HONED and ACTIVE. It’s such a problem and breeds so much hubris.

          I will say that when it comes to interacting with voters, Parks and Rec got it right.

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          2. As I Live and Breathe, Raisin?!*

            We had a recent City Council meeting where a woman played Sammy Hagar as part of her argument AND our Animal Control is a joke. Parks and Rec nailed it.

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          3. FricketyFrack*

            Sometimes I’ve felt like it’s exaggerated and then every once in a while, I’m reminded that some members of the public are actually insane. My relatively small city (<50k people) ended up in the GD Daily Mail recently for a fairly innocuous ordinance that brings us into alignment with many of the surrounding cities. We received multiple death threats – and one, hopefully fake, murder confession – and people are HEATED without really understanding anything about it. We're having a nice time over here. :/

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          4. Higgins*

            I used to work in state government and I had a mug with the Parks and Rec quote “I found a sandwich in one of your parks, and I want to know why it didn’t have mayonnaise on it” because that was about the level of the calls I got from constituents every day.

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          1. Snarkus Aurelius*

            Here’s one I just remembered:

            When I worked on Capitol Hill, we had a male intern tell the boss, “I serve at the pleasure of Representative [Boss’s Name],” to her face. My boss, who didn’t watch television and would never pick that show if she did, looked terrified. She slowly backed away, said nothing, and went into her office.

            Later, I told the intern to never do that again. “We all work here so what you said is a given. Boss is now under the impression you have a crush on her. Don’t apologize. Never bring it up again. Please stop watching that show. Thank you!”

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            1. Bird names*

              Oh dear, oh no. Poor boss, poor you and even poor intern who hopefully learned his lesson then and there.

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    5. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

      Also work in politics (c4/PAC side) and 100% agree. Nearly 15 years into working in this field, I am still stunned about how much money my colleagues get paid to sit around and share opinions with each other – opinions about things we don’t work on, opinions about things we are in no way positioned to do anything about, opinions that have no relationship to advancing our mission. Most of our meetings look like a Josh-Toby-CJ hangout session, except we aren’t senior white house staffers, we work at a small org that has extremely limited influence. It’s one person’s entire job to share articles and Twitter threads a couple dozen times a day with the rest of the staff so they can reply with snarky and progressively derailing comments. These are not like, hard-to-find relevant takes on our work; they’re more like front-page-on-the-washington-post articles that we’re all already looking at.

      (I work on the business side and am immune from most of this – I have actual clear goals and deliverables, as does the rest of the Development/HR/Admin/Accounting staff.)

      The first time I watched Veep I could not stop comparing Jonah to many of the folks I work with. The resemblance is uncanny, even down to the horrible concert he drags Dan to in the first season.

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    6. mcm*

      The “99% of what we do is boring as shit” is so real. White guys with ideas: useless. Your one colleague who knows and remembers the byzantine process required to get election data from this one county in California who only sends data by mailing physical CDs: priceless, a genius, indispensable. Requires zero inspiring speeches, however, so less fun for the ideas guy.

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      1. Pumpkin cat*

        I found this to be the case with a few small volunteer groups I used to work with. There would be the “ideas men” who would take up a ton of time blathering about their dumb ideas, and then the real workers (mostly women) who would come up with the actual thing we would do and implement it. I wish we could have kicked the “ideas men” out. One of my dearest old friends is an “ideas man” and he lives to tell me about things I know a lot about. I let him though, because he’s actually very sweet, and I think he’s trying to impress me. When we were in college together, I was very impressive, and my friends from back then still have that view of me, haha.

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      2. goddessoftransitory*

        This whole thread is making me think of the “why won’t anyone hire me to be their Ideas Man?” letter SOOO much.

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    7. M.*

      I am a diplomat and I feel this so hard. 98% of our jobs is reporting, building contacts to help find common ground, negotiate for the best possible outcome for the USG, processing and issuing visas and helping AmCits overseas. It’s not glamour and intrigue like The Diplomat makes it look like. But there is definitely a savior complex among a certain demographic of diplomat.

      Reply ↓
      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        OMG I hate The Diplomat so much! I had really, really high hopes for it, and I intentionally didn’t read a lot of the background or hype because I wanted to be surprised.

        Nope! Most of the stuff Hal does would have him fired long ago in real life, yes, even though he’s a white guy. Kate goes overboard to let us know she doesn’t give a shit about her appearance when in reality she’s still very attractive and stained clothes on anyone would not go over well. Everyone in my field always has an extra change of clothes. Oh and, of course, a strong, intelligent, independent woman slept with and eventually married the boss, took his last name, and rides his coattails through her career. Because of course she can’t be successful otherwise!

        After I finished the first season, my initial response was, “this is some West Wing wannabe bullshit that has to have a woman sleeping with someone from work because that’s why we ladies have careers!” Then I found out the creator was a former West Wing writer, and it all made sense.

        I assume the second season is more of the same.

        Reply ↓
    9. Texan in Exile*

      My husband has run for state-level office three times and Congress once. Every time I see a TV or movie character decide to run for office and the next scene, he’s on the ballot, I get a little crabby that nobody has shown the part where you have to spend a few weeks gathering nominating signatures. Or where you are trying to raise money. Or where you are trying to actually create an event that people will attend.

      (And related to what should be required for all elected officials or, frankly, anyone who comments on social media: The Bill of Rights applies to everyone, not just citizens FFS.)

      Reply ↓
    10. Dolphins*

      West Wing debuted like 26 years ago though. Weren’t there entitled, blowhard jackasses in politics before then???

      Reply ↓
  21. Bird Lady*

    I work for a textbook publishing company and while about 90% of my time is assisting professors and other instructors, I sometimes work with college students. In some sense, the kids are still doing okay! But three things have become incredibly apparent to me:

    1. While we’ve called Gen-Z digital natives, they have no idea how the digital realm works and have very little tech literacy.

    2. They’ve been trained for high-stakes testing that’s typically recall-based in high school and have very little critical thinking skills and extreme anxiety about failure to the point of simply shutting down.

    3. They are not using AI to cheat in the numbers that some in academia would report out.

    Reply ↓
    1. Justme, The OG*

      I have a Gen Z kid and agree with all, especially #3. She was having a hard time in her math class and used AI to help teach her how to do it. Then did the rest of the homework herself.

      Reply ↓
      1. Bird Lady*

        Yes! I work with a lot of students who write essays and then run them through AI to correct grammar/ spelling – just like how we’d use spell check in MS Word – and they get flagged for using AI. And okay, maybe they should use what’s available to them in Word, but I really don’t think that using AI to correct some comma placements in a research paper is cheating. When I worked at a museum, I used AI to check content grade-levels. We wrote exhibition labels at a 5th grade reading level. I was a content expert; not a reading-level expert. Was that cheating?

        Reply ↓
        1. 'nother prof*

          FWIW, some of the grammar/spell-checkers (like Grammarly) have morphed far beyond what you’d think of as a grammar/spell-checker. “AI detectors” can’t actually detect AI-usage; they’re looking for phrasing typical of AI-produced text (and they aren’t that reliable, by all accounts). So, detectors wouldn’t pick up “some comma placements,” and AI-based “grammar/spell-checkers” are actually going to suggest substantive changes that go well beyond that type of thing. Personally, when I suspect AI-writing, it’s because the paper does a mix of things like: including made-up “facts,” contradicting itself, failing to carry a thesis throughout the paper, only using vague phrases without any hard evidence, and/or repeating the same idea ad nauseum in rephrased forms.

          Reply ↓
          1. AI Challenges*

            I work as a freelance writer, and I’ve generated a *lot* of content in my chosen industry.

            So sometimes the AI checkers think I’m AI, because the AI uses a lot of my turns of phrase…because there’s a lot of content out there that I wrote.

            Reply ↓
            1. le bureau des conneries françaises de Chicago*

              I got caught out on that many years ago – in high school, I was taking a class on the urban fabric of Chicago, and submitted a whitepaper on expansion of the Ravenswood service to O’Hare Airport. It was based, largely, on work I’d supplied to a Chicago-based railfan/rail history site a year before.

              Their plagarism detection machine farted it back because I’d copied [web site here] – I asked the teacher if she’d read the byline on the article it claims I stole, she said “it didn’t matter”. The next day, I brought a signed letter from the site’s operator (and the then-head of communications for the Chicago Transit Authority) explaining the post to the department head – the head apologized profusely, congratulated me on my work and let me loose. Teacher wasn’t too happy, but what can you do.

              On the other side, it turned out the department head was a railfan too, we’d meet up occasionally afterwards when there were interesting things to shoot (snowflake charters, new stock coming in, etc). Good guy.

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    2. Pixel*

      I feel like people assume that since many Gen-Z grow up playing on a tablet since they were toddlers, they automatically are tech experts and don’t need to be taught tech skills. And then because no one teaches them tech skills, many end up tech illiterate.

      Reply ↓
      1. AnReAr*

        Yep. They grew up in a time when tech was at its most user friendly; they rarely had to figure out how to make stuff work. I’ve seen it compared to how modern car drivers know very little about vehicle maintenance– when a modern vehicle needs repairing it usually needs specialized tools and knowledge. When personal cars were new they used tools most household already had, were more simple, and needed much more constant maintenance so people just got good at it.

        Personally, I’d say it’s also like language. They’re native speakers, so they never really had to think about their grammar as they spoke. Whereas we older generations had to help invent the language and actively had to be mindful of how the grammar was being shaped.

        Reply ↓
        1. Bitte Meddler*

          I’d compare it to being a car driver today. Yes, I can drive a car in all kinds of situations and navigate the roads successfully, and have been driving since I was 14, but I do not have the skills to repair / replace most of the things in and on a modern car.

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      2. EMP*

        yep! I didn’t realize how true this was until I was doing some STEM outreach and learned that the kids (they were in middle school at the time…maybe cusp gen alphas) didn’t know what a “pixel” was. They grew up with retina-display mac books, of course they didn’t know what a pixel was.

        Reply ↓
      3. Thegs*

        This may as well be a good point to add my industry secret. I’m in IT, specifically systems administration. I’m a Late Millennial having recently crossed into my 30s, and everywhere that I have worked for my career I have been the youngest person there. When I was in my early/mid 20s, that was to be expected, but now that I’m at SA II… there’s no SA I level people out there to taking up torch. It’s that way at every org I have friends or contacts in, and we all work in computers-based technical organizations.

        Developers, support staff, anything that can be learned in an app isn’t having this problem, but the well of young people who have dug into their operating system, changed it, broken it, and fixed it, and are crazy like us thinking that it’s fun is drying up. Cynical me feels like this is all intentional. Lock down consumer OSes, push people into cloud hosting, control their environment and their spending from top to bottom. Gen Z was done an incredible disservice by these trillion dollar corporations, depriving them of the joy of actually owning your system.

        Reply ↓
    3. WeirdChemist*

      Speaking of textbooks, I used to work for my college’s campus bookstore, and people were very surprised at how little we marked-up the textbooks! The mark-up for textbooks was entirely to cover the shipping costs, the high prices came from the publisher. Now the clothing items… those we bought for pennies each and sold them for $20+….

      Reply ↓
      1. MaybeRelevant*

        Can confirm that this is the truth as I used to manage college bookstores! Branded items and snacks are the margin makers in college bookstores. Used text books were more profitable than new but not by a ton.

        Reply ↓
      1. Audrey Puffins*

        I had to teach a young co-worker how to drag an email from her Inbox to another folder for filing. We need computer lessons back in schools

        Reply ↓
        1. Paint N Drip*

          At this point, ONLY that small cohort of GenX/Millennials who had tech training in school has the baseline knowledge most of us expect out of fellow workers – employers are really going to have to go back to training sessions on the basics. I’m stuck between my vintage boss who doesn’t know how computers work and the new workforce who doesn’t know how computers work and I BARELY do but I am comparatively Steve Woz

          Reply ↓
        2. Ganymede II*

          I am very worried by how many Gen Zs do not know how to use file structures. They’re used to searching for everything, which is fine most of the time, but does not work when you are using shared folders. File structure matters!

          Reply ↓
    5. Forensic13*

      Yes to all these things as an adjunct teaching English! Although the AI has been far worse than usual this semester, which I blame mostly on mental health-related panicking.
      We forget that computers didn’t use to have obvious UI everywhere, so you had to play around a bit more. Now that it’s all one-to-one buttons and easy access, they aren’t really developing those digital skills.

      Reply ↓
    6. Midwest Cheesehead*

      My sister is GenZ and can’t type that well or use office products. I’ve already told my husband our kids are taking typing classes, I’m going to make them use office products because it’s used by 90% of companies right now.

      My kids will not have a phone or ipad for years. (Unless medically necessary). We do watch TV, but little screens are a no no.

      I’m actively mentoring some Gen Z women who I’m trying to help with their digital native skills. I feel like as a young millennial in communications, I have a duty to help them because I’m helping Gen X & Boomers with our new tech, and then the people under me.

      Reply ↓
      1. typing*

        I hope for your kids there are better input devices (dictation or at least keyboard gloves)! The technology exists; I assume it’s only because workers, not employers, bear the burden of body pain that it’s not widely available commercially.

        Reply ↓
    7. Irish Teacher.*

      I think part of the issue with 1 is that, to an extent, the way in which people are introduced to technology has flipped in the last 20-30 years.

      For most of us who are Gen X or older, our first introduction to computers was in education or the workplace. Computers were expensive and not many people had them at home so our first introductions to them involved things like learning to type, setting up e-mail, creating word documents, maybe powerpoint or excel… Gamers were the real “techy types,” the ones who were so into computers that they actually invested in them for fun. And content creation was pretty much unknown.

      That has now completely changed. Everybody has access to digital devices and they use them primarily for entertainment. Kids start school at 4 or 5 already playing computer games and watching videos online and because of that, we assume they are “digital natives” and don’t think we have to teach them what we still consider “the basics” – word, e-mail, powerpoint, etc. But those things are very different from playing computer games or watching a video and they aren’t inherently easier. Just because we learnt them first doesn’t mean Gen Z and Gen Alpha did.

      And when you think about it, it makes sense that they don’t know. After all, we grew up drawing and scribbling on paper, but that didn’t mean we knew how to write a business letter without explicit instruction. Nobody thought we were “pen and paper natives so we didn’t need to be taught how to write formal letters or reports or college essays.” It was understood that those were very different from writing thank you letters to grandma for your birthday present or letters to your penpal and we were explicitly taught the rules.

      Reply ↓
    8. Lurker*

      Out of curiosity, what kind of basic level tech skills did you expect Gen-Z to know that they did not? I’m curious about where the gaps in knowledge are.

      Reply ↓
      1. Irish Teacher.*

        I’m dealing with teens, but I have a lot of students who cannot access their e-mails or who don’t know how to change the font size in word or how to get bold or italics or how to save a word document.

        These would be 13-16 year olds. They’ll perhaps be typing up an assignment and then call me and tell me they don’t know how to save.

        Reply ↓
      2. MigraineMonth*

        Not the OP, but I’ve heard that navigating the file system and particularly finding saved files is something people struggle with these days. I think this is because phones and Google drive rely so heavily on searching rather than “filing” it into a particular folder, it’s pretty opaque where a given file is located.

        Reply ↓
        1. FD*

          I’ll give people a pass on this because depending on if you have one drive infesting your system, it actually is genuinely opaque sometimes where a file actually is.

          Reply ↓
          1. Teapot Connoisseuse*

            Don’t talk to me about OneDrive – accidentally saved something to it the other day, and could I find it when I needed it? Could I heck!

            Reply ↓
          2. MigraineMonth*

            I originally typed “young people struggle with” and changed it to “people struggle with” because I completely agree. There’s a file saved somewhere on my phone that I need to access frequently, and I lose it every time my phone has a major update.

            Reply ↓
      3. pumpkinn*

        We found my then 16 year old brother had never saved a file! I’m essentially a “school” ahead of him, in that we only overlapped at primary and secondary for a year each and it’s amazing how much changed in that time.
        We had painful IT lessons in making PowerPoints and word docs, etc. He didn’t.

        Decent file management, emails, any kind of troubleshooting, and anything much more complicated than basic formatting in word just seems to be a mystery.

        Reply ↓
      4. Bird Lady*

        So for example, for a good number of reasons, students should always log into their school’s LMS (Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, etc…) and complete assignments in the course, even if the course links out to a third-party program or website. The school provides information on how to access courses in the LMS to all student email addresses.

        I have students complaining that they can’t access their assignments because they are googling “Blackboard” and trying to log into another school’s LMS.

        Or, they email me with an issue and I say to please send a screenshot. I include a link to instructions for Windows and Mac. They can’t follow these instructions. If they can, they don’t know how to add the attachment in email.

        I try to help them, but often times, when they can’t do these simple steps, they completely shut down and inform their instructor no one wants to help them. What often happens is that the instructor then needs to take time during class or office hours to teach them how to take a screenshot or attach a file and it takes time away from other students.

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    9. Calamity Janine*

      the funny thing about number 1 is that it’s ended up with a double meaning to me – Gen Z are digital natives in the same way you know your native tongue.

      it’s perilously easily to get quite far in your native language where your actual knowledge is basic, but everything higher gets processed as “it doesn’t sound right”. you know the right answer through sheer exposure and use. actually showing your work? much harder! i will fully admit that despite a linguist father and being nerdy in that direction, there were nuts and bolts of grammar that i only truly understood when i learned them in Latin and not English.

      it’s a similar phenomenon to why biology uses model animals. you’re too used to being a human and knowing on some level how humans work, on account of being one. humans are quite complicated. to get a clearer look at how something works, we don’t always use humans. we use more simple things where we don’t have any baseline assumptions that we know how they work. we don’t know intuitively as many aspects about what being a fruit fly is like because we don’t spend our time being a fruit fly. and a fruit fly is much less complex than an entire human – there’s just stuff that’s easier to see without all the noise.

      it doesn’t surprise me that digital natives are the same way when it comes to “speaking” digital skills. they grew up fully immersed to it, so they never had to sit down with the fruit flies or diagram baby’s first passage of Julius Caesar. it’s not really their fault – it’s not ignorance but a known bug in humanity, lol. the solution might be much the same – learning this technology in a vintage and more primitive state so they can see the moving parts and understand what is going on.

      am i saying they need a turn in the Hand Code An HTML Webpage For Your Neopet mines to learn? …perhaps

      Reply ↓
  22. WeirdChemist*

    I have a PhD in a STEM field (well, chemistry, if you can’t tell by my username lol).

    People are constantly surprised by the fact that I only took classes for a year, the next 4-5 were entirely working full time as a graduate research assistant. My family would always ask how “school” and “classes” were, and would push back if I tried to refer to this time as a “job” or “work”. I worked 50+ hours a week out of the same room in exchange for a regular pay check and a W2 at the end of the year, what is that if not a job?

    Even now, I’ll talk to someone about something “from my last job” and they’ll tell me “oh that wasn’t a job that was school”. I also had someone react with horror over the fact that I listed graduate research assistant as prior employment on my resume! It was a job, with relevant skills! Why would I not list it on a resume!?

    (Note I have no clue how PhDs in the humanities work, may be completely different)

    Reply ↓
    2. PostalMixup*

      Absolutely. And in the biosciences, NIH-funded PhD students are typically explicitly disallowed from having meaningful outside employment. At my university you even had to get permission if you wanted to TA more than the program required. So I got paid, had health care benefits, and was not allowed to moonlight? It’s a job.

      Reply ↓
    3. WeirdChemist*

      Oh, and also, professors typically aren’t doing any lab work themselves! The hands-on research, data collection, lab work, etc is frequently being done entirely by their grad students. The professor certainly plays a role in advising their students on strategies to test for certain things, or how to interpret data collected, but they’re typically not doing the actual grunt work. I’d frequently hear “Professor discovered XYZ” or see someone cite “Professor, et al” could be frustrating, when you know that a grad student made that discovery, or did all the experiments for that paper!

      (I’m sure there’s exceptions to this, that’s just my experience in chemistry)

      Reply ↓
    4. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      Goddess yes. Back when I was doing my postgraduate stuff in virology it absolutely WAS a day job. With some very odd hours (keeping cell cultures going).

      People don’t understand how much physical effort is needed to work in a lab either. That’s why I left the field in the end – disability plus laboratory isn’t a good combination.

      Reply ↓
      1. WeirdChemist*

        I hurt injured my ankle at one point during grad school, and when I went to student health I was told “oh, if you were an undergrad I’d give you a walking boot, but because you’re a grad student I won’t” because I wasn’t going to be wandering around campus all day between classes. I also asked my boss if I could exclusively do desk work for a few days to stay off of it and let it heal and was told “no” because I could just pull up a stool to my work area… I ended up spending most of the time on my feet anyways because I constantly had to get up to grab beakers/equipment/chemicals/etc from the other side of the room, walk to another building to use the NMR, and so on and so forth

        I have a permanent mild limp now, because that ankle never got to heal :(

        Reply ↓
        1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

          I’m sorry to hear that – ankle pain is nasty.

          I fractured my spine in an accident and asked if there could be any accomodation for me. Basically the answer was ‘no, we’re not changing the lab/hours for you’. That’s how I ended up in IT!

          Reply ↓
        2. Alicia in Hinterland*

          Fellow NMR veteran salutes you! I still sometimes smell those darn E. coli cultures 25 years later!

          Reply ↓
    5. Retired Camp Counselor*

      My partner is finishing up his computer science PhD- it doesn’t help that the university insists they are students and definitely not working- if only to fight the unionization efforts (though of course they are also conviently employees when it benefits the university for them *not* to be students…)

      Reply ↓
      1. WeirdChemist*

        Yes, we called that “Schrödinger’s grad student” lol, could either be a student or an employee depending on what was most convenient for the university. During inclement weather/Covid? Students can stay home, but employees must come to campus, so come on in! Hurt yourself doing lab work? Uh, you’re a student, don’t even think about worker’s comp!

        Reply ↓
        1. Area Woman*

          This was my experience! It felt like a scam, but I got my PhD and they can’t ever take that away from me. It’s taken a lot of time to deal with the messed up expectations and the hours worked at that time.

          Reply ↓
        2. Pink Flamingo*

          Health insurance? You can go to the student health center. If your stomach hurts, they will give you a pregnancy test; if you have a weird rash, they will insist you have bedbugs; if you have any other compliant, they will give you a Motrin and send you on your way.

          Retirement contributions: Don’t be ridiculous, you’re just a student!

          But, want to park within a mile of your lab on a giant midwestern campus? Then you’re faculty, and you can pay $100 a month to park in the employee parking garage.

          Reply ↓
    6. Rotating Username*

      Absolutely amazing that people close to you who didn’t know the details of what you were doing would try to correct you. What the heck.

      Reply ↓
      1. PostalMixup*

        It’s frustrating, but people generally have an idea what “student” means. They don’t realize that, in the sciences, it’s actually more like an apprenticeship. But we also get very used to our people not understanding what we do. My mom was 100% sure I was curing cancer. I was in a parasitology lab.

        Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          I had a friend whose mother blew a fuse when my friend said she was taking a class in parasitology. Her mother was furious that my friend was wasting her time and so much money taking a class on pseudoscience. (She’d misheard it as “parapsychology”.)

          Reply ↓
        2. amoeba*

          Hah, yeah, that’s why we don’t typically call PhD students “students” at all – they’re “doctorands” (although they are inscribed as students at the university, typically – at least for us, that wasn’t actually a requirement for the whole time though, you only needed to do it for two semesters or so? We all did it anyway because cheap public transportation, hah.)

          Reply ↓
    7. Not an academic anymore*

      In the humanities, the work is different but it’s still work! You might have coursework for the first 1-3 years of your 5+ year PhD program, but it’s not like undergrad classes – aside from a couple of intro courses your first year, it’s typically research seminars and independent study ‘classes’ that you’re supposed to use to further your PhD topic research under your advisor’s or another professor’s supervision. At the same time, you’re teaching (TAs typically plan and lead discussion sessions, run office hours, and grade assignments–professors plan curriculums and supervise), doing independent research in your field (likely in the library rather than a lab), applying for grants, applying for and presenting at conferences, and potentially working as a research assistant. Depending on how your school structures TA/research assistant roles, you may officially be a W2 employee of the university, instead of or in addition to more-complicated-for-taxes income like fellowships and research grants.

      Reply ↓
      1. Not an academic anymore*

        To add one more point – in the humanities, your PhD research project isn’t a student project, it’s professional work in the field. Most people who continue in academia after graduating edit down their dissertation into their first book.

        Reply ↓
    8. WeirdChemist*

      Oh one more rant lol. A PhD doesn’t work like a bachelors, you can’t double/triple major! Even if your work is cross-disciplinary, you’re still only getting the one degree out of it. If you want multiple degrees, you got to go start basically from scratch again! It’s also extremely rare to be able to double up on workload and graduate super early (if you’re truly that exceptional of a researcher, there’s no way your PI isn’t going to try to milk as much cheap work out of you as possible for as long as they can lol)

      So every movie/TV/book “genius” character who somehow got multiple PhDs before the age of 22… yeah, nope

      Reply ↓
      1. linger*

        That’s a writer relying more on theory than practical knowledge.
        It took me 10 years to complete 4 degrees, and that was with some fast-tracking.
        5 years for two unrelated undergrad degrees. (If there hadn’t been a direct timetable clash between the last 2 years of courses for each major, cross-crediting could have theoretically made it possible to complete both within 4 years; for similar reasons, that’s also the practical time limit for most double-major single degrees, which would be the most efficient way to gain entry into two postgrad programs.)
        1 year of coursework for BA Honours (equivalent to 1st year of MA).
        And then, highly unusually, straight into a 4-year PhD (by thesis only, no coursework).
        This was possible only because I’d spent the previous 4 years as an RA putting together a database, and then determined one of my chosen Hons project topics could be expanded over that already-completed database.
        The record for fast PhD completion in my department was 2 years. (Again, that was analysing a pre-existing database; and also, a far from typical student who had her project well defined from the outset to fit efficiently into the limited timeframe of a sabbatical.)
        So theoretically, someone could get 2 unrelated PhDs, starting from scratch, in an absolute minimum of 10 years (4y undergrad + 2x1y Hons + 2x2y PhD).
        But they’d need to start by age 12 to complete by age 22. Yeah, nah, right?
        And yet … as it happens, my old university currently has a *9-year-old* registered for some courses (in mathematics, obviously). So … it’s not absolutely beyond the realm of possibility! It’s just something that piles up the improbabilities so high it shouldn’t feature in a story that an audience is supposed to find feasible.

        Reply ↓
        1. WeirdChemist*

          It also comes back to my point above, that for a lot of PhDs, a significant chunk of your time is spent working as an employee of the university… A lot of the times, those super young geniuses can actually struggle to get into PhD programs because the university doesn’t want to take on the liability to employ a 12 year old (if they legally can?), or try to figure out how to adapt their degree requirements to disallow that part. If you were a professor, would you want to employ a (probably) poorly-socialized preteen to work for you? Give them honest and critical feedback on their work? Mediate interpersonal conflicts between them and some other 20-something grad student? Would you need parental permission for everything? Would they have to work less hours than everyone else? Could you take them to conferences out of state? Sounds like a nightmare lol

          Reply ↓
      2. amoeba*

        Also, at least where I live, I literally *couldn’t* get a second Doctorate degree in any science discipline – I have a Dr. rer. nat, which translates to “doctor of natural sciences”. It doesn’t specify whether that’s in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, whatever – and you can only have one of those. I could get a Dr. ing (Engineering) or Dr. med. (medical) or of course a Dr. h. c. (“honoris causa” – the one that universities just give to famous people without any actual research!), but nothing scientific at all. This is different in other countries though, I’m sure…

        Reply ↓
    9. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I got a master’s degree in music performance at an Ivy league music school. Most people there left with either a master’s or they did a third year called an artist’s diploma, but there were some people who went further and decided to get the doctor of musical arts (DMA), which meant that you did the two-year master’s degree, which consisted of taking two VERY easy classes in music history or theory (seriously, I’d come from a very rigorous liberal arts college and these graduate level music classes were way easier than anything I’d taken in college), taking private music lessons, performing in chamber groups and the graduate-level orchestra, and one master’s degree solo recital. After that, you had a third year on campus where you did your master of musical arts (MMA, haha, not the kind most people think of), in which I guess you did more of the same as the two MM years and probably another recital? I don’t recall. And then for your DMA, you left campus and went out into the wider world for three years and lived your life as a professional musician, then came back to campus to do yet another recital, and maybe you also wrote a thesis? And I think you had to prove to the school that you had been a very successful professional musician for three years and were highly in demand as a musician, or something like that. I dunno, so few people did it that I actually have no idea. The only reason to get a DMA would be if you wanted to teach at the college level, but I still don’t think it’s a requirement to teach academically. Classical music is so wild that it’s one of the few careers I can think of where the more schooling you have the less desirable you are as a performer; if you’re that good at 17, you’re good enough to go out and be a musician without even a college/conservatory degree. If, like me, you aren’t even that good at 21 yet that people will hire you to perform, you go get a master’s to hopefully get good enough that people will pay you.

      These days I mostly make money doing something other than music, in case you hadn’t guessed yet.

      Reply ↓
    10. JM*

      Absolutely, yes! After I finished my PhD and started a job as a postdoctoral researcher in the same field, various friends and family members asked how I’m adjusting to the new job. I always told them: “I’m doing exactly the same work as before. The only difference is, I’m getting paid twice as much!”

      Reply ↓
    11. biobotb*

      I had a similar experience. My parents didn’t understand why my PhD took so long. They seemed to think that a thesis was just an extra-long term paper and never really grokked that I was generating all the data I would be writing about myself. That takes more than a year!

      Reply ↓
    12. amoeba*

      Hah, I find that pretty funny because where I’m from, we actually tend to be surprised that you take any classes at all during your PhD – mostly, it’s literally only a research/teaching job! (We do usually first do a Master’s, which does indeed consist of classes and exams, and then a shorter PhD afterwards – 3-4 years would be typical, although it can be longer.)

      Reply ↓
  23. bamcheeks*

    UK higher education edition: if your main complaint about higher education is that it’s too expensive, I have bad news for you about literally every other kind of higher-level training. traditional university degrees are by far the cheapest and most effective way of delivering higher-level skills training on a mass basis. Degree apprenticeships and other types of work-based learning are absolutely right for some things and will suit some students much better, but they are considerably more labour-intensive and more expensive to do well. Doing more of that costs more money not less.

    Reply ↓
  24. Resume Please*

    There are different types of accountants (bookkeeping, corporate, financial, auditing, not-for-profit, etc etc.) Most us are not tax accountants, nor will we ever be!

    Snarky one: We accountants just love – LOVE! – being out with a group of non-accountant friends, it’s late, drinks are had…and then the bill comes. It gets placed immediately in front of us to “figure out, because you do numbers.” Love that!

    Reply ↓
    1. M2RB*

      Yes! There are sooooo many different types of accounting, and specialties even within the various types. You can be a tax expert for non-profits or for agriculture or for restaurants & bars or or or…. People ask me tax questions because I’m a CPA and I have to tell them that I got out of tax world back in 2011, so my knowledge is completely out of date. I was confused and offended when I did my own taxes a few years ago and the Form 1040 had been revised! But I had not done any tax-related continuing education that year to see the updates, so it was my own fault for being behind.

      Reply ↓
    2. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      I was in a club in college that was all poli sci and history majors. plus me the engineer. I always had to calculate the split. amazing how well I could do arithmetic after 8 drinks.

      Reply ↓
    3. Juicebox Hero*

      Or figuring out the tip. “What’s 18% of $128.42?” “I don’t know, use the calculator on your phone.” “But you do math for a living!” Yes, with an adding machine, and spreadsheets, and specialized software.

      Reply ↓
      2. Glitsy Gus*

        My answer is always, “20% is $25ish. Just go with that.” I get very annoyed with folks who do 18%. Is that 2% going to buy your yacht in the Caribbean, Mitch? Just tip 20%. The math is easier and I’m sure the server deserves it.

        Reply ↓
    4. Miette*

      In all fairness, my family is full of accountants and they can all compute tax, tip, and splits on a bill in their heads in seconds, so I am spoiled, I guess?

      Reply ↓
      1. Paint N Drip*

        there is a certain flavor of accountants like that, my current boss is one and my former boss (who did run a business but was never technically an accountant) was nearly 100 years old and still could tabulate a list of figures in his head faster than I could on a calculator/adding machine

        Reply ↓
    5. AliceInSpreadsheetland*

      My accountant friend actually does get a kick out of doing the math on who owes what for dinner (and I know because she always volunteers to do it, I don’t ask)- but I can definitely see how it would be annoying! And she’s very clear that she’s not a tax accountant so don’t ask her to do taxes :)

      Reply ↓
    6. ProducerNYC*

      I pivoted from broadcast producing to production accounting and I absolutely love the change. Made the change in my late 40s after decades in news, radio, infotainment and more. Work/life balance is so much better and I’m no longer hesitant to split the bill AND figure out tax lol

      Reply ↓
  25. A large cage of birds*

    People are more than likely in your private medical records for research purposes all of the time. This is especially true if you go to a large hospital or clinic. Even if they’ve never asked you about research. Even if you’ve opted out of being contacted to be recruited for research. Your records are more than likely in research studies and/or research repositories.

    Reply ↓
    3. Anonymous in WI*

      While this is true, I do want to point out that typically, records used in this way are deidentified or tokenized to protect patient privacy. Research professionals take GCP and HIPAA very seriously.

      That said, many times the service and billing agreement that patients sign on arriving at clinic includes a buried line about the facility being able to use records to screen for research without notifying the patient.

      Reply ↓
      2. Cranky Analyst*

        I hope those researchers are taking available studies seriously on just how little it takes to de-anonymize someone, especially with aggregated data.

        There also needs to be a better opt out, because it there’s rarely a way to receive services without agreeing to the fine print. I read what I sign, but have never seen an opt out available. I can sign the paperwork I’m presented with when I arrive for surgery, or walk out, nothing in between.

        Reply ↓
        1. LiveALitte*

          When my teams prepare data for research purposes, we test de-identifying methods before we share the data. Can a set of characteristics be reduced to 10 patients in a zip code? Then you don’t get zip codes, only state level.
          And the researchers that we work with are also careful to do the same when they are reducing their lists.
          I work in a sensitive field [something like HIV research] so all professionals in the community take patient privacy very, very seriously.

          Reply ↓
      3. A large cage of birds*

        Not as often as you think. At my last institution, often de-identified. At my current one, no.

        I mean sure, they’re not publishing your identifiers, but they’re colleting them.

        Reply ↓
    4. DataSlicentist*

      And as a patient in a large health system who has been recruited into studies, I love being able to talk a little inside baseball with the folks administering. People really light up when talking through how my EHR data can connect to the data they’re collecting directly.

      Reply ↓
    5. Beth*

      To add onto this, your private medical records are likely available not just to your caregivers at the clinic or hospital you go to, but also to a whole host of vendors that work with that clinic or hospital. Most healthcare organizations have BAA contracts with a variety of healthcare tech vendors, who are then allowed under HIPAA to access PHI. So, for example, if an admin at your hospital is seeing an error on a report in their EHR, and they contact their support person at the EHR about it–that support person can look at the report (which can have your identifying info e.g. name, DOB, address and health info e.g. diagnoses, procedures, labs) to help fix the problem.

      Those of us who work at these vendors are required to take HIPAA privacy training, and we’re not supposed to access anything we don’t need to. But it’s not something you’ll typically be notified of or given a chance to opt out of. A lot of people probably have access to your health data that you’re not aware of.

      Reply ↓
      1. econobiker*

        And medical records being transcribed by offshore transcription services most likely in India and Philippines where there’s a base of English language employees. Unless you’re in the United States military or politics then, because of operational security, the transcription MUST stay in the United States. Yes HIPPA still applies but half a world away someone’s listening to your doctor’s voice notes about your operation.

        Reply ↓
  26. LinesInTheSand*

    I’m an illustrator and I have SO MANY.

    1.Disney animators are some of the best figure drawers on the planet. You look at their drawings and it’s like taking a peak into an atelier from 200 years ago and adding steroids. Classical forms married with dynamic movement and gesture. What you see in the movies is the style they choose for the movie, but it’s not the only way they know how to draw.

    2. Illustrators, in particular, plan their paintings. Pieces take anywhere from hours (newspaper editorial) to months (Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering). It’s a combination of needing to work with the art director on getting the image to tell the story it needs to tell and then finding all the reference material necessary to pull it off. Artists hire models and assemble massive collections of odd props so they can do the best paintings possible. I currently have a set of metal armor gloves on my office shelves. But what they don’t do — for client work — is just walk up to a blank canvas and start painting.

    3. The best figurative art (art that looks like stuff, as opposed to abstract) on the planet right now is commercial, in games and movies. It may not be your cup of tea, and commercial work typically doesn’t have the authenticity of emotion that fine art is “supposed” to have, but illustrators kept the figurative tradition alive through the twentieth century when everyone else was moving to conceptual work.

    Reply ↓
    1. Analyzer of data*

      This does not surprise me! Disney movies are often beautiful, and it’s been years since I’ve had a kid to read picture books to, but I’ll still get them from the library (e-books, so as to be that weirdo in the children’s section with no children) to appreciate the beauty. It’s art.

      And those adult kids of mine will tell me about particularly gorgeous video games that I ought to watch a walk through of, just to see the graphics. I took them to art museums, they’re now returning the favor.

      Reply ↓
      1. I Have RBF*

        There is a game, Mythwalker, that has absolutely beautiful art! The only reason I play it (it’s not my usual style) is for the art.

        Reply ↓
    2. One Duck In A Row*

      Probably not in the same pop culture or money making realm as games and movies, but having a kid and reading picture books to/with her was one of the things that prompted me to finally explore drawing and painting for myself. The fact that there are children’s books with high quality art is not new or a surprise, but as someone who hadn’t spent much time with those materials since I was a kid, and hadn’t seen all of the stuff that was published in the intervening decades, it was hugely inspirational to get to immerse myself in that stuff.

      Reply ↓
      1. LinesInTheSand*

        Children’s illustration, like most other illustration, has come a long way since I was a kid but we all still look at A Very Hungry Caterpillar and Where The Wild Things Are as artistic and cultural masterpieces.

        Reply ↓
        1. Paint N Drip*

          I will stand on ten toes that Eric Carle is one of the most formative artists of our lifetime – if you have the opportunity to visit the museum in central Massachusetts, I would absolutely recommend

          Reply ↓
    3. Strive to Excel*

      The same is true for a lot of instrumental music. There’s some composers out there who are able to just compose symphonies, but the real bread and butter is in games and movies. And some of the most stunning talent. John Williams, Christopher Tiin, Hans Zimmer, Borislav Slavov, just to name a few.

      Reply ↓
      1. LinesInTheSand*

        I learned recently that Stewart Copeland — you know, the drummer from the Police — scored Spyro The Dragon and counts his time in games as one of the most valuable learning experiences of his career.

        Reply ↓
    4. Yet another librarian*

      Thanks for sharing, this is really interesting stuff! I definitely appreciate and enjoy art in all those mediums (movies, D&D, video games), but I know virtually nothing about it as a career.

      Reply ↓
  27. Tradd*

    I’m a customs broker (clear imports through US Customs). The secret is that import duties (tariffs!) are paid by the importer of record here in the US. Not the overseas shipper, contrary to what’s been in the news lately with all the tariff whiplash.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nilsson Schmilsson*

      I commented on a post from the online news source, “The Hill”, and it was incredible how many people argued with me about this exact thing. The tariff is paid by the importer, goes into the treasury, and then the cost is passed on to the consumer. I’m not sure our current administration really understands that either.

      Reply ↓
    2. Dadjokesareforeveryone*

      Yep, I can confirm that myself. My company imports most of our goods from China, and we are frantically trying to work out how we can afford the additional duties without doubling prices to our customers.

      Reply ↓
      1. Tradd*

        Have you figured out the actual duties? People are so confused. Here you go:

        Standard duty + 2018 China duty if applicable (7.5% or 25%, depending on item) + 20% China duty (March 2025) + 125% reciprocal duty

        However, if your items are subject to steel/aluminum duty, the 125% reciprocal doesn’t apply. There is also a list of products excluded in Annex II from the executive order. It’s searchable by HS code. Any shipments in transit before the reciprocal duties went into effect are exempt from the reciprocal duties until the end of May. However, that is the last leg into the US port of discharge. Air freight shipments go by date of US arrival.

        Reply ↓
        1. President Porpoise*

          Oh, and you don’t get to shop around for an HS code that looks friendly for you. And you have to pay the tariff every single time that item comes into the country unless you’ve got a good process and can work out a way to apply a special duty program- which requires good records and partnerships with your suppliers/customers.

          A lot of people are getting a whirlwind education on customs regs right now.

          Reply ↓
          1. Tradd*

            Yep, some people are learning about that now. Already had to explain the consequences of deliberately using a different HS code that resulted in lower standard duty. And deliberately declaring a lower value, as well. CBP considers that FRAUD. Amazing how people who are regular importers think they can change something right when there are huge duty increases and CBP won’t notice. The computer systems KNOW your regular patterns!

            Reply ↓
      2. WestsideStory*

        I have heard that some businesses have stopped importing products, leaving them on the overseas docks till this clears up.

        I also recently saw that printed books are exempt from China tariffs and a few other Asian countries as well. Given that the better illustrated books for the U.S. are usually printed in Italy or Asia, I’m trying to keep an eye on that.

        Reply ↓
        1. Tradd*

          If something is on the Annex II list, that means it’s exempt from reciprocal duties regardless of the country it’s exported from.

          Reply ↓
    3. Economist*

      As an economist, the (little understood) key is that it doesn’t matter. Regardless of who pays in terms of sending the money to the tax man, the buyer pays for a part of the tax or tariff in the way of a higher price, and the seller in the way of a lower profit. The breakdown has more to do with demand and supply than with who is legally on the hook. And there’s an extra loss, but that’s a bit esoteric for our purposes :)

      Reply ↓
      2. PP*

        Economist, it matters a lot to small companies that are importer of record. They literally may not have the budget to pay that tariff. CNN interviewed such a small company and they have manufactured goods ready with their China manufacturer, but don’t have funds to be able to pay the tariff. The cost of trying to supply their item to US buyers is unworkable.

        Reply ↓
        1. Tradd*

          I have a number of customers who import from China that have temporarily stopped ALL shipments. Nothing will be coming in after the stuff that is currently on the water.

          Reply ↓
  28. t-vex*

    If you love animals but hate people, animal sheltering is not the field for you. We rely on humans to adopt the pets, your misandry actively gets in the way.

    Reply ↓
        1. WeirdChemist*

          My dad used to work with a cat rescue, and they were very excited to have him there for this exact reason!

          Most of the cats were scared of men because they had been previously mistreated by one, and the majority of volunteers they’d be around all day were women. Which then made it very hard for the cats to get adopted by couples/families/anyone who wasn’t a single woman living alone. My dad being there helped the cats get used to being around taller bodies and deeper voices (while obviously he was treating them well at the same time), which made them more adoptable!

          So if you’re a man who likes animals, consider volunteering at shelters, rescues, etc!

          (But also after working there for a few years, my dad did struggle not to hate humanity sometimes)

          Reply ↓
          1. Strive to Excel*

            My uncle worked with fostering dogs for a similar reason. He’s ex-military and very very chill, so he doesn’t panic in stressful situations and he’s patient as heck. A lot of the dogs he worked with were coming in from very abusive situations. His patience, zen, and the bacon bits he kept for them did a huge amount of work in getting them adapted for life with families.

            Reply ↓
      2. Opaline*

        I think the bigger question around self-driving vehicles is going to end up being legal liability. If you’re hit by a rogue truck and seriously injured, you sue the trucker or, by extension, the truck company employing them. But if you’re hit by a self-driving vehicle, who’s responsible? The trucking company that owns it? The company that made the truck? The IT consultants the truck manufacturer hired to program the automatic navigation software?

        Reply ↓
    2. JTP*

      PREACH. I stopped volunteering because of all the “I would sleep in my car rather than surrender my pet! How dare you not spend $15K on medical evaluations and training to figure out your animal’s behavior problem!” and other judgy comments.

      Reply ↓
    4. Benihana scene stealer*

      I’m not sure what you mean exactly but there aren’t many fields you’ll do well in if you hate people

      Reply ↓
      2. Bitte Meddler*

        I think it’s a different kind of hate than just hating humans in general. I love animals. I cannot watch nature shows because of the violence and the… eating. I want all animals to live and be well, even though that is completely impossible.

        Because of my love of animals and wanting all of them to be well and cared for, I thought about becoming a veterinarian. But as I got older and spent time in my local vet’s office with my pets and got to see how other people cared for their pets (or not), and got to hear the staff talking about their human clients, I realized that I would make a terrible vet because I’d get way too angry at pet owners who DNGAF about their animals.

        I remember being in the waiting room one day and hearing one of the front desk people telling someone on the phone the price for spaying their puppy, and then suddenly was giving the price for euthanizing the same puppy because spaying was “too expensive”. The front desk worker managed to talk the owner into surrendering the puppy.

        I wouldn’t be able to deal with that the same way I deal with the way insenstive, unthinking, and uncaring actions happen in the white collar professional world.

        Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          My “I want to be a vet when I grow up!” phase lasted about 3 weeks, at which point I found out vets were also responsible for euthanizing animals and noped right out.

          (I will be forever grateful that my cat’s long-term vet helped him pass peacefully when he was dying from cancer. I also know I don’t have that emotional fortitude.)

          Reply ↓
        2. ursula*

          God I am so grateful for vets and veterinary staff. I know it’s a hard job and there’s high turnover.

          Reply ↓
  29. Bunny Watson*

    I am a librarian. I almost never touch books. I even manage a collection, but I mostly play with excel and send emails when I’m not in a never ending stream of meetings.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rex Libris*

      Yep. I’m a librarian, and my days are mostly staff management, meetings, vendors, Excel, Access, ILS maintenance, catalog maintenance, etc.

      Of course many people are surprised that we A) have master’s degrees. It’s actually called a Master of Library Science at many schools. and B) Aren’t all volunteers who just spend our days checking out books to patrons out at the front desk, when we aren’t reading.

      The staff you see on a daily basis at a public library is probably less than half of the total staff. The rest are doing everything from producing marketing materials to maintaining the websites, to cataloging, purchasing, processing new items, etc.

      Reply ↓
    2. Madame Desmortes*

      Also a librarian.

      I know things about computers and data. In fact, The Digital (in various guises) has been the entirety of my career.

      Reply ↓
      1. Seal*

        One of most satisfying conversations I had with a faculty member was about the pros and cons of digital versus tangible library collections. I could practically hear the gears in his head grinding because I could speak with authority about the challenges of digital preservation. He had always been a condescending towards me and other librarians, but noticeably more respectful after that.

        Reply ↓
    3. Burnt Out Librarian*

      Saaaaaame. I used to work with books all the time as a children’s librarian, but in higher ed we’re all about e-books. Now and then I get to order physical books, but in very small amounts.

      Reply ↓
    4. Dust Bunny*

      I work for an academic library and we are functionally a giant computer lab, except for the literal rare book department. The information in medicine turns over so quickly now that print sources don’t stay current that long.

      Reply ↓
    5. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

      I once worked in a library without a single book (except the one I brought in to read at lunch). This was in the early days of the internet so there was a lot of paper (technical drawings, specifications, etc.) but no books.

      Reply ↓
    6. Throwaway Account*

      Also librarian, academic. Everything is digital. In my current job, I do nothing with print books, ever. In my personal life, I’ve been a digital-only reader for about 10 years.

      When I say I’m a librarian, people think I’m as excited about print books as they are. But I’m not. I don’t care about the packaging, about the medium for the information, I care only about the information. Digital items mean I don’t have to physically go to the library and it means I carry all my books I’m reading in the palm of my hand.

      Yes, I know there are issues with digital media, but there are with print too.

      Reply ↓
    7. an academic librarian*

      Came here to say this! People are shocked when they found out that my job is hybrid – what could a librarian possibly do from home? The reality is that I only really need to be in-person for some meetings and classroom teaching. And I don’t do collections work at all!

      Also the people that you interact with at the desk to check out your books are likely not librarians – they are often paraprofessionals (i.e., they don’t have the master’s degree). I think the distinction is silly, but a lot of librarians really emphasize it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Seal*

        Sad but true. I was a paraprofessional in a large academic library long before I became a librarian. The main reason I didn’t go to library school until I was in my late 30s was how nasty, condescending, and entitled the librarians were towards the rest of the staff. They insisted they were the “professionals” when they were anything but. Ironically enough, despite all of their fancy degrees most of them had no idea what the paraprofessionals did or why it was important to the library as a whole.

        What changed my mind was the fact that there were far more opportunities for even mediocre librarians than there were for the best paraprofessionals, and the only way to move up was to get that piece of paper. Having an MLIS definitely opened doors for me, but not where I worked as a paraprofessional. A few librarians were supportive and encouraging, but most of the rolled their eyes at me and laughed off my aspirations. When I graduated, I got the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head and sent on my way; the library’s unspoken policy was that paraprofessionals could never be hired as librarians. So I took my years of experience and institutional knowledge elsewhere and thrived, moving into leadership roles almost immediately. Very satisfying.

        Things I learned along the way:
        – having an MLIS doesn’t make you inherently superior; it shows you were able to get a masters degree
        – an MLIS may get your foot in the door, but it doesn’t automatically make you a good librarian
        – I learned more about librarianship and librarians by working in a library than I did in library school (and I LOVED library school once I got there).

        Most importantly: librarians alone don’t make libraries work; it takes a village. Another thing they don’t teach you in library school.

        Reply ↓
      1. Librarian of Things*

        I am a library director. My cataloger once interrupted a conversation with me to say to my predecessor, “You USED to be a librarian. I need help.”

        Yeah. I used to be a librarian. Now that I’m the director, I create spreadsheets and attend meetings. Sometimes, just for fun, I grab a weeding list and go lose myself in the stacks for a while.

        Reply ↓
    9. Elinor Dashwood*

      I was a children’s librarian. We were not paid to read on the clock. I spent most of my time doing presentations, developing programs, making marketing materials, creating craft kits, working on spreadsheets, or figuring out how to do all of the above. By the time I left, most of my time was split between desk shifts and program development.

      Reply ↓
    10. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

      I once had a patron tell me that she could do my job because “I like to read and I know the alphabet, and there can’t be that much more to it”. She was one of those people who had us all deciding that we needed to take a break immediately when we saw her walk in the door.

      Reply ↓
    11. Regina Philange*

      Public librarian here. I haven’t read all the books in the library. In fact, I don’t read much at all.

      I read book reviews, I talk to people to find out what books are trending, I order books. But I don’t often read them. I prefer movies, TV, and podcasts.

      People are SHOCKED when they hear this and they act like I’m a traitor to my entire profession.

      Reply ↓
    12. linger*

      One useful reference on What Librarians Actually Do vs. What the Public Thinks They Do is:
      William Ottens (2020) Librarian Tales.
      It’s based on his blog “Librarian Problems”.
      Though perhaps disappointingly (but understandably, since it’s coming from an identifiable person representing an identifiable institution), it’s more upbeat and less snarky than that topic really deserves — with the notable exception of quotes from (anonymous) comments left on the site by other librarians.

      Reply ↓
  30. Chelle*

    I work in healthcare billing. Those huge prices you see on bills? Nobody actually pays those, ever. They get negotiated down by insurance companies or adjusted off before being billed to patients.

    Reply ↓
    1. 653-CXK*

      28+ years in the industry and can confirm this is true.

      A physician/hospital can bill what they wish or think they get paid, but 95% of payments are either on fee schedules or contracts. The rare time they will get paid as billed is if it’s contracted or the charge is small enough not to be charged. E.g. A physician bills $100 for an office visit, but will likely get paid $35.

      Reply ↓
    2. Art3mis*

      Yep. I worked in health insurance in claims and handled “high dollar” claims which was anything billed at $50K or more. And going up incrementally those bills are gone over with a fine-tooth comb and are looked at by several people. The more it is, the more people that are involved. If it’s a really large bill the Chief Medical Officer gets involved and has to sign off on it before it gets paid.

      Reply ↓
    3. Richard Hershberger*

      The odd thing is that these fake numbers actually help in personal injury cases. Plaintiff is in a car accident, ending up in the hospital for a few days. This results in an eye-wateringly high bills. Plaintiff’s health insurance pays a fraction of this, and the hospital writes off the rest. The health insurance carrier has a lien against any third party recovery, but it is based on what they paid, not what was billed. In the meantime, should this ever make its way to a jury, they will be presented with the eye-wateringly high numbers, not what was actually paid. The result is that everyone involved pretends that the high numbers are real, even as everyone involved knows better.

      Reply ↓
    4. Esprit de l'escalier*

      Then why do they bill those huge amounts? I’ve always thought that in fact it’s the poor souls with no or inadequate health insurance who will be hounded for the next 20 years to either pay in full or pay some negotiated but still unaffordable bill. No?

      Reply ↓
      1. Carls*

        It’s often because insurance providers are going to apply a discount no matter what you charge. Say you really only need to be paid $100 for a service, so that’s what you bill. But the insurance company will take that and apply a complicated formula to reduce it by 75%, so your payment is only $25. In order to get the $100 you need to cover costs, you actually need to bill $400. Apply the same logic to high-cost procedures like surgery or inpatient hospital stays and that’s how you end up with 6 figure bills! Different insurance companies have different formulas, so some may agree to pay 25% of you billed amount, while others might negotiate to pay 15%, etc. A provider has to come up with a rate that will satisfy their costs regardless of the individual insurance payer (and the 75% ‘discount’ is just for ease of math – in reality insurance contract negotiation is a big industry all on it’s own!)

        Reply ↓
      2. MigraineMonth*

        My understanding is that no one is actually expected to pay the bill (including the poor souls with inadequate health insurance), but the huge numbers end up making both the insurance company and the hospital look good.

        Imagine you’ve gotten one of those “NOT A BILL” letters from insurance saying the hospital is charging $400 for your ER visit, and you have to pay $200 as a deductible. Pretty crappy insurance, right? Now imagine if the hospital is charging $2,000 for the ER visit, and you only have to pay $200 as a deductible. Thank god for your insurance, right? It saved you $1800!

        Or maybe you don’t have health insurance and apply for the hospital’s charity program. Sure, the hospital could write off $400 as charity, or they could write of $2,000, which goes towards lowering their property taxes.

        Unfortunately, a lot of the healthcare system in the US is set up like this: incentives for higher prices, secret negotiations, anticompetitive practices, and generally just massive amounts of inefficiency built in. No fixes it, though, because that “inefficiency” is entire market sectors and people’s jobs.

        Reply ↓
        1. Metothree*

          Wow. My Son was in an accident not too long out of high school and had no insurance. He had an ambulance ride and an emergency room (broken arm) visit and paid all of what they billed him. Kind of sad to think that he could have negotiated and no one told him? (I didn’t tell him because I never thought this was a thing. Again wow. I just keep hearing how the US is so bad about health care costs and it bankrupting people but we can just not pay?

          Reply ↓
          1. MigraineMonth*

            It’s more complicated than my summary and depends on a lot of factors, but many hospitals have charitable programs (often need-based) that you can apply to. Even if you don’t qualify or if the remaining amount is too much, the billing department is usually willing to work with uninsured patients to set up a payment plan or negotiate a lower bill (there are multiple nonprofits that can help you with those negotiations). Remember that the hospital’s goal is to get money, and it will generally settle for *some* money if the other option is the patient going bankrupt and getting none. (That may or may not have helped in your son’s case, since the ambulance company is often completely separate and has its own billing procedures.) However, if you just don’t pay, the hospital will probably send your account to collections and you’ll take the hit to your credit rating and be hounded by collectors.

            Note that these tips help patients avoid the additional markup on their care *above* what insurance pays, but that doesn’t mean that that the care itself is affordable. Most Americans can’t afford what insurance pays for a major surgery or serious chronic illness; many who have insurance can’t afford the copays/deductibles/coinsurance/medication costs. That’s where the majority of the bankruptcies are coming from.

            Reply ↓
    5. AOR*

      This cracks me up extra because I work for a university that also operates the major medical system in my area. The university operates a program of self insurance for health insurance, and it is administered by our local BCBS affiliate. So any time I go to a university medical system (UMS) doctor, the process goes something like this:

      – UMS billing tells BCBS what the sticker price bill is
      – BCBS tells UMS what the University’s negotiated rate is
      – University pays itself (?) the lower paid amount, subject to my deductible, of course

      Feels wild that it’s all a shell game.

      Reply ↓
    6. LAM*

      Ignoring how many sides want to keep the status quo of providers charging high amount and insurance balking and only paying a portion, why can’t we do price controls. Long story, but in college I ended up spending a lot of time in records revolving around rationing in WWII. I often grumble when I get a bill because my providers charges more than what my insurance states is the agreed upon amount. And I wonder why can’t itemized charges be out in the open. If a provider wants to charge more, they have to successfully make the case. Since the amount would be out there, people could see who is yanking them around and report it.

      Reply ↓
    7. Paint N Drip*

      If I get one of those bills, how do I contact you and respectfully say ‘seriously?’
      I know you and your coworkers aren’t responsible, and I have more than NO money so I am not looking for you to give me charity, but how do I get the “real” price (or just a reasonable one) that I will happily pay?

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        There are a number of nonprofits that help uninsured patients negotiate with hospitals and doctor’s offices. I’d start there. You don’t have the negotiating clout of an entire insurance company, but if you can pay cash then the billing office is probably happy to work with you.

        The tricky thing is that both the amount that insurance pays and *the amount that appears on your bill* were considered “trade secrets” until pretty recently. (“How much will this surgery cost?” “I can’t tell you.”) There was some progress towards transparency in the last administration, but that may be getting rolled back.

        Good luck! You might also consider “catastrophic insurance”, which is pretty cheap, just in case of, well, catastrophe.

        Reply ↓
    8. Rincewind*

      I dunno…
      I have in my possession a paid invoice from a hospital, paid by my insurance company. It shows a total of nearly $220,000 in charges for my daughter’s OUTPATIENT IMPLANT procedure. (as in, they implanted a grain of rice under the skin of her arm)
      I know for a fact this procedure runs around $6k for cash payees.

      Reply ↓
  31. JustCuz*

    That management of manufacturing in this USA is almost as bad as developing countries still. Most manufacturers are either experience negative/stagnant growth, are closing, or are being bought out by large European companies because the US cannot compete on quality or cost in the global market. What people think is due to “people not wanting to work” is actually awful conditions and really really banana crackers decision making. Its also no coincidence that this sector experiences the most discrimination of anyone not white or male. We cannot bring manufacturing back to the US right now because we do not have the competency and knowledge to do it.

    Reply ↓
    1. Name (Required)*

      I’ve been working in manufacturing in the US for about 15 years and I don’t agree with this. Maybe I’ve been lucky or maybe it’s different in other areas of the country. I’m in NJ and there is a lot of successful manufacturing here.

      Reply ↓
      1. JustCuz*

        Do you work in manufacturing that also happens to be regulated by some federal laws? Have the companies you have been working for foreign owned or has foreign ownership? I would say both of those are likely. But even with that said, I am sure there are one or two companies that are fine. But my career has me working with multiple manufacturers across multiple industries, and this is the common denominator of it all. I also work with major companies outside of the US, and this is also the feeling world wide. For clarification, I specialist in business management and improving companies performance. This is a stark reality, ok. We are not competitive in this country.

        Reply ↓
        1. Name (Required)*

          I guess I’ve been lucky. I thought all manufacturing companies were regulated by OSHA and EPA and in NJ, we are also regulated by NJDEP.

          Reply ↓
          1. econobiker*

            You got absolutely not a clue how good it is in New Jersey for manufacturing versus other states.

            Source: former NJ native who worked in NJ and left for the southeast United States. I’ve even worked in Mississippi factory so I know buddy, I know.

            Reply ↓
    2. Art of the Spiel*

      THANK YOU. The whole reason a generation was raised to value college was because their parents knew what a shitshow it was to work in a factory. Yes it paid the bills but the management was (is) absolutely horrendous and those parents wanted something a lot better for their kids.

      Factory management is usually by promotion from within – former floor workers who kissed enough boots. They are not given training, so they follow their knee-jerk instincts. Every supervisor I ever had was petty, vindictive, eager to cultivate favorites and punish everyone else. This management style costs the companies serious money, but nobody ever fixes it. Half the impetus for unions was because of active mistreatment. My husband was a factory worker until he became injured on the job and permanently on disability — and one big reason he won a settlement was because his supervisor 1) refused to rectify safety issues, 2) actively forbid the warehouse to deliver materials in a safe manner, and 3) threatened the union steward to not inform my husband that there were open postings for jobs he could do, while he was on medical leave.

      Reply ↓
      1. JustCuz*

        The one company I worked for was Finnish. Their Supplier Quality team had an entire risk spread sheet of regions and suppliers most at risk for various issues. The United States rated among countries like India and China on Human Rights issues in work places. This is because we allow child labor (farms and farm-based factories yes we do omg I know), working conditions (go into a foundry one time in your life in the USA), labor laws & fair treatment(we all know this), racism in the workforce, abuse of women in the workforce, general human rights violations, safety culture, and on and on and on. And to give perspective, and because I already used a foundry as an example here, In India some of our suppliers were pouring molten metal in sandals or bare feet. That’s who they rated us with because we literally are not much better. The stories I could tell you about manufacturing in this country would blow people’s minds.

        Reply ↓
    3. cornelia street*

      I think this is industry-dependent! I’ve worked in US tech manufacturing for 7 years and have only had positive experiences and seen a lot of domestic growth.

      Reply ↓
  32. Saint Elmo*

    How small government agencies actually can be!! My core team that deals with the entirety of our province is only made up of five people, including myself.

    Reply ↓
    1. Left Turn at Albuquerque*

      I can relate! I work for a state regulatory agency. We have our ED, 2 full-time staff, and another person who works 2 days a week. We’re responsible for over 8,000 current and former licensees and over 1,000 related businesses.

      Reply ↓
    3. Old Lady with a Scalpel*

      Yeah, I work as a medical examiner, and we cover one fourth of a populous state with 22 full-time people. We cost the taxpayer $1.96 a year.

      Reply ↓
  33. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

    Medical coding and billing.
    **When your insurance company tells you we coded it wrong, what they actually mean is “we don’t want to pay it or deal with you.”
    **Your doctor and his staff probably have no idea what you’re going to be charged for anything, especially if it’s a service associated with a hospital/system rather than a small individual practice.
    **We don’t like the US health care system either.

    Reply ↓
    1. Art3mis*

      I’ve worked in health insurance, and often, it is coded wrong. I used to get depo-provera shots which should have been covered by my insurance as preventative, but the doctor’s office kept coding it wrong. Which I only knew, because I worked for the insurance company and I knew how it was supposed to be coded. I ended up going to a different provider for those shots who knew how to code it properly and never had a problem with billing.

      Reply ↓
      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        There are a couple of points in your statement that, if you worked for the insurance company, basically confirm my statement. “Coded the way the insurance company wants it coded” and “coded correctly so as to be legally compliant with the appropriate use of the code set” are frequently not compatible. As a certified coder, my requirement is to code to legal compliance, not to what the insurance company has decided they want this week and legal compliance be damned.

        Reply ↓
        1. Nerf*

          Well, I once had to fight my insurance for over a year because the office coded my cold as workers comp, which, obviously, it wasn’t.

          Reply ↓
    2. So Tired Of God's Specialest Princesses*

      Aaaaaaccurate. Also, if your hospital gets government funding, ask if they have charity care or community care initiatives. There are usually sliding scales that will adjust off at least some of the bill depending on your income and circumstances.

      People used to expect me to be anti-ACA and anti-singlepayer because I “worked in hospitals.” My sibling in this miserable existence, at least with singlepayer I could be pretty sure my doctors would get paid *something.* That’s a reckless gamble when you pass the bill to the patient.

      Reply ↓
      1. Nightengale*

        I am pro ACA and pro single payor because I work in hospitals.

        I literally spent an hour I didn’t have last week trying to convince insurance A to send me a medication denial letter on letterhead so that insurance B would agree to pay for it. The initial faxed denial wasn’t good enough. Single payor would not be perfect, but would solve an awful lot.

        Reply ↓
        1. I Have RBF*

          Seriously. Just the reduction of the multiple systems, requirements and payees to one would eliminate so much waste and duplication of effort.

          Reply ↓
  34. Nononononsense*

    I had to urgently fix a computer in an OR. Patient was on the table and the radio was blasting the Backstreet Boys. Surgeon and nurses were all singing along.

    Reply ↓
    1. No Tribble At All*

      At the hospital I delivered at, they told us that if you had an elective (scheduled) c-section, you could pick the music. Husband and I entertained ourselves by discussing the best and worst songs to play. I’m not surprised the surgeons picked Backstreet Boys lol.

      Reply ↓
      2. Zombeyonce*

        Both my kids were born via C-section to 90s pop (I got to pick the playlist for both the unscheduled and scheduled operations). The OR staff was dancing and singing along.

        Reply ↓
    2. snowdog*

      As a patient- sometimes if you ask nicely the surgeon will let you pick the music too! I definitely requested Britney Spears… TBD on if they kept it on after I was asleep.

      Reply ↓
    3. Oodles of Revenge*

      My mom was a surgical nurse, and she worked with one doctor who liked to listen to Cheech and Chong comedy albums during surgery.

      Reply ↓
    4. Bitte Meddler*

      I woke up in the middle of having my gallbladder removed and said two things, “Nice tunes!” followed by, “I’m not supposed to be awake right now, am I?”

      They had Led Zeppelin cranked up.

      Also, OR’s are *freezing* cold.

      Reply ↓
      1. goddessoftransitory*

        so very, very cold. I had a colonoscopy last year (just fine) and even the prep area was FREEZING.

        Reply ↓
        1. Dr Sarah*

          Which actually makes sense; the surgeons are under massive lights and having to wear gowns over their clothes, so they’d end up sweltering if the room wasn’t freezing. Hard luck on everyone else, but I do see why it’s necessary.

          Reply ↓
    6. Nightengale*

      The first time I ever saw an iPOD was in an operating room when I was a medical student, around 2005. I was familiar with music coming out of record players, tape players, CD players and radios. It was also my first time in an operating room. I was possibly more mesmerized by the music coming out of this tiny little machine than I was by any of the surgery equipment and happenings.

      Reply ↓
  35. The Prettiest Curse*

    I’m an events planner/coordinator.
    * You would be surprised at the number of speakers (including people in senior roles) who are either really nervous about speaking or think that their talk didn’t go well when the audience thought it was fine.

    * Sold-out events often have a waiting list, so if you really want to go, request a place and we’ll try to fit you in.

    * If there is a registration deadline and you just missed it, ask if you can still register. We can often add you in even if the registration form is no longer public.

    * Be careful when typing your email if you want to get a registration confirmation. If it’s an obvious typo or you’ve been to our events before, I can fix it and re-send the email. If it’s not obvious and I have no idea who you are, it’s going to be a lot more difficult. Likewise, please double-check that your name is typed correctly, especially if it’s going to be on a name badge!

    Reply ↓
    1. I am a translator*

      You would be surprised at the number of speakers (including people in senior roles) who are either really nervous about speaking

      That part surprises me! Speaking makes them nervous, but they still go into jobs that have them speaking at events!

      Reply ↓
      1. Beth*

        I think speaking in front of a crowd makes almost everyone nervous! Some people find it really paralyzing, but a lot of people can work through it (who among us doesn’t have a stressful task or two as part of our jobs?) or even find the adrenaline rush energizing. I’m sure it gets less nerve-wracking over time for people like comedians who do it all the time, but for the rest of us, I think “fake it ’til you make it” is a normal part of the experience!

        Reply ↓
      2. Glitsy Gus*

        I’ve worked with really experienced, famous actors who still get stage fright. It’s the adrenaline rush and the unknown that is built in to the experience. While it’s a bit uncomfortable, it’s not a big enough barrier to not push through and do the fun part anyway. Also, it can serve a purpose, it keeps you on your toes.

        Reply ↓
      3. The Prettiest Curse*

        I think a lot of speakers just get used to it, regardless of nerves. I was talking about this to one of our senior management who often does introductions at our conferences and she told me that she’ll never like public speaking, but she’s done it enough that she’s used to it now. I know she gets nervous, but it’s never obvious, and I think that comes with experience.
        If you enjoy most of your work field, but don’t love public speaking, I suppose you’d just weigh up how frequently you have to do it. Even professional performers get nervous or have stage fright!

        Reply ↓
      4. goddessoftransitory*

        Sarah Bernhardt, one of the most famous stage actresses of the 20th century, had such terrible stage fright she often had to be physically pushed onstage. Once out there she managed, but that was happening when she’d been performing for 20 years.

        Reply ↓
        1. allathian*

          Sorry to nitpick, but the peak of her career was in the 19th century ( born in 1844, died in 1923), although she continued to act until she died, including appearances in early movies, her last movie was released in 1924 after her death. She was also famous for playing male characters, including a run as the title character in Hamlet.

          Lots of famous performers suffer from pretty debilitating stage fright, but for them the high they get during and after a successful performance more than makes up for it.

          Reply ↓
    2. Jennifer Strange*

      * Sold-out events often have a waiting list, so if you really want to go, request a place and we’ll try to fit you in.

      Adding to this (from a fundraising events background) PLEASE request a place on the waitlist! When I was doing opening nights for a theatre we had so many last minute cancellations and no-shows, and you don’t want gaps on opening nights (especially in our tiny black box theatre). People who agree to be waitlisted are my heroes.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        I very much appreciate people who cancel! I really don’t mind if people can’t attend, because things come up, but please let us know about it if you can. Especially if it’s a gala or an invitation-only event like a dinner, because we have to pay for your food whether or not you actually show up.

        Reply ↓
    3. Targ*

      I work tangentially to events coordination:

      1. Yes, it is that expensive and that logistically difficult to make that change, I’m not telling you “no” for the sport of it *eyeroll*

      Reply ↓
    4. Another event planner*

      I’m also an event planner with a fundraising background. Adding in, preparing nametags are so much harder than most people think. We are frequently making last-minute changes to table seating arrangements, adding in new registrants, and all kinds of behind-the-scenes work. So please be kind if your nametag doesn’t look exactly the way you wanted it to, we’ll fix it for you, but there’s no need to be upset about it!

      Reply ↓
      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Agreed with all of the above. And if you’re at any type of big event, the event organisers and staff have likely been working long hours for weeks or months, are probably significantly under-paid for all that work and rarely get thanked. I know the event environment can be stressful for people and if something is wrong, any decent event coordinator will want to fix it ASAP. But please try to be polite to us – especially as we may be extremely busy trouble-shooting a lot of different issues.

        Reply ↓
      2. MsM*

        Yep. In particular, do not count on me being able to make changes or corrections less than 24 hours before the event. I’ll try my best, but there are like 50 other things on the to-do list before I can sit down at a computer with access to a printer that has the badge paper loaded.

        Reply ↓
        1. The Prettiest Curse*

          I hate name badges in general, but I particularly hate last-minute changes to name badges! If it’s 24 hours or less before the event and someone needs a new name badge, they’re probably going to be writing their own badge with a Sharpie because I just don’t have the budget for fancy on-site badge printers.

          Reply ↓
          1. I Have RBF*

            I’ve done registration for SF&F conventions. It’s better if you preregister, but make sure that you don’t typo your name. We preprint most badges.

            But I have set up on-site registration computers, software and badge label printing. Those Dymo LabelWriters? Are a godsend if you can set up your software to print to them. If your software can’t print to them, get new software that can.

            Reply ↓
      3. oranges*

        I had to make nametags for the first time a few months ago… My god I have never appreciated the work that goes into it. I really appreciate every nametag I get now!

        Reply ↓
        1. The Prettiest Curse*

          People who have never made name badges just don’t appreciate what an absolute pain they can be!

          Reply ↓
        2. I Have RBF*

          There was one event, pre-Covid, that the organizer would literally call me up two days before it started and say “I have a list of the people registered. Can you print nametags? Also, can you work the registration desk?” Most people could not do this. Me, I would say “Sure, if it’s just label nametags. Printed and laminated badges take over a week.”

          How could I do this? Mail merge, having templates already set up, badge labels in stock, and years of experience.

          Reply ↓
    5. HE Admin*

      Re: Name tags

      I work in higher ed and do student name tags for events. If students don’t fill out the “name as you want it to appear on your name tag” field, they get the name that is on the roster for their class put on the name tag–so, their name as they entered it into the university system, typically when first filling out an application for an academic program. I once had a student who was OUTRAGED his name was misspelled on his name tag…but that was how HE had input it into the system, it pulled automatically. I told him this, and that he should make sure to correct it with the records department soon, or else it would end up misspelled on his diploma. He refused to believe me that HE was the one who had misspelled his own name, didn’t correct it, and then got mad at another group of people when, surprise surprise, his name was wrong on his diploma.

      Reply ↓
    6. Somehow I Manage*

      Also, the cost that facilities charge for food and beverage is WAY more than you’d think, so those who are planning events that include food do have to charge as much as they do.

      Reply ↓
      1. MsM*

        Especially the coffee. I know you think you want us to have it out for more than just the morning breaks, but you don’t want to know how much that would hike the registration fees.

        Reply ↓
        1. JustaTech*

          Thank you for telling us this! I always assumed it was because the meeting organizers wanted people inside watching the presentations instead of hanging out in the hall drinking coffee.
          I’m glad I know better now.

          (Now if only we could get conference venues where your coffee doesn’t go from hot to stone cold in the time it takes to walk into the meeting room…)

          Reply ↓
      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yup, the example of this phenomenon that sticks in my mind the most is an afternoon break during a conference I organised for a nonprofit. Since people tended not to go for sodas so much in the afternoon breaks, those were charged on consumption (per can). So I screamed internally when I saw one attendee pick up a can of Coke, take 2 sips and put it down and walk away, never to return. Those 2 sips out of a regular-size can of Coke cost our nonprofit $4. This was a few years ago, so it would probably be around $6-$7 now. I’m sure that attendee would have thought twice if she’d known how much it cost us!

        Reply ↓
      3. The Prettiest Curse*

        AV services can also be extremely expensive. And in a lot of venues, you’re stuck using their in-house catering and AV services whether you like it or not. I would really like to be able to live-stream and record all our events for reasons of accessibility, but so many venues over-promise on AV and their state-of-the-art hybrid meeting solution turns out to be two Meeting Owls and one is broken. (Meeting Owls are fine for meetings, but they are NOT suitable for live-streaming talks.) Or the only venue staff person who knows how to actually work the state-of-the-art AV system is off sick.

        So if I’m not familiar with the venue or not paying a reliable external AV company, I won’t promise live streaming because I really don’t want to disappoint people. I do always say that we will do our best to record and upload talks to YouTube and most people seem to be okay with that.

        Reply ↓
    7. Meaningful hats*

      I also work in events. My “secret” is that the events budget at most any given company could fund so many salaries. I’ve signed for bar tabs that were 3x my annual salary. Which made me side-eye a little when that company told me they couldn’t afford to give me a 3% COLA.

      Reply ↓
  36. Lauren*

    I work in an elementary school office as a secretary.

    The amount of parents that come in smelling of marijuana is staggering. I’ve gotten contact highs so many times. I don’t get it. I wish we could say something, but we can’t.

    Reply ↓
    1. nnn*

      Sorry but it’s not possible to get a contact high from someone else’s clothes. You’d need to be in a poorly ventilated space with a lot of smoke for a while before it could happen.

      Reply ↓
      2. Lauren*

        Well, I don’t know what to tell you, but I know what I’ve experienced. It’s not a major high and it doesn’t last long, but it’s there.

        In any case, it’s gross and I worry about the kids going home with such parents.

        I’m not against marijuana use, but I absolutely judge people who are come to a school in the middle of the day to pick up a kid wreaking of the smell of it and obviously high. I feel the same about alcohol, but I’ve never had a drunk parent come to pick up a kid.

        Reply ↓
        1. Ash*

          *That you know of. Just because someone doesn’t reek of booze doesn’t mean they’re under the influence. And those parents who use canna may not be ‘high’. Or used it earlier in the day & it’s lingering on clothes. OR didn’t use it at all but grabbed a jacket on the way out the door w/out realizing it smells.

          Reply ↓
          1. CowWhisperer*

            Ash, most adults can figure out the difference between someone who is wearing a second-hand smoky jacket and someone who is actively high on pot. Ditto for someone who is still burning off last night’s drinks versus someone who is several sheets to the wind. Marijuana, tobacco, alcohol and meth burning byproducts have different oxidation smells when freshly burnt compared to a few hours later.

            I say “most” because people who inhale drugs in the form of burning plant or chemicals wreck their olfactory receptors and lose a lot ability to pick up relatively faint scent. That leads to various smokers who are furious that non-smokers think they smell like smoke because the smoker genuinely can’t smell the scent anymore.

            Reply ↓
          2. 48 hours*

            That’s all cool and all, but it doesn’t change the fact that now I have a full on migraine at work and it’s impacting my ability to do my job, my PTO, etc.

            Just like no one NEEDS to drink booze or smoke tobacco, they don’t NEED to use pot. And if it’s medicinal, they can use the type that doesn’t smell like a literal dead skunk. They also don’t have to bathe in it either way.

            Reply ↓
            1. I Have RBF*

              Some people actually do “need” it instead of other drugs with worse side effects. But edibles are much more convenient and don’t stink.

              Reply ↓
          3. amoeba*

            Also, smoking CBD products has exactly the same smell but doesn’t make you high. (Which is pretty funny because THC is illegal here in Switzerland, but CBD isn’t – basically means you can walk the street with a joint and nobody will bat an eye – no way to tell whether it actually contains THC or not from the smell!)
            To be fair, they also really don’t care a lot about THC either, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be legalised soon enough.

            Reply ↓
      3. Ann O'Nemity*

        Probably psychological. Or holding their breath and feeling momentarily “high” from oxygen deprivation.

        Reply ↓
      4. Invisible fish*

        Oh, it may not be a contact “high,” exactly, but it is definitely SOMETHING. I work at a school, too, and some folks will come up REEKING of weed, and you’re stuck in a little office with them, and it affects you somehow. I can’t explain it exactly, but somehow, someway, it will mess with you for a bit.

        Reply ↓
      5. AnSteve*

        From what research suggests you have to be in a poorly ventilated room with a bunch of people smoking to get enough to get a high. You are definitely not getting a contact high no matter how much they stink.

        Reply ↓
    2. PostalMixup*

      My daughter’s dance studio recently had to send out a reminder that parents are not allowed to smoke marijuana at the studio. Apparently these parents are getting high during their kids’ after-school activities and then driving them home.

      Reply ↓
    3. Junior Assistant Peon*

      I’m amazed how blatantly open pot smoking has become. In the days of “just say no,” any middle-class suburban parents smoking pot would have gotten their kids taken away if anyone found out they were “drug users.”

      Reply ↓
      1. L*

        I mean, it’s entirely legal in Canada now. Shouldn’t be doing it if you need to drive somewhere, but that goes for alcohol as well.

        Reply ↓
  37. Definitely not Keri Russell*

    International diplomacy.

    The best background for this isn’t political science or international relations, you’d be way ahead of the game if you had a first career as a wedding planner (like, BY FAR).

    So much event planning, so much keeping people away from each other, so many invitations, so many spats over tablecloths…

    Reply ↓
    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      Even though I plan events, I would never want to plan events with diplomats and international leaders. Way too much potential for things to go horribly wrong! I applaud you, because you must have A+ diplomatic skills AND nerves of steel!

      Reply ↓
      1. Definitely not Keri Russell*

        And a pseudo “go bag” full of clear nail polish for nylons, emergency TUMS, a lint roller, deodorant, one of those hotel sewing kits, Halls lozenges, band-aids, extra pens, scotch tape and safety pins…

        Reply ↓
        2. The Prettiest Curse*

          Ha, your event go bag is much better stocked than mine! Mine is a complete change of clothes and footwear, random office supplies (for running a registration desk) and lots of snacks.

          Reply ↓
    2. Rogue Slime Mold*

      I think this is the best example of Dunbar’s number (number of relationships we can keep track of). (And yes, it can be wildly or naively ill applied.)

      Mack and Joe cannot sit at the same table. UNLESS we put Valerie there. Valerie should be kept away from Stuart. Stuart needs to have Kevin near enough to send him threatening glares. Figure out the interworkings of 100 people, and then add one more, who has relationships of varying degrees with all the existing 100, and those relationships shift depending on who else is nearby…

      Reply ↓
    3. Sokovia Accords truther*

      I find this totally believable for bilateral work.

      For multilateral diplomacy, I was surprised by how high school the dynamics can be (cliques, playing games, emotional appeals, even a bit of bullying), considering these are all adults representing their governments on important issues.

      Reply ↓
      1. Definitely not Keri Russell*

        Next time you go to NATO, check out just how many brands of condoms they sell at the little Carrefour.

        Reply ↓
        1. Sokovia Accords truther*

          oh my. I was thinking more mean girls, tbh, but there is definitely a work hard/play hard vibe as well.

          Reply ↓
    4. TiredBureaucreat*

      My last tour, I had to do event planning. Thankfully, that’s not my normal job. I’m much more the traditional “go to this meeting and write a long report about it” type of diplomat. (I also try to get out of most of the cocktail parties.)

      Also, I’ve found my background as an editor the most important preparation I had for this, because it’s so much writing. And, as a mid-level person, so much editing other people’s writing. We do so many reports, memos, briefing papers, etc.

      Also, we’re not the pollyanna kumbaya types some media report us as. We are in fact well aware that not every problem can be solved by talking it out – we just also know that not every problem is amenable to a “kinetic” solution.

      Reply ↓
  38. Lady Danbury*

    Law. Much of what would be considered plagiarism in other field’s is best practice in law. Need to draft a real estate contract? Find another RE contract that’s as close to your deal as possible and modify from there. How about a brief for a gender discrimination case? Surely one of the partners recently had a race discrimination case that you can modify accordingly.

    Related, sometimes it’s more cost effective to have a more senior/specialist attorney, even if they have a higher hourly rate. They potentially will spend last time getting up to speed on the law/industry practice that applies to your situation, so they can be more efficient in advising you.

    Reply ↓
    1. Chick-n-boots*

      That’s funny – I was an immigration paralegal for a number of years before I got burnt out and I would say that between the fact that my fellow paralegals and I spent FAR more time doing research and writing petitions for clients than our supervising attorneys, and the fact that our billable rates were about a third of the attorneys, it was WAY more cost-effective to have us doing the bulk of that work and the attorneys only doing reviews and client strategy. (I also did some of our practice management for awhile when we were transitioning between firms so I handled client bill reviews every month – trust me, the paralegals were better and cheaper!) But I can absolutely imagine there are other fields where that’s not the case. If you don’t mind me asking, what type of law do you practice?

      Reply ↓
      1. Lady Danbury*

        My comment was purely in reference to senior vs junior attorneys. Paralegals are in a class of their own, and to paraphrase my comment below, better an “old” paralegal than a young attorney.

        I work in house, so my work touches a number of areas (employment, contracts, corporate, property, regulatory, etc) in both contentious and non-contentious capacities. If I can call a more experienced/specialist attorney and get a quick answer to my question over the phone due to their knowledge versus a junior attorney having to research the answer and call/write my back, the former is usually a better use of my time and money. Drafting can go either way because of my first point, so it really just depends on the context, the complexity of the matter, etc.

        Reply ↓
    2. Legal Assistant LC*

      My firm used to have a really good search program that I could use to find past briefs, letters, forms, etc. with specific phrases and it was SUCH a help. Newer associates were always so impressed that I could pull up a multiple examples of something we’d done before that they could then tailor to their specific case’s details. Unfortunately, the program broke (I’m not sure if it’s not compatible with Windows 11 or if we just stopped paying for licenses) and now I’m stuck with using Outlook’s crappy search function and hoping I attached something to an email once that could work now, at least for the really specialized instances.

      Reply ↓
    3. Newbie Paralegal*

      Absolutely seconding this. I was deeply relieved to learn that templates are the lifeblood of a good law firm.

      Reply ↓
    4. Panda (she/her)*

      A lot of engineering is the same. Don’t reinvent the wheel, find the closest thing and modify it.

      Reply ↓
    5. higheredadminalumna*

      Also, for law, how few of us do litigation.

      That some of the more ground breaking places to do civil rights work is on state courts, administrative agencies, and tribal courts.

      How many of us that work in government that are not working in criminal law. How many people work in legislative affairs as committee counsel, lobbyists, or in government relations across various sectors. How often it can be more effective to get a regulation changed than a law revised.

      How many of us work doing private investigations and audits. Or running ethics and/or compliance divisions of various public, private, governmental, and quasi-governmental entities.

      Reply ↓
  39. SuburbanBonfire*

    I worked for a while for a bank in their lockbox processing department. Whenever you pay bills online, a physical check is still printed out and sent to whatever entity processes them. No paper is saved.

    Reply ↓
    2. Strive to Excel*

      This is only partly true. There’s a lot of companies out there that are set up for full electronic bill payment. There’s just an equally large amount, especially small companies, that are not. Square and other money transferring functions are helping but they’re nowhere near all the way there yet.

      Reply ↓
    3. MikeM_inMD*

      Not entirely true. I do online bill-paying through my credit union. If the recipient is big and set up for it, like the electric company, it gets paid by EFT as early as the next day. Smaller and less automated recipients, such as my church, will have the payment date set as 5 days ahead and those definitely go out as paper checks.

      Reply ↓
    4. *daha**

      This is going to vary depending on how many payments the payee receives. An office that receives few payments from a bank’s system will still get a single check mailed by the bank’s online-payment vendor. But most payments are to things like utility companies that receive numerous payments daily. In those cases, the bank’s vendor will combine all the day’s payments into a single check accompanied by a list of which account/name are paying what amount — or the payment will be made electronically direct to the payee’s account, if they have signed up with the payment processor.

      Reply ↓
    5. FD*

      This is not true in all cases. I know this because as someone who gets the requests, many bill paying services will send an EFT. And in fact, they’re getting kind of pushy about trying to get people to sign up so they don’t have to spend the money on the paper.

      Reply ↓
  40. Raine*

    I’m an artist who makes products from the fabric I design. I print my fabric domestically and make everything by hand myself, but a lot of artists out there selling similar products actually order everything made from Chinese factories. And they are *hurting* right now. I’ve seen so many artists say they’re giving up their business this week, it’s heartbreaking.

    Reply ↓
      1. LinesInTheSand*

        Like it or not, that’s where manufacturing has been the strongest for decades. What China does often *cannot* be done here. Artists don’t have much choice.

        Reply ↓
        1. Raine*

          Exactly that. Some artists are scrambling to find similar manufacturing domestically, only to realize it just doesn’t exist. Or if it exists, it’s at a rate that makes their business no longer feasible. While I won’t speak as to whether all business *should* be feasible, I’m mostly just saddened at the variety of art that will cease to exist because of it.

          Reply ↓
        1. TGIF*

          This: “Rotating Username*
          April 10, 2025 at 12:55 pm
          I have no sympathy with anyone who has gone all-in on doing business with China.” I mean really?

          Reply ↓
      4. Joron Twiner*

        That is where textiles are manufactured these days. Everything you’re wearing was made outside the US

        Reply ↓
        1. Wolf*

          And “made locally” can mean anything between “fully made locally” and “we imported the thing and added a few buttons and a print”.

          Reply ↓
      5. OldHat*

        I’m with you. Propping industries or practices because it might hurt someone, isn’t a good enough reason. Especially if said industries or practices hurt other people. I feel for people because it can be difficult to shift gears and change directions. BUT, sometimes things change and you have to cut your losses.

        Never mind all the crap being sold that ends up in the land fill. Maybe some things shouldn’t be made at all.

        As much as possible, I’ve avoided things made in China (among other countries, but mostly China due to how much businesses have given into their demands) for at least a decade. Alternatives may be expensive, but I’ve definitely decided maybe I don’t need something. I can feel bad for the smaller and independent people affected, but it’s not going to change my opinion on China goods.

        Reply ↓
  41. I am a translator*

    Translation is way more about writing in the target language than it is about understanding the source language. I live in an English-speaking environment and work with English as my target language, and non-translators are usually surprised that I spend way more time thinking about how English works.

    And in technical and administrative translation, it’s less about crafting your own translation and way more about finding where correct terminology and phraseology already exists (e.g. What’s the actual name of this interface item in the target-language version of the app? How did they describe this concept in last year’s annual report? Is this the actual wording used in actual legislation?)

    Because of this, even the best quality machine translation adds no value (and, all too often, introduces problems) in a professional context, because it gives you statistically likely sequences of words rather than the actual correct answer you need to find, and you have to go through and re-research all its output anyway.

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    1. Another Translator*

      100% agreed with all of this!

      There ARE absolutely ways to use machine learning tools to assist with translation and boost speed. It depends enormously on the tool and the text (it’s going to be a lot more useful for a repetitive inventory list than an event description with flowery language about the artist’s process) but it’s as a tool the translator is using where appropriate. It’s been industry standard for years to use various kinds of computer-assisted translation tools. Machine translation as such, however, is rarely helpful because it’s rarely even adequate without a human spending just as much time checking over everything, standardizing phrasing, weeding out the completely incorrect insertions and changes to something statistically likelier but irrelevant, etc.

      (My company briefly experimented with a pilot project of using machine translation, and found that with all the checks needed, it took almost as long and, what with the tools’ cost, any time savings saved us no actual money. So this isn’t just knee-jerk.)

      Also, most of us do not translate novels. Or if we do, any literary translation is as a sideline to our main work. There are exceptions, of course, but they’re rare exceptions.

      Reply ↓
      1. Rotating Username*

        I’m going to have to dissent on the blanket dismissal of machine translation. It’s usually quite helpful in my field, and any other field where a general sense is sufficient rather than the highest level of technical accuracy.

        Reply ↓
        1. Another Translator*

          Yes, there are plenty of contexts in which it can be helpful, though I do think that many people aren’t sufficiently wary of the introduced hallucinations and misinterpretations that can crop up.

          But if what you want is professional-quality translation? Nah. That’s how I’m reading I am a translator’s reference to “in a professional context,” and I agree with it. I’m not saying I’ve never put anything into google translate in my personal life, because I have; like anyone else, I’ve occasionally had cause to read a website in a language I don’t speak, etc. But in my professional work it really adds no value for me.

          Many of these tools do have value in the right circumstance, and obviously you know your own field best and what contexts they’re useful to you in. But this is one of those instances where a lot of people have cause to use tools to get a general “it’s probably more or less like this, broadly speaking, good enough” sense — quite reasonably! — and then translators get to have the conversation over and over about whether our expertise and personal experience is actually valuable for the contexts we work in. That’s not what you’re saying, I know! But it felt dishonest not to note it, because that’s an adjacent subject and my god, have I had so many conversations that boil down to politely explaining that I do have more knowledge about the things I’m paid to know and the skillset I’m paid to have, actually. So it’s a sensitive subject. The “in a professional context” part is important.

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        2. I am a translator*

          The thing is, there’s very little overlap in the set of situations where a general sense is sufficient and situations where people would even be hiring a professional translator in the first place.

          As an analogy, WebMD is useful for people with little medical knowledge, but doesn’t tell doctors anything they don’t already know. But if WebMD can solve your problem or answer your question, it’s not something you would be going to the doctor for anyway.

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      2. Teapot Connoisseuse*

        Fellow translator here and I just want to thank you both for summarising the reality so well.

        Reply ↓
    2. Longtime Lurker*

      This is so interesting! I mean it makes sense, but I’ve often wondered about translator’s “philosophies” based on audience, source material, and more–for instance, is it better to be word-for-word technically accurate even if it’s clunky in the target language, or is it better to have good flow and comprehensible target language even if you miss some nuances in the source language? How does this change based on what you’re translating–a court ruling versus a novel versus a standard business contract?

      The only material I’ve worked with in translation is usually artistic (ie novels) or for history classes, so my experience is limited, but it’s still so fascinating.

      Reply ↓
      1. Another Translator*

        It’s always a balance, but it varies significantly depending on both the type of text and the client.

        If you’re doing a contract for electrical work, for example, you absolutely want to stick to technically correct terminology and legal phrasing, and your research is going to focus heavily on that as you translate. (And ideally you’ve done some specialization training in legal language, too.) If you’re doing bubbly marketing text, often the tone IS the message more than the exact words, and so what you want to do is come up with something that conveys the relevant info with the right amount of zing and catchiness, even if you’re rearranging sentences about it. It really varies!

        And, of course, if you’re doing pragmatic translation professionally, you’ve got a client whose opinion is where the buck really stops, and some of them are more communicative and informed than others. I’ve worked for clients who say “we don’t care if it departs from the source wording; we want it to be catchy and appealing to our audience.” (Taken far enough, this is called “transcreation,” and imo it’s a blast when you get to do it.) I’ve worked for clients who say, we really need this to be technically precise, please stick to the source; we don’t care if it’s pretty. I’ve worked for clients who come back with “we found an error, this sentence doesn’t match the source syntax, wouldn’t [really clunky wording] be better?” (And then you have to decide to what extent you want to try doing client education, and to what extent you want to shrug and say that their text is their call and client satisfaction is what matters.)

        And, of course, I’ve worked with plenty of clients who don’t give you any input on the matter; they just want “a good translation.” Part of the translator’s professional expertise is figuring out what that means in this document’s context. And sometimes you just have to take your best guess and go with it.

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        1. allathian*

          Yes, this. I work as a translator for a governmental agency in Finland, an officially bilingual country, so the public has the right to get official translations of decisions in their own language (Finnish or Swedish).

          I’ve used translation software (database that looks at previously translated text and flags matches above a certain threshold, usually 75%) for most of my career, and we’re just looking at (internal) machine translation tools that use our data as training material for us but don’t send it to other clients. Even so, they’ll require a lot of training.

          The machine translations I’ve looked at so far have the same issues as AI in general, they’re prone to hallucinations, either inventing stuff out of whole cloth or completely changing the meaning by missing a negation or other modifier.

          Machine translations work best with highly standardized, technical texts, such as user manuals.

          I translate official decisions, HR documentation for our Swedish speaking employees (all of them have some Finnish but many prefer to read about things like benefits in Swedish), news for the intranet and our website, other website content, annual reports, blog posts, social media posts, app interfaces, customer terms and conditions, EULAs, policies and how-to guides, strategies and slide decks… Each genre has its own requirements.

          But because I work in-house, all of my clients are also my coworkers, so if a wording is unclear I can ask for clarification and suggest improvements to the original, and at least 99 percent of the time these are adopted and when they aren’t, there’s always a reason that I can accept easily when they explain. About a year ago I translated a document of about 30 pages or so. I sent the translation to the client with a few suggestions of how to improve the original. About a month later they sent a new version, and as I translated, I realized that I didn’t have to change the previous version at all, apart from trivial stuff like valid from dates and file numbers. They’d implemented all of my suggestions! I count that as one of my biggest professional wins ever.

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      2. I am a translator*

        It really depends on two questions:

        1. What is the function of this text?
        2. Why am I translating this text?

        Sometimes the answer is the same, sometimes it’s different.

        For example, a marketing text is meant to elicit a specific emotion and a specific action (buying the thing, going viral, etc.), so it’s more important to capture the vibe and elicit the same emotion and the same action in the target language audience.

        A technical procedure is meant to elicit a specific action (i.e. following the procedure) but the emotion is less relevant, so you don’t have to worry about vibes, but sometimes there is room to clarify.

        A business contract is meant to set out specific obligations and requirements and constraints, so the important thing is to choose language that sets out the same obligations and requirements and constraints. Often this means a close translation, but the absolutely essential question is “Does this do the same thing as the source text?”

        Usually I’m translating things so that the client or the end-user will have a document that does the same thing in the target language, but sometimes I’m translating things so the client will have an official record of “What does this say?”, and that leads to slightly different translation decisions.

        For example, sometimes I translate materials to be used as evidence in legal proceedings. In those cases, a closer translation that doesn’t “help” the text is often more appropriate, because they need to see any flaws, factual errors, inconsistencies, ambiguities, etc.

        So if I’m assigned to translate a transcript of a dignitary’s speech to go on the organization’s website, I’ll clean up disfluencies, make word choices that reflect well on them, etc. But if a transcript of the same speech is entered as evidence in legal proceedings, I render every “um” or “uh” in case the fact that they briefly misspoke is relevant, retain any ambiguity, retain any potentially-offensive word choices, etc. If they drop their notes and say “Shit!”, that’s not going in the website transcript but it is going in the legal transcript.

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      3. Trick or Treatment*

        I adapt patient information documents, and flow and conveying the correct meaning are more important for us than word-for-word. My native language is notoriously clunky when closely matching to English sentence structure, so I very often have to split sentences, change passive/active voice etc. We also have to do a lot of fine-tuning with verbs, especially verbs like may, should, could, must. These don’t always perfectly align in the two languages, but they make a big difference for the patient’s understanding of their responsibilities and what will/could happen to them.

        We have internal translation tools that can assist, which are supported by specific machine learning (i.e. trained on medical communication materials) and therefore know the right lingo in most cases, but they still need a human assessing and deciding. It’s more of a starting point or assistant for alternative phrasing.

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    3. NothingIsLittle*

      I have a translator in my extended family and was shocked when she told me that best practice is to translate into your native language. She was simplifying because I was pretty young, I’m sure, but it totally blew my mind.

      Reply ↓
      1. Anony Mouse for this*

        Yes, generally speaking it’s the best practice. You’re more familiar with the nuances of your native tongue, especially if it’s English (which is famously difficult to learn as a second language because it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of borrowed vocabulary and differing grammar). That doesn’t mean a person can’t be competent translating into their second language, but it heightens the chance of them using awkward or clunky phrasing.

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    4. Rogue Slime Mold*

      It adds no value, because it gives you statistically likely sequences of words rather than the actual correct answer you need to find.

      I want this on a T-shirt.

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      1. Anonym*

        This explains so much. And makes me wonder where the data comes from. I had a web project several years ago requiring vendor translation into 30+ languages, and the feedback we got from colleagues was terrible. My manager, whose native language was in the group, quipped, “Who wrote this, my great, great grandmother? Nobody has spoken [language] like that in the last 50+ years.”

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    5. I am not a translator*

      I’m so fascinated by this! A good friend of mine has a BA in their 3rd language (and a masters in linguistics), plus a professional background in software localization. They’ve been sort of thinking about pivoting into technical translation but they have a lot of hangups over e.g. having near-native fluency in speaking/listening but being much slower at reading/writing. This comment has inspired me to nudge them to think about whether that’s as big an issue if they set English as their target language.

      But yes, although I’m not in translation myself, I am multilingual in a largely monolingual area, and it’s actually so shocking to me how many people assume translation is a 1:1 mechanical issue. My coworker wanted to get an intern to translate some public-facing high-level scientific content because the intern spoke the target language informally at home, which IMO is a step up from machine translation—but literally one step and still absolutely not acceptable for a professional org.

      Reply ↓
      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        There’s a reason why hospitals have specially-trained medical translators, because that’s a field where you *really* want to make sure the translation is correct and the vocabulary is not something you’d necessarily pick up as a native speaker. I mean, how many people know much medical vocabulary even in our native languages? Plus the nuance of trying to translate medical jargon from doctors in one language into words that the average layperson can understand in another language…it sounds exceedingly complicated to me, but then I’m only fluent in one language anyway.

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      2. Texan in Exile*

        “people assume translation is a 1:1 mechanical issue”

        I speak Spanish, but sometimes, when I try to translate stuff written in Spanish into English, I just shake my head and say, “I understand what it means in Spanish but I truly do not know how to say it in English.”

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      3. JustaTech*

        My company has had a couple of translation issues – in one they did end up going with machine translation (of a very technical document!) but thankfully we also had most of the document professionally translated so we were able to get the information we needed. (My 8th grade Latin is not a substitute for a professional Italian translator!)

        Then we had someone seriously suggest that a coworker could translate a 30+ page extremely technical document “in her spare time”. I asked another coworker who spoke that language to take a quick look at one page and see how long he thought it would take for him to translate. “This would take me all day just to read! I can’t translate this!” I put my foot down about that one – not least because it was the sender’s job to get it translated in the first place.

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        1. I am a translator*

          It amazes me how people who find it non-trivial to learn a language and non-trivial to write a document (and sometimes even non-trivial to read a whole document) think it’s trivial to translate the document.

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    6. Madame Señora*

      I teach high school French and Spanish to predominantly English speaking students. I always have to explain ad nauseum that they cannot write their work in English and then translate it into the target language. So many of them just don’t believe me. I took one translation course in University and it was hands down my most difficult course.

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      1. Anony Mouse for this*

        I had to teach my second language to undergrads as part of my MA program, and even though I literally did a class showing them how bad Google translate was, I still had them turn in Google Translated writings (it was an intro class so I was giving them assignments to write like 3-4 sentences about hobbies or whatnot, not entire essays). They didn’t understand that I could immediately tell because of clunky grammar and vocab they didn’t know.

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    7. oranges*

      Yes! I used to do translation, and it’s so much more about lucid and sometimes creative writing in the target language rather than comprehension of the original language (which obviously has to be spot on for you to be translating in the first place, but it’s far from the main thing).

      Reply ↓
  42. Just a Pile of Oranges*

    My field is safety, and specifically I’m in Canada.

    Safety is a part of law where companies are guilty until proven innocent, you must answer questions asked by an officer of OHS (no right to remain silent), and you do not have the right to a lawyer. That’s because what you say to an OHS officer has “use immunity” which means it can’t be used to press criminal charges against you.

    That said, you can’t be forbidden from using the bathroom. So if you do find yourself asked uncomfortable questions by OHS, feel free to call a lawyer from the toilet.

    Reply ↓
  43. Targ*

    Since my first comment got deleted:

    1. Admins can always tell who thinks we’re stupid, who thinks we’re trying to get a man, and we absolutely prioritize your work less. Your internal misogyny is not as covert as you think it is.

    Reply ↓
    1. Professional_Lurker*

      My dad was a materials engineer at a mill, and he *always* stressed being nice and professional to the admins, both to his kids and his subordinate engineers. He rarely raised his voice, but he would ream out any engineer he caught being rude to the admins, because he knew that could hold up his department’s workflow.

      Also, he happened to be a fantastic baker, and would bring cheesecakes in periodically for the admins (and his own team, but that’s beside the point). His paperwork got higher priority than the General Manager’s, by the end of his career.

      Reply ↓
      1. Tenebrae*

        Fellow daughter of a man who was nice to admins (university prof, in his case). He would have done it anyway because he’s a gentleman and isn’t much interested in hierarchies but he used to roll his eyes at the shortsightedness of his colleagues who did try to bully the admins.

        Reply ↓
        1. Rogue Slime Mold*

          I recall a mystery series where the university admin was using the nameplate of the person two admins ago.

          Reply ↓
          1. Paint N Drip*

            Last week my boss reminisced about a brief interaction we had when I first started. Readers, I do not know which admin he was talking about but it was NOT me. Getting TF out of here…

            Reply ↓
    2. false name*

      Absolutely true for all genders. Arrogance, disdain, ill treatment: It goes on the mental checklist. You will now be treated according to the letter of the law, and no extra effort will be spent on your tasks. I won’t delay what needs to be done, but I won’t prioritize or go out of my way to complete it.

      Reply ↓
    3. TiredBureaucreat*

      In my career (diplomacy), we stress to new folks the need to be nice to any admin. They have more power than you do. (I’m mid-level now, and most of them still have more power than I do!)

      Reply ↓
      1. Toot Sweet*

        Many years ago, I had a coffee mug with an org chart that had a box off to the side of the CEO that said, “Secretary who secretly runs things.”

        Reply ↓
        1. Secretary Half*

          The motto growing up in my household was “Secretaries and Janitors run the world” and that has only proven to be more and more true as I’ve gotten older. As a secretary now, I can confirm, we definitely run at least 1/2 of the world and the janitorial staff (who are the BEST) run the 2/2 of the world!

          Reply ↓
  44. Yellow*

    Food labeling… The FDA has “requirements” that you are supposed to follow. But no one actually checks them. It’s all on the honor system. Do not trust calorie counts on food packaging. I’m even skeptical about ingredients listings.

    Reply ↓
    1. Required*

      I’d disagree with you in part. (In the US. Other countries’ laws differ. YMMV)

      It’s true that it’s “on the honor system” in that companies don’t always have to pre submit data to a government agency or that it gets validated.

      The risk of making a mistake on the nutrition panel or ingredient statement is having your product be recalled for adulteration, though, and no firm wants that.

      I’ll also agree with you, also, that there’s a lot of optimization that happens to ingredient statements to make them appear as short and clean as possible.

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      1. Irish Teacher.*

        One thing I’m finding fascinating about this whole post is how much is culture and so on dependent. I guess it’s not surprising really, but there are so many things that you wouldn’t think are culture-specific but turn out to be.

        Just in response to your “other countries laws may differ.”

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    2. pally*

      OH gracious!

      I’m in the middle of a book about the impetus behind the 1906 Food & Drug law and the “Poison Squad” involved with testing various food additives.

      It’s disturbing to me how someone can prioritize politics & greed over honesty in food production. Things like passing off beef fat + coloring = butter. Or using harmful -even deadly- additives to color food or to restore spoiled food such that it is sellable. Or stretching out food product with non-food additions to cut costs.

      I like to think food manufacturers are much better than a century ago.
      Guess not.

      Reply ↓
      1. JustaTech*

        That’s a great book! If deeply unappetizing.
        And it really, really drove home to me that we have regulations for a reason – people died. Regulations are written in the blood of the public.

        And also, in a purely capitalistic society there is absolutely no reason for any company to *not* fill their products with the cheapest fillers available, even if they are poisonous.

        Reply ↓
    3. Annie*

      On the calorie count, are you talking about the 20% allowable margin of error, or is it common for, say, a product listed as 100 calories per serving to really be 500 calories per serving or vice versa?

      Reply ↓
  45. ThatGirl*

    I work in marketing; my current job is not full of big secrets but I previously worked for a well-known baking and decorating brand and a workplace supply wholesaler.

    It’s not a secret, exactly, but the house brand products you see in stores like Target and Walmart are frequently made by the same manufacturers as the name brand. HOWEVER many companies want a cheaper product, so some corners get cut to make the margins work – the Walmart branded bakeware, for instance, was a thinner gauge of steel and had a less expensive coating on it. Not all house brands are lower quality, but many of them are.

    Reply ↓
    1. NothingIsLittle*

      This is fascinating to hear! I’ve absolutely heard from people claiming it’s often the same products from the same manufacturing line with different packaging, so it’s great to learn that’s not always the case.

      Reply ↓
      1. ThatGirl*

        If there is a significant cost savings, it’s made more cheaply; if it’s a “store exclusive” version of a brand name thing then something is different about it, even if it’s a small design thing.

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      2. econobiker*

        It’s called “private labeling” for products manufactured by a name brand for another company to distribute under their branded name. Yes corners are cut in specifications, recipes are changed, packaging is changed, etc but it comes from the same company and even possibly the same manufacturing line as the name brand product.
        Automotive companies sometimes do this with what is called “badge engineering” putting a different companies brand badge on the same vehicle (with minor visual alterations).

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  46. UKAAM*

    I work in environmental policy (used to work on electric cars, now I work on aviation). The world has made HUGE strides in emissions reduction, and frequent doomer-ism on the environment drives me up the actual wall. People and businesses all over the world are working flat out on every little piece of saving our planet, and we can do it! We need people who don’t know all the technical details not to give up!

    (also – a great deal of our work and progress is never reported on. I work in the UK and often get asked by “normal people” (not in my field) why we don’t have a levy/tax aviation flying in the UK. We do! It’s just mostly technical and boring and not in the papers every day)

    Reply ↓
    4. Stoney Lonesome*

      I work on climate change projects and I totally agree with you! When I tell people I work on climate change, they always ask me if I am depressed or discouraged, but I am probably the most optimistic person about climate change that I know (outside of work).

      I am in the US and in a purple state. All around me there are NGOs, business, and government agencies working hard to actually fix the problem, but most people never hear about it. This is because for news outlets, “these 25 projects are, together, going to make a bit of a dent in climate change,” doesn’t get as many clicks as “we’re all going to die.” And, especially in the US, the people working on climate change don’t seek out publicity because you are more likely to end up with crazy people yelling at you than anyone else actually caring.

      Climate change will be solved by a million community-level boring projects. Not one magical silver bullet. Not individual actions. Just dedicated experts, working together, and doing their jobs.

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      1. Rogue Slime Mold*

        I think a central problem for the US right now is that “People are saying there is a conspiracy of flying space cabbages who are going to hunt us with lasers, and they have infiltrated the post office!” will get more clicks than “Sensible program has expected positive effect.” And clicks + cheapness to produce (for which “people are saying” is perfect) are the only standards.

        Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          I saw a post the other day saying “hope is paywalled” pointing out that a lot of encouraging scientific progress is published in journals that requires a subscription fee and isn’t written for the general public. So the public hears a ton about microplastics in the ocean, but not about the scientists genetically engineering ocean microorganisms to destroy it.

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    5. Kay*

      As an environmental educator, this is a really tough message to communicate! Because on one hand your audience could hear “I don’t need to do anything because other people have figured it out! Tech saves the day!” OR, with a slightly different wording they could hear “nothing I do matters and the world is going to end.” I need to know my audience quite well- politics, age, outlook on life… to make sure they hear what I mean to say.

      Reply ↓
  47. Jennifer Strange*

    Very often fundraising is more moving trash cans so we can put up the Gala tent and throwing away the trash donors and artists couldn’t be bothered to toss in the trash can five feet away than it is sipping cocktails while rubbing elbows with rich people.

    Reply ↓
      1. Jennifer Strange*

        Hahaha, I used to joke I should bring a tupperware container to events since we had so many leftovers :)

        Reply ↓
        1. Goose*

          I used to do that! Not on purpose, but if I had my bag with empty Tupperware from lunch that food was coming home with. me. Or I would just abscond with entire catering trays if they food was getting tossed anyway

          Reply ↓
        2. Meaningful hats*

          As someone who works in events – bring the tupperware! The food is paid for either way and we’d rather it not go to waste.

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        3. Anonym*

          The catering folks at my company used to sneak us takeaway containers (like, many) after events if no one was looking! (Us being very hungry, very tired event staff who had been politely smiling at executives and clients for the past several hours.) So much good cheese…

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      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        I also enjoy taking home the leftover wine from receptions, because inevitably it’s fancier wine than I’d usually buy for myself!

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  48. Anony Mouse for this*

    I work in translation. A lot of my job is educating customers because they have no idea how it works.

    1. The US doesn’t have government-certified translators. Some countries do (such as Germany), but we don’t. Most translation companies have their own version of a certification that *some* courts will accept, but not all. There are a couple states who have state-certified interpreters (like CA), but many don’t have those either. If some entity you’re dealing with wants a certified translation, best to try to figure out exactly what they want before contacting a translation company. In a pinch, you can go to the ATA (American Translator’s Association), who have their own certification process (essentially the translator took an exam to prove they can translate a particular language), many courts and other country’s governments will accept an ATA-certified translation (but do ask if they need a translator’s affidavit, since those are an extra thing and need to be notarized on the translator’s end). Their website is atanet (dot) org

    2. Feasible timelines for translation can vary a lot, depending on many factors, including how rare the language is, what type of document it is (dense legal language takes longer than a marketing brief), what other projects a translator already has on their plate, etc. At my various jobs I’ve had clients ask me if two weeks is feasible for a 20-page document, while others might send me that same document and tell me they need it in less than 8 hours. A good rule of thumb is that one translator can translate between 2000-4000 words a day (depending on their personal speed, type of document, etc). Some can do more, but that’s a good basic number you can use. So if your document is a one page birth certificate, you can probably get it back in 1-2 business days, but plan for 2-3 just in case. If it’s really short they might be able to do it same day, but that depends on if they have other stuff on their plate. If you know you need to have something translated by a certain date, send it to the translator as soon as you possibly can, don’t wait until 2-3 days before. But if you have a 6,000 word document and your deadline is in two weeks, you’re probably gonna be fine.

    3. There are pros and cons to using a translation company versus an individual translator. Now, if you go to the ATA to find a certified person you can generally trust they have some idea of what they’re doing, but they also tend to be more expensive. Any given company you find online may or may not do good quality work, so do check reviews and try to get recommendations from people if you can.

    Also, some things to know about companies:

    A. If they say they have “thousands of translators at their disposal”, that means they use contractors. That isn’t a red flag, because literally every translation company uses contractors, almost no language company keeps staff translators because it’s just not feasible. But it does mean that you’re not going to be speaking directly to the translator, ever. You’ll be dealing with a project manager (like me) who acts as the middle man between the client and the contracted translator. It also means that almost every company can translate almost any language. They keep databases of contractors for just about every possible language (unless they’re a company that’s more specialized, like some companies focus on Middle Eastern or Asian languages, since they can be harder for US-based companies to source).

    B. The biggest upside to using a translation company is that the project manager’s job is to make sure you get a good quality translation to your specifications. If a contractor delivers a poor quality translation, they’ll send it back and demand it get fixed. They’re trained to do QA and ensure you’re happy with your translation. They’re also trained in customer service (which individual translators may or may not be good at) and they’ll make sure to give you confirmation of your deadline and keep you in the loop if anything goes wrong.

    C. The biggest downside to using a translation company is that you will pay more. An individual translator may charge you $0.08/word, where the translation company is going to charge at least double that, because that’s how they make their money. That can soar much higher depending on the rarity of the language, how fast you need it, and even what contractors are available for the project (translators don’t have uniform prices across the industry, far from it). If money isn’t a concern, then obviously that’s fine, but it’s worth noting.

    D. If you find a company online and can’t find much in the way of customer reviews, check them out on GlassDoor. Companies with terrible employee reviews can generally be guaranteed to do shoddy work. I know, I’ve worked for a couple.

    4. The old adage of “you can have it fast, cheap, or good, pick two” applies with translation. If you want it fast and cheap, you might as well use Google translate (which is terrible for any professional translation purposes). Don’t get me started on the various machine translation options out there, and know that any company that touts machine translation as their main thing, you shouldn’t use, because even if you request that they use a human on your project, there’s no guarantee. Many companies are taking to using a machine to translate and having a human proofread what it spits out, but the translator proofreading gets paid much less for those and has very little incentive to carefully make sure the translation is good. Machine translation is much like genAI at the moment, in that a lot of people think it can do stuff it just can’t. It’s fine for if you want to plug something in to get the general idea for personal reasons (like if you want to read an article in an Italian newspaper or something), but never for professional translations.

    5. If you’re bilingual and want to get into the translation industry, my advice is: don’t. Move overseas and get a job as a waitress or something instead. The pay will probably be better anyway. Unless you know a really rare language, then absolutely, get into it and charge out the nose.

    Reply ↓
  49. Anon Engineer*

    Spacecraft operations: spacecraft can accomplish a lot with relatively simple systems. That said, there’s always something broken, and almost always some workaround. Stuff up there is way, way jankier than you think. I’ve seen tens of millions of dollars of hardware lost because someone put a diode in backwards. I’ve seen teams recover spacecraft that couldn’t talk to the ground so they couldn’t confirm what they’re doing.

    Also, we fix a lot of stuff by turning it off and turning it back on again.

    Reply ↓
    1. Gitty*

      I work in nursing home billing. it’s sad to see people spend their life savings on nursing home care, it’s over 10K a month. People would be well served by transferring their assets over five years PRIOR to potentially needing care and then they could get Medicaid to cover it.

      Reply ↓
    2. KathyG*

      My husband worked on some scientific instruments that flew on a satellite some years ago. He said that most of the electronics used was several-generations-old technology, as it can take some time to get components rated as space-hardened. The software will be optimized to the the nth degree, because the amount of memory they can build in will be limited.

      Reply ↓
  50. Nonprofit fundraiser*

    Nonprofits need to pay good, very competitive salaries to C-suite and other key employees in order to attract and retain top talent. If you refuse to donate to a large charity because their executive director makes six figures, please learn more about the challenges of running a successful nonprofit.

    Reply ↓
    1. Sloanicota*

      I think you could argue about leadership salaries (well, I think *all* industry top salaries should be tied to the lowest full time wage in a company) but I definitely think this about indirect generally. I’ve heard so many donors say they “don’t want to pay for employee travel” or whatever. It completely hamstrings an org to have this kind of mindset. If you love an org, give unrestricted gifts. If you don’t love an org … find an org you love and give unrestricted gifts.

      Reply ↓
      2. Silver Robin*

        the folks who gave us unrestricted funds are life savers because that is how we are keeping salaries going while the feds wreak havoc with their funding nonsense.

        seriously, I cannot stress enough how much unrestricted giving helps. you either trust the org, or you do not. If you want to start with specified funding while you build relationships, fine. But the goal should be to shift to unrestricted support as soon as possible.

        Reply ↓
    2. Dust Bunny*

      Good grief, thank you. We don’t really have a literal C-suite–I don’t know what our ED makes but it’s not lavish–but being able to attract good leaders makes an immense difference.

      Reply ↓
    3. Zona the Great*

      Yeah people really don’t understand this. Someone online lamented how much the ED of the Girl Scouts makes (“I thought it was supposed to be non-profit!?” Yeah not for those working there). She runs a national organization. Why on earth shouldn’t she earn a commiserate pay?

      Reply ↓
    4. WantonSeedStitch*

      I remember my mother-in-law complaining about the overhead of some nonprofits, and I pointed out to her, “I’m not sure you realize what ‘overhead’ really is. Technically, *I* am overhead. My salary. My benefits. I’m not rich, but they also aren’t paying me garbage. Volunteers can’t do everything.” She had always thought that “overhead” automatically equalled “excess.”

      Reply ↓
      1. Numbat*

        100%

        If you need a non profit to be able to tell you “what percentage of their donations goes directly to the people they help” then they’re going to need to pay an accountant to work that out, aren’t they?

        Reply ↓
    5. goddessoftransitory*

      Thank you! I get so frustrated when people complain about a really big charity org, like Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders, “spending so much on administration.” Well, that is work that must be done if they are going to fulfill their mission and save actual lives!

      Good arguments can be made about waste (especially in soliciting donations) and bloat, naturally. They aren’t angels or in some rare bubble. But the idea that charitable organizations should function on nothing but hope, prayers and goodwill is naive at BEST.

      Reply ↓
    6. Emergency Pants*

      As a non-profit employee (direct service provider), I’d argue part of being a successful non-profit is having all the jobs you create be sustainable and pay a fair wage. When companies don’t prioritize this, but somehow find $$ to pay good competitive salaries to C suite, it’s demoralizing and telling.

      Reply ↓
  51. AVP*

    I’m a comms person so I am here to tell you….a lot of people are lying, a lot of the time.

    That’s not to say that every public statement you read is a bald-faced lie. But pretty much every corporate press release, statement, quote, etc., has gone through ten layers of writers, lawyers, and executives, and only at a few marginal points does “is it true?” come up. Accuracy just isn’t the top priority. Does it sound good? Will it get attention? Will the search/social algo pick it up? Will the truth get us sued, and if so, how can we word this in a way that doesn’t? Is there a magic bs phrase that will make this mediocre situation sound like a success to our key stakeholders? < all higher priorities.

    If you read something really wacky…probably true because it didn't go through the above process. Something admitted under sworn oath, in a deposition, or to Congress? True or true-ish, unless the speaker has a death wish. The rest of it is really iffy, and people should read and research with a high level of skepticism for anything that comes through a comms dept (and that's pretty much everything these days).

    Reply ↓
    1. Anonym*

      I’m not exactly disagreeing with you, but in my experience in a large, rather sturdy member of a heavily regulated field, the accuracy questions are definitely happening. Now, they may come with a side of “the board or regulators could potentially find out and that creates massive risk for us with little benefit,” but they do come. I imagine there’s a lot of variation across industries and organizations… and parts of organizations.

      Reply ↓
      1. Anonym*

        Meant to add: Hard agree with your last sentence. Remember the most important question in assessing someone’s position – what’s their stake in the situation? A for profit company’s stake in anything is *not* the same as yours. Take whatever they say with that particular grain of salt.

        Reply ↓
    2. SciComm Support*

      Huh, this is interesting to read because it’s the complete opposite of my experience…I spent ~5 years working for a well-established PR agency specializing in healthcare/science, and it was always drilled into us that baseline accuracy was SUPER important. Like, yeah, I’m gonna spin something—but I’m not going to misrepresent it.

      I actually jumped promotion levels at my agency specifically because I was good at reading and comprehending dense technical text and translating that for the general public in a way that made our scientist clients, who generally wanted us to include waaaay too much unnecessary detail/context, satisfied with its accuracy. They’d ask for me to be put on projects because they felt I understood what they were really trying to say and could express it truthfully.

      That might be a SciComm specific thing, though! And I definitely wouldn’t generalize my experience to the field at large, especially because I’m on the autism spectrum and tend to take accuracy a little too seriously in my personal life (which drives my partner up the wall!); just saying that there ARE ethical communicators out here.

      For the record, I have since become comms director at a decent-sized nonprofit STEM education org, and regularly discuss the importance and nuances of comms ethics with my colleagues/team, all of whom care deeply about accuracy because we’re communicating with the next generation of scientists. I actually just had to talk to a social media intern this morning about using a lobster emoji on a post about a similar but different type of crustacean—that’s the level of accuracy I care about!

      Reply ↓
    4. Bike Walk Bake Books*

      I worked in communications for nearly 15 years in public higher ed. I’m now in a public agency where I work closely with communicators and am hands-on with final product. None of this is true for my work in the public sector or the people I’ve worked with.

      We absolutely know that a public records request will turn up anything we might not say in the release and we’ll look worse for not having addressed that. We also know that trust is a lot easier to break than to restore. We don’t just have stakeholders; we have legislative oversight and the governor.

      We may not lead with the part that someone’s going to jump on as their “gotcha” point. We’re writing with an eye on lawsuit potential if that’s part of the context so we don’t use a word that exposes us to avoidable liability because that wouldn’t be good stewardship of public funds. Yes, there will be (thousands of) other ways of describing our work if you start with very different goals or priorities. But “What are we basing this on?” is *always* present. We start from the facts; they’re not an optional layer of frosting.

      I’m sorry you’ve worked in places that didn’t apply those standards.

      Reply ↓
  52. IHaveKittens*

    I work in legal technology and have worked in and around law firms for my whole (40+ years) career. The caste system that exists in law firms can be pretty hard to deal with if you are new to it – there are partners, then senior associates, then associates, then paralegals, then admins, and then everyone else. I did work for one London based law firm in the US who tried pretty hard to get rid of the injustices, but even there it was still pretty apparent who ranked and who did not.

    It’s not necessarily a bad environment – I really like working in law firms – but it can be difficult to take if you are new to it.

    Also, the amounts of money that get spent on things like the summer associate programs can make you ill.

    Reply ↓
    1. TGIF*

      They pretty much cover all that in every legal show to be honest. So this isn’t surprising to me. But I will say from years of experience, lawyers do NOT know technology at all. Neither do doctors. They all have to be led by the hand to even connect a computer to anything. It may be better now but in the days of dialup it was a nightmare.

      Reply ↓
  53. RIP Pillowfort*

    I know a lot of people pass roadway construction without thinking about how it happens (or are extremely annoyed by it!). It’s incredibly complex and collaborative work to bring a project from design to completion as an engineer.

    One of the big misconceptions is that the engineers will just be doing design and that’s it. That we churn out products without leaving an office. Reality is to do this work well, you have to know all the parts. Example- you could design a bridge with no thought to how it’s constructed. But that results in so many mistakes and additional cost that it’s pretty much the worst way to design anything. Fresh grads are always shocked we take them out into the field regularly to just see things being built. That we tell them to do cost comparisons for design options. They need to manage problems on their designs while being built (because you can never completely prevent some issues).

    Reply ↓
      1. RIP Pillowfort*

        One of the downsides of being in management is I don’t get to do it as much. Something I constantly gripe about.

        The upside is I typically get sent out to the spectacularly cool* issues when I do get to go.

        *Cool as in this is innovative or OHGODTHIS IS BAD. There’s no in between right now.

        Reply ↓
    3. ScruffyInternHerder*

      I work in similarly large scale (not road) construction and can confirm. Its not just slap in on paper in a vacuum and send it off. There is SO much that goes into it. Just the shell and services for a factory are years of work, retrofit or greenfield/brownfield build, it does not matter. If I’m working on it now, it has a shovel date of at least 3Q 2026 right now.

      Reply ↓
      1. RIP Pillowfort*

        Our timetables are generally on the long-ish scale. Depends on the project, depends on the funding.

        There are projects I’ve worked on 10+ years ago that still have not been built yet. Not a lot but at least a handful.

        Reply ↓
    5. WS*

      My dad was a surveyor for the roads board so my siblings and I got to spend our childhood investigating half-finished roadworks and learning about camber and drainage!

      Reply ↓
    6. Bike Walk Bake Books*

      I hope you have them walk, bike, and use transit through the project boundaries, not just do a windshield tour. Driver-first designing is really bad for the rest of us, and for the drivers when they get out of the vehicle.

      I’m lucky to work in a transportation agency that’s work to embed multimodal thinking and practice. We still need more of that experiential piece to get the concepts to come alive. Nothing like walking a highway shoulder and seeing kids cross that road from the new subdivision over there to the school on this side to make you appreciate sidewalks, lower speed limits, and highly visible crossings.

      Reply ↓
  54. Sloanicota*

    I want to hear Alison’s answer to this. As a person who runs a website and/or as an author and/or consultant.

    Reply ↓
  55. AnonCFRE*

    Non-profit fundraiser here:

    1) Charity Navigator is useless. Do we need a source to tell us if a charity is legit? Absolutely. But Charity Navigator’s in-house management team makes up definitions of efficacy out of thin air and frequently gets information wrong. If you really want to know if a charity is worth your support, go read their annual reports and 990s for the past 5 years– hopefully on their website, but if not ProPublica is a great resource for that instead.

    2) Donor matches are for the hype. I have worked on 2 really big campaigns that were true “match this or you get nothing” matches, but dozens of others for things like #GivingTuesday where the match was secured and existed only to inspire others to give.

    If you really want to support your favorite non-profit, become a monthly donor. That will do more good than getting your gift “matched”!

    Reply ↓
    1. Lady Lessa*

      One of my favorite non-profits is running a membership drive right now, and I have noticed that there are no challenges for matching funds this round.

      (and I am a small monthly donor)

      Reply ↓
    2. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

      2: I’m glad to hear that usually the money is donated regardless! I’ve often had a kind of grumpy response, because, if you have a million dollars available to donate, just donate it!

      1: I’ve always kind of wondered. Evaluating whether an org is actually having a good impact seems really difficult. Even their own annual reports seems potentially iffy though–I imagine those are going to spin the spending, initiatives, and impact in the best possible light.

      Reply ↓
        1. AnonCFRE*

          Yeesssssssss! Do I occasionally read audited financials on the weekend for funsies? For sure.

          Do I get judgy when I can’t easily find your audited financials on your website? Gurl. Do you just not have them, or do you just not want me to see them? Either way, you’re not getting my money.

          Reply ↓
      2. JustaTech*

        Oh man, impact assessment is a huge and really complex field that doesn’t ever seem to get the attention (or time or investment) it needs.
        I had a single class on it in grad school (public health) and I was like, wait, but we just scratched the surface!

        My spouse found an organization a few years ago that just does impact assessment of other organization’s programs and what they found had the biggest ROI was … deworming programs. Super cheap to run, huge benefit in terms of health and productivity. I wish I could remember the name of the group!

        Reply ↓
      3. Nonprofit Mktg Mgr*

        #2 can get a bit complicated. I do understand the “why can’t they just give” reaction, as someone who is not usually directly involved with fundraising, but…the reality is that donation matching is effective! And it stops being effective if people know about it, because then they say, “I don’t need to donate, Big Corporation already gave $1M so Nonprofit Org doesn’t need my $10.”

        We do! We really do! But it’s hard to get past that sense of scale, so donation matching is sort of a psychological trick to help individual donors feel more like they’re making a difference. And like most psychological tricks, it loses efficacy when you know about it.

        So for everyone reading this: yes, the nonprofit wants your $10. It wants your $5. It wants your $1. If you would give to an org if that money were in fact being cruelly held hostage by a cackling big corporation rubbing its evil hands together in a dark boardroom, please just tell yourself that’s true and give anyway.

        Reply ↓
    3. Golden*

      I just learned about #2! I have a family member that works for a small but recognizable brand, and let me know their “for every unit sold we donate X dollars to Specific Charity” event wasn’t exactly set up that way. The company had already donated the amount to the charity and printed info about the campaign on the package to get more people to buy it.

      Reply ↓
      1. AnonCFRE*

        That can be *such* a gray area, too!

        Small, socially responsible brand that carefully chose and wants to support a specific charity? Love to see it.

        And then there’s “charity washing”, which… *sigh*

        Reply ↓
    4. Mesquito*

      yeah, and even the breakdown of “x amount is spent on wages” isn’t useful unless it breaks it down by role- if there is a huge gap between the highest paid and the lowest paid, it’s not a good organization.

      Reply ↓
      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Curious what you think a huge gap is. My last job was at a nonprofit and I left in part because they declined to give me a promotion even though I had far excelled the job requirements when I’d been hired there and even gotten a certification I didn’t have before that. The CEO was making 3x what I was making. I’d gotten one COL raise in three years and with inflation being what it was, that didn’t even cover the rise in my rent over that time.

        Reply ↓
        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          Also, can confirm about AnonCFRE’s #2 point. Several times we had matching campaigns and people would call in all concerned that their donation was too late for the matching or whatever, and I always just said that absolutely, the donation would be matched. Because the matchers were always giving the money regardless as to whether we matched it or not, but none of the other donors knew that.

          Reply ↓
          1. AnonCFRE*

            You bring up a great part of the guaranteed match process, Slow Gin Lizz! There are always a couple of stragglers, and they get so happy when they find out that there’s still time to join the party. It makes my day to let them know they’re going to be included.

            People LOVE those donor matches, and I have a contingent who always save up to give at match time because it means so much to them. On the other side, we have a donor who will only give to BE the one “matching gifts”, because they understand how the process works and like encouraging others.

            Connecting those groups so they can all support a charity they love together is one of the best parts of my job.

            Reply ↓
      2. Code monkey manager*

        Unfortunately not that clear cut. If a nonprofit is paying significantly more than market rate for their lowest paid workers, that’s an inefficient use of donor dollars. If they’re paying significantly under market rate for their C-level roles, they get people who don’t know how to run a large organization. (Source: currently work for a place where the second is true. It’s bad. It’s very bad. We’ve been through three CEOs in three years, the Chief Development Officer was just fired and I think the head of HR is going next.) I don’t think there’s any short cut way to know whether a nonprofit is a good place to give. Reading audited financial reports helps figure it out. Volunteering helps more.

        Reply ↓
    5. Generic Name*

      I’m on the board of a nonprofit (and thus I supply a portion of the board match for our fundraising campaigns), and at least according to our director of philanthropy, the board match absolutely does drive donor engagement. Maybe think of it as more of a goal for the community to meet rather than seeing it cynically (“org will get the money regardless/why not just give the million dollars?”). It’s also a way for the board to demonstrate their commitment to the mission. I don’t sit on the board just to have something to do (I have a full time job as well). I’m on the board because I believe in the cause, and I also back it financially.

      Reply ↓
      1. AnonCFRE*

        You are correct about Board giving, Generic Name! It means a lot to donors that the Board financially supports the organization just like they do, and a match is a great way to advertise it.

        In my opinion, in this case what’s driving donors is less the match opportunity itself, and more who it comes from. When we do capital campaigns, it’s similarly important to let donors know that there’s 100% Board and staff participation in the campaign. If the people who are most closely involved in the organization don’t put their money where their mouth is, why should anyone else?

        Love that you’re a contributing member of your Board, and that you’re listening to your Director of Philanthropy about this stuff! I guarantee you’re probably one of their favorite people.

        Reply ↓
  56. Agent Diane*

    Comms checking in.

    Our secret is whenever a senior leader or CEO says something really, really stupid we almost definitely advised against saying it but they think they are “good at comms” and said it anyway.

    That covers internal (“don’t talk about your third skiing trip this year in the same email that you’re announcing headcount cuts”) and external comms (“don’t call your products ‘total cr*p’ in the speech, Mr Ratner”).

    Reply ↓
    1. Lady Danbury*

      Or they just didn’t check with you first. Legal is the exact same situation (and we’re often in the same meetings with comms, often with similar advice that gets ignored).

      Reply ↓
      1. Agent Diane*

        Oh, I always know it’s going to be good when I’m called into an urgent meeting with someone senior and someone from legal. Bonus points if the head of HR is also called in.

        Reply ↓
    2. Anonym*

      OMG. Everyone thinks they’re good at comms. And everyone thinks MORE communication is the answer to everything. It really, really isn’t. You have a finite slice of people’s time and attention. Use it very, very carefully.

      I’m in internal comms now and am grateful to work with largely sensible execs at this point. We have more issues with cross-functional stuff, like “hey policy owner, you need to be prepared to answer questions on this policy change that’s affecting people’s lives in real ways; they’re not happy, and that’s completely reasonable, here are your talking points to appropriately acknowledge that and also keep the event on track.”

      Love the Ratner deep cut! (Or maybe not that deep? It’s been making the podcast rounds lately.)

      Reply ↓
      1. MsM*

        The more communication thing is so true. I swear the most valuable crisis strategy I’ve picked up over the years is that you can just let certain things play out, instead of responding and turning them into a bigger, more attention-grabbing problem.

        Reply ↓
      2. Daisy Adair*

        Anonym – off topic, but related… did you work in media relations and move to internal comms? I’m considering the switch….

        Reply ↓
    3. Eleanor Knope*

      The number of times I have coached our executives to not go for a joke at employee Q&As and the number of times they proceeded to make an out of touch or condescending joke anyway is way too high to count. Stop making jokes about each other’s golf scores or the audience not paying attention!

      Reply ↓
    4. Marcella*

      I tell people this regarding any creative that looks or sounds terrible. “I could write or design better than that! Their writers are terrible !” Chances are, a good writer wrote s great draft that was then “edited ” into pure crap by someone with more power.

      Reply ↓
    5. LarryforPM*

      In another life, I used to work for the Institute of Directors (at whose annual conference Ratner made his ‘total crap’ and ‘prawn sandwich’ comments). We were never allowed to mention this, even though the organisation had nothing to do with the content of the speech.

      Reply ↓
  57. A large cage of birds*

    From working in higher ed in an administrative position, the same excuses that you have given a college professor for not getting something done on time, your professors have given to me:
    – “What if it’s not done right at 5, but more like 6?”
    – (Sent on the day of the deadline for something they had three weeks to do and plenty of warning about) “Today is the last day of classes, and I’m not able to get it done.”
    – “I misread the deadline (for this competitive program where the correct deadline was posted multiple times) can I still turn it in?”
    – “I can’t do weekday deadlines because I have meetings.”
    – “You should have moved the X deadline to a different day (earlier) because your deadline is the same day as Y (thing I have no control over or knowledge of.)” Me: Couldn’t you just do X earlier if you need to focus on Y after? Them: “You just don’t understand.”

    Reply ↓
    1. bamcheeks*

      *sends in the initial application for the £5m grant; has not answered the 5 questions that will be used to score the grant*

      Reply ↓
  58. FNR*

    I work in fundraising as a prospect researcher and I think people outside the industry (and maybe even some folks in the industry) might be surprised to know that my particular specialty exists: most nonprofit organizations above a certain size have at least one person doing research on individual high-level donors. Things like professional history, estimated assets, giving to other organizations, etc. It can get extremely specific at times–in some cases, I’ve even researched someone’s family tree. I think people would also be surprised if they knew just how *much* information about themselves is out there on the internet. Privacy is very expensive.

    Reply ↓
    2. WantonSeedStitch*

      Yup! Another prospect researcher here. When I onboard new fundraisers, I always tell them, “my team is only able to make use of publicly available information. That said, you’d be surprised what’s publicly available.”

      Reply ↓
    3. Heirloom Tomato*

      Fellow prospect researcher here and I kind of love the slightly clandestine nature of my work. If you are both nosy and introverted I highly recommend it.

      It has definitely made me cautious about what I share online. An amazing amount of information is just freely and publicly available out there for anyone who has the time and the interest to look.

      I would add that there are very few Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, banks or multinational corporations that don’t have some kind of controversy around them. That’s why they’re rich.

      Reply ↓
      1. RCB*

        Not quite doing prospect research but I have been able to find the contact information for some very important people through some very determined online sleuthing. Once found the cell phone number for the Vice President of an African Country this way, and then I found a major foundation head in NYC Google through the parental contact sheet on their kids private school website, not something you could get to on their website but with a link you could get to it and Google brought it up. I was both impressed and creeped out and what I was able to find.

        Reply ↓
    4. bananners*

      I started off in prospect researching (I called it Professional Stalking) and even though I haven’t worked in fundraising for 10+ years, I still use my Internet Sleuthing skills to my advantage very regularly. People are amazed by how much I “know.”

      Reply ↓
    5. AnonCFRE*

      “Privacy is very expensive.”

      As a fundraiser I get SO EXCITED when everything starts coming up zeros. Could there genuinely be nothing there? Sure. But in this day and age? Hello there, someone with the net worth to scrub their data from my usual sources!

      All the love for your prospect research work!

      Reply ↓
    6. Susan Calvin*

      A novelist I like does this as their day job, and occasionally (very circumspectly) blogs about it so I knew this existed, and a bit how bonkers it can be – my favorite tidbit of his was how many LinkedIn connections from hopeful fresh STEM graduates or internship seekers he has to fend off, because apparently people see “researcher” in a title and immediately jump to conclusions.

      Reply ↓
    7. tippytoes*

      MGO here, it’s always a weird feeling to “meet” a prospect for the first time after reviewing their file and pretend you don’t know anything about them.

      Reply ↓
  59. WorkerJawn*

    Physicians are not researchers! I’m biased because I’m research staff and I literally have a job because doctors can’t do what I do, but even things like pulling patient lists in an EMR and running stats is outside the knowledge of so many docs. Physicians are trained to care for patients and if they want to do research, they have to figure it out on their own. Even at academic medical centers!

    Also, so few of them have good HIPAA practices. I swear, at least one a project I tell someone with twice as much professional experience than me that no, they cannot just email me that file.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lime green Pacer*

      Physicians who “do their own research” often become quacks, because they are not trained to be scientists. To dig deeper into this, check out https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ , a non-profit blog where multiple physician-scientists critique quacks’ “research”.

      Reply ↓
      1. Calamity Janine*

        to just wildly spitball here, i think a huge part of this – that you’ll also find in nurses and, well, okay, dentists are the stereotype lol – is medical care is something you HAVE to do with a degree of confidence. even if you’re faking it to make it, not letting the patient know that you’re clueless is something that can genuinely have negative outcomes all its own. so medical professionals have to walk this tightrope of on one hand keeping up with continuing education and admitting their ignorance… but also needing that professional confidence to not flinch and do the dang thing. when the continuing education depends so much on knowledge easily gained, that humbleness can fly out the window in favor of “oh yeah, i totally know this, i am following it perfectly, i am totally hot shit!”. that’s the kind of confidence that your average huckster can smell from three miles away because if you think you’re totally right and the smartest… well, you’ve just become a perfect mark.

        aaaaaand something something dentist selling amway because “i’m smart, you know! they convinced me this was a good idea and i can’t be wrong so it must be!”

        Reply ↓
  60. MDP*

    I’m a medical laboratory technologist in a hospital blood bank, working a behind-the-scenes job that will never be glamorized on a TV show. We run tests on patients’ specimens and issue blood products, but if those aren’t necessary or aren’t within our guidelines, we have no difficulty refusing, even if a nurse insists that these are the doctor’s orders. And if the doctor still wants it done, we can escalate the matter to our transfusion specialists, who are also doctors.

    Reply ↓
  61. Academic*

    Just how competitive it is to get a tenure track position at a university. I think that it’s obvious from the outside that a tenure track job at Harvard is competitive. But almost all tenure track academic positions will have at least 50-300+ applicants, all of whom have a PhD and are experts in their subject matter.

    I was recently talking to a college student at a small regional university (good but not top tier R2 school, but no name recognition outside of the city it was in). They were bragging that their professor was doing research on a topic that had been in the news, and were implying that they must have settled to work at this university. I had to explain that their professor was great, but everyone at the university was involved in research, and that their job was likely a dream job that had been highly competitive!

    Reply ↓
    1. Nesta*

      Do you find this to be more true for some fields than others? I’ve been on several faculty hiring committees, though admittedly for a somewhat more specific field, and we are lucky if we end up with 3 viable candidates to interview.

      There is actually someone in our department who was hired because they were the only person left standing after the second round of the interview process. Both of our other candidates took other positions before we could offer it to the one who joined us!

      Reply ↓
    2. Golden*

      This isn’t true in all cases, but one can also just be connected to the right people to land that job. The place I did my PhD had several married PIs, and to me it was painfully obvious when they had agreed to give a tenure track position to one person in order to recruit their more stellar spouse.

      Reply ↓
    3. Sitting Pretty*

      I work in a state university, mediocre ratings, so-so outcomes, not a big player on the higher ed scene. It never ceases to amaze me how many of the faculty we hire did all their studies very elite institutions, many of them ivy league. And they have beyond stellar research and teaching track records. Every one of them had to hustle hard for these jobs.

      Graduating doctoral students from my institution who aspire to teach in academia are facing long odds. The competition is fierce out there.

      Reply ↓
  62. Required*

    From the (US) flavor industry. They aren’t secret, but not widely known outside of it.

    Some of the chemicals used in natural flavors are identical to the artificial version other than the raw material they start from. Same chemical, same purity, different source.

    Vanillin, a component of vanilla and other flavors, can be made from sawdust.

    Castoreum used to be an expensive ingredient used in flavors. It was made from the secretions of beaver glands.

    Reply ↓
    2. LingNerd*

      I did already know about this just because I’m interested in food/baking/etc. I didn’t know about vanillin coming from sawdust specifically, but it doesn’t surprise me! One of the major reasons whiskey is aged in oak barrels is because the wood has vanillin in it, and that’s where whiskey gets its vanilla notes from

      Reply ↓
  63. Professional_Lurker*

    Archivist here. I and everyone I know in this field does a little internal cheer whenever we get to cull/throw something away. Space is always at a premium in archival storage rooms/facilities, and people save a *lot* of fluff with no long-term value.

    Reply ↓
    1. Schrodinger's Dumb Adulteress*

      1000% agreed. The amount of times I have overhead potential donors being turned down very gently, and being crushed that their various paintings/papers/doodads are not considered of archival significance is a very sad-making number. Never hurts to ask but don’t assume!

      Reply ↓
      1. Professional_Lurker*

        And we do it gently, because we understand that collection is interesting and/or important to the donor, but most archive also have pretty strict limitations on their scope, and we really don’t like “poaching” materials from that other archive. So no, I can’t take your 50 year collection of (insert national newspaper here) issues, that’s neat that you have it but they maintain their own archive, and besides this archive is dedicated to religious history. But thank you for thinking of us!

        Reply ↓
    2. Dust Bunny*

      Absolutely this.

      I just finished a collection that belonged to a guy who had saved every single newspaper clipping about himself–he was a big cheese and there were a lot–ever sent to him. One person sent an entire Sunday paper just for a 1″ x 2″ clipping. And all of it was turning brown and getting crunchy with age. I was not sorry to copy one of each that was actually unique and toss everything else.

      My coworkers is dumping boxes and boxes of medical journal reprints (these are singles of published articles, basically) that a former archives director was convinced people would want as souvenirs. Nobody has ever asked for one. The size of the collection probably went down by 25%.

      Reply ↓
      1. Professional_Lurker*

        getting rid of newspaper is the *best*, rivaled only by deconstructing those horrible bulky, sticky-backed photo albums and rehousing the photographs in proper sleeving.

        Reply ↓
        1. Dust Bunny*

          AAAUGH PHOTO ALBUMS. Side note: Label your photos on the back. We have boxes and boxes of photos with minimal context and zero identification.

          I also now hate tape, and one of my former bosses one dropped an f-bomb when we opened some newly-donated boxes and discovered that the donor had laminated every single page. Except plastic darkens with age and they were all now the color of apple juice. I have some hobbies that involve paper materials and am endlessly railing against tape, ink, and lamination.

          Reply ↓
          1. Professional_Lurker*

            And lamination can’t be removed without destroying the document or photograph. Hate with the fire of a thousand suns.

            Reply ↓
          2. Myrin*

            I’m super strict with people gifting our archive anything because my predecessor of 30 years was Decidedly Not and I know the unidentifiable-and-in-boxes you speak of all too well. They have to fill out a form and for some reason most are super!! excited!!! about that? IDK what’s up with that but if it helps me and my documentation, I’m all for it. I’ve also taken to hold mini interviews about people’s donations and I’ve had a blast with those (and people loooove talking about themselves so it’s a win-win).

            Oh, and also, I always make sure to praise people especially well who have labelled their photos and they’re always SO PROUD. I’m manipulating this city’s senior population into becoming good lay archivists one by one.

            Reply ↓
    3. Dogwoodblossom*

      My parents had an acquaintance who was a little kooky and when her father passed, she was determined to donate his 50 years of personal journaling to the state university’s archive. Except his journals were like “today I got up, had a piece of toast…” just absolute minutiae about his day to day. When the university turned her down, she put all these boxes and boxes of his writing in a truck, drove it to the university (a several hour drive) and dropped them off outside.

      Reply ↓
      1. Dust Bunny*

        yeah, we get that kind of thing, too–stuff that people don’t want to keep but don’t want to feel guilty about dumping. Basically we get to dump it for them.

        Reply ↓
  64. CzechMate*

    I work in higher ed. Occasionally, students will come in with a complaint about, say, a professor, an office, how the university is handling a political issue, etc.

    We administrators usually can’t say anything (because professionalism), but we usually agree. Oh, you don’t like how ResLife handled the housing selection this year? Take a seat, my child, and I will tell you about a decade’s worth of housing selection mismanagement.

    Reply ↓
    1. Dark Macadamia*

      Also true at the middle school level, lol. You think that school policy is stupid? You think our building/schedule/curriculum sucks? You’re frustrated there seem to be no consequences for that kid who constantly disrupts class/bullies people/never does any work? JOIN THE CLUB.

      Reply ↓
      1. CzechMate*

        Now you’re making me think of my friend (elementary school teacher) who was recently complaining about a fourth grader in his class. “HE PRODUCES NOTHING!”

        Reply ↓
  65. Schrodinger's Dumb Adulteress*

    A really surprising number of people think they can/should be a librarian because they love reading/books. This is a mistake; don’t get your masters in library science because you love reading/books, do it because you love coding and spreadsheets. Also, if you’re not very good with people/don’t like dealing with people/are not very good at communicating or training, and want a job where you don’t talk to co-workers or even have co-workers, please, please, PLEASE do not become a librarian.

    I consider both of these ‘secrets’ because a lot of people are very surprised to hear that no, not just anyone can walk in and sit at the desk and start checking out books, that’s the least part of the job these days in many places. Things have come on a bit in the 21st century, including libraries!

    Reply ↓
    2. Rex Libris*

      Unless it’s an incredibly small system, it’s unlikely the person checking out books is ever a librarian. The librarians are usually in the back buried in spreadsheets, budgets, staff issues, program planning, meetings, email and etc.

      Reply ↓
      1. ReallyBadPerson*

        As a library volunteer for a small rural library, I can confirm that I am the person checking out your books. The real librarian is in her office up to her neck in spreadsheets, endless zoom meetings, and some state department level acts of diplomacy.

        Reply ↓
    3. Yet another librarian*

      Ha, yes! I do a lot of teaching and course support as an academic librarian, and a shocking number of students tell me how much they’d like to work in a library so they can read and not talk to people. It never occurs to them that I’m available to hear this aspiration because I showed up to do *public speaking* and instruction that day!

      And when I do read as part of my job, it’s largely on depressing real-world topics. Granted, I signed up for that and I think it’s important to do, but most of my time is spent in public-facing work and/or supporting with research into things like extremism and criminal justice reform.

      Reply ↓
      1. MCL*

        I work in an information school with a Master’s program in LIS, and it is somewhat startling to hear from (some) new students that they want the kind of library job where they don’t have to talk to people. Those jobs are infinitesimally rare and I have to gently explain that they probably are going to have to learn how to work collaboratively. Yes, there are non-public-service library jobs. But you are probably still going to have to work with others.

        Reply ↓
    4. Professional_Lurker*

      Thirding, and adding in Museums and Archives to round out the LAM family. We get distressingly little time to explore our archives or look at the pretty artwork. It’s a *lot* of cataloging, and tracking, and spreadsheets. So many spreadsheets.

      And you need to be able to triage, because you are always juggling finishing processing that collection, but also cataloging that new group of items, but also prepping items from that third collection for shipment because it’s going on loan, and also there’s a researcher who just showed up and wants to look at “stuff” from a fifth collection…

      Reply ↓
      1. NothingIsLittle*

        Letting people down gently that you don’t want their garbage! I wasn’t on the collections team, but so many people would want to donate things that are old without considering that it has no historical significance and we have pay to maintain everything in the collection (whether through materials, space, or salary).

        Reply ↓
        1. Rex Libris*

          You get it in public libraries too. So, so many people are absolutely shocked and offended that we don’t want Granddads complete run of National Geographic from 1975-1995, or their 1983 set of World Book Encyclopedias.

          Reply ↓
      2. Myrin*

        Oh god, your second paragraph is my life right now. I’m in local government and I just received 66 file folders from a coworker I have to deal with and right as I was sitting down to start processing them, another coworker called and says he has about 90 folders for me. 150+ folders in a matter of two days! And I can’t just store them away for a more opportune time because that’s what my predecessor (illegally!) did for literal decades and now there’s not enough space for the new stuff! And have I mentioned that pre-66 folders, I was in the middle of working through the literal kilometres of old stuff I inherited?!

        Add to that the institution’s old boss who wants to learn more about the city’s participation in Napoleon’s Russia Campaign from 1812 (not a lot to report, 1813 was the deciding year for our area), the couple whose notary told them there are brewer’s rights tied to their house (IDK what that’s called in English but you get the gist of it) and they’d like to have “a copy of that” (not how that works!) for their “history of our house” project, the county’s archaeologist who is flabberghasted by the remains of a well he found during an excavation in preparation for the new underground car park and wondering if I have documents which could help shed light on that (boy do I ever! Very interesting, actually!), and all the old men who regularly rock up in my office with their little pet projects.

        Reply ↓
    5. TraceMark*

      Also! Checking out books is a surprisingly physical occupation. Those books need to be pulled out of return bins, carried here and there as they are checked in and out, and then put by people on to shelves. It’s not super heavy, tote-that-barge-lift-that-bale work, but it’s not nothing, and there are a lot of repetitive stress injuries. The number of people who tell me that working at the public library is going to be their retirement job so they can take it easy…

      Reply ↓
      1. Professional_Lurker*

        ooohh… yeah. No, you’re on your feet a lot, and often carrying or pushing a not-insubstantial amount of weight.

        Reply ↓
      2. bamcheeks*

        I actually did this in a university library for my Year 10 work experience and it EXTREMELY put me off “I like books, I’ll be a librarian” thinking.

        Reply ↓
      3. Dust Bunny*

        Archives assistant: The two primary requirements for my job were that I have a Bachelor’s degree in something and that I be able to lift and carry 50 pounds repeatedly, up and down stairs. The latter is not a nice-to-have: File boxes of papers are heavy.

        Reply ↓
    6. In the middle*

      Yes! Teacher librarian for 16 years. I NEVER sit and read at work. I spend most of my time teaching technology and searching, programing, deep in the excel sheets, and dealing with student chromebooks.

      Reply ↓
    7. AgnomeN*

      I’m going to quote the first paragraph of this comment to everyone I talk to about my library job who then expresses interest in getting an MLIS, because it is SO true. While I do work in a library department that touches books on a daily basis, so much of my job is creating spreadsheets, updating spreadsheets, running reports that then get turned into spreadsheets… just spreadsheets in general.

      … More seriously, not having social skills/hating working with other people is how you get a team of senior catalogers that’s held grudges longer than I’ve been alive and throw fits when the paper the book flags are printed on gets changed. Don’t be those catalogers.

      Reply ↓
      1. M*

        In many cases, you can’t be those catalogers anymore. In the decade I’ve been in public libraries, having in-house catalogers has gone from being normal to being quite rare. That job will continue to exist at the Library of Congress and at book vendor companies, but I imagine competition for those spots will be quite steep, so it shouldn’t be anyone’s Plan A for their career.

        Reply ↓
        1. Rex Libris*

          I think it varies depending on the region and the library type. Public libraries in my part of the US still normally have in-house catalogers, though of course there are more classified staff copy catalogers than MLS catalogers. Often the head of technical services doubles as the head cataloger.

          Reply ↓
      2. JustaTech*

        After high school I worked for the preservation department of a large private university library. There were entire sections of the collection we couldn’t preserve properly because their catalogers were so far behind – partly due to a feud or something 30 years before. (I did not ask.)

        There were also some amazingly antisocial librarians – they would arrive at like 5 or 6am in order to get most of their work day done before the students (grad students! Not even undergrads!) showed up and wanted to touch something.

        Not everyone who worked there was a Personality, but there were enough to fill that old building to the brim.

        Reply ↓
    8. PublicLibrarian*

      I’m head of Adult Services at a small public library, and this is so true. I deal with people day in and day out, and I have to give a little self-deprecating laugh every time a patron says, “Oh, you helped me a few weeks ago!” — Patron, I’ve dealt with several hundred folks in the past few weeks!
      To your second paragraph….. I literally just the other day had someone ask me (after thanking me for finding some really obscure old articles!!) if I “was trained for this job.” SIGH.

      Reply ↓
      1. Regina Philange*

        I’m Head of Adult Services and Programming. I get so frustrated when patrons say:
        1. Thank you so much for putting this event together for us! dude, I didn’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. it’s my job description and if I DONT do it, I get fired.
        2. I’m standing at the door signing people in. “and who are you? do you work here?” no, I’m running around with a clipboard for funzies.
        I think they think that programs must be run by little elves, bc librarians are the ones who sit at the desk and read all day. ;)

        Reply ↓
    9. Irish Teacher.*

      I found this weird even when I was a kid and people would tell me I should work in a bookshop or a library because I “liked to read.” Even then, I knew it didn’t mean you get paid to read all day (I would be done for that if anybody would be willing to pay me for it!) and that anything involving sales and the general public was not my thing.

      Reply ↓
      2. goddessoftransitory*

        It’s like telling someone who like cooking to “open a restaurant!” No, that is a whole other skillset and most people running restaurants are actually cooking maybe 10% of the time.

        Reply ↓
  66. Name (Required)*

    I’m in print media, and I badly need people to know that an article’s byline in no way reflects the efforts, influence and decisions of that group one person. If you’re about to shoot off a nastygram to an article writer, please know that everyone from copy editors to section editors to editors in chief to salespeople to deep-pocketed advertisers to publishers who are equally power-hungry and out of touch have impacted the final product.

    Reply ↓
    2. WellRed*

      I’m in print media and say this depends on the organization and type of product. At ours, there’s a bright line between sales/marketing and the journalism. But I have definitely seen some overzealous advertisers try to throw their weight around.

      Reply ↓
  67. Who knows*

    I work in health research.

    There is no right answer. We often have no idea what we’re doing and are making stuff up as we go. That “scientific” article you read? There is no way to prove that it’s correct. Even the authors don’t really know if their conclusions are true.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ms. Yvonne*

      Do you follow Retraction Watch? Their weekly newsletter is full of “wtf”, which now seem like a direct extension of this comment.

      Reply ↓
    2. Relentlessly Socratic*

      Former researcher here and now I work in evidence-based medicine (so I do large reviews of medical research for medical societies and fed agencies)–a LOT of it is weaker than one would think.

      Reply ↓
    3. foureyedlibrarian*

      I do a lot of systematic reviews. Allegedly the highest level of evidence, but many subpar ones are conducted and published that do not follow almost any of the rules (one author, only searched one databases, what’s PRISMA?)

      Reply ↓
      1. Relentlessly Socratic*

        I do evidence reviews/systematic reviews for a living. There are varying methodologies for different types of reviews that have higher or lower levels of rigor depending on the final intended use (I’m thinking of something like very rapid reviews/scans/etc), but if that’s not transparent, then that’s a problem. And, yeah, there’s a lot of bad ones out there.

        My librarians are my heroes! I couldn’t do my work without having a librarian on the project. If people are doing systematic reviews and not giving their librarians authorship, I want to have words with them.

        Reply ↓
  68. LingNerd*

    I’m in pharma, and something that really surprised me when I learned about it was failure to supply fees. Sometimes the fees can be more than the value of the product! Essentially, if your company is out of stock, the customer demands that you pay for them to buy it from a competitor. This is able to happen because there are lots of manufacturers, but only a handful of wholesalers/distributors, so there’s a big power imbalance.

    Another interesting thing about pharmaceutical manufacturing is that labels are super tightly controlled. Access to the labels themselves is very limited and they’re inspected to make sure everything on them is correct. It makes sense when you think about it because an incorrectly labeled drug could literally kill somebody, but I never considered how important labels were before I worked here!

    Reply ↓
    1. Ruby Tuesday*

      Also in pharma, and 2nding the label part! Especially for controlled substances – they’re locked in the vault with the drug itself, usually. Or some equally tightly controlled area with very limited access. The text has to be inspected by 2 people to be 100% correct – no errors, ever! And they need to be 100% reconciled, regardless of the drug product. For example, if a label gets torn accidentally, it has to be defaced and saved with the batch record for reconciliation purposes.
      Oh, and in some cases, the printers themselves are considered mfg equipment and have to be qualified, validated, etc.

      Reply ↓
    2. JustaTech*

      Yes about the labels! When I’ve needed to test the physical label (does it stick to the bag/bottle/box) it’s been like pulling teeth to get them, even though there is zero product in the facility where I work.

      Reply ↓
  69. Holly Gibney*

    Writer here.

    – “No, I don’t want to read your screenplay.”

    Sorry, just had to get that one out of the way!

    – There is almost no money in writing comic books unless you’re at the very, very top and your books are getting optioned for films, etc. It is absolutely a labor of love for most of us. (And I’m speaking as someone who has had a not insignificant volume of work published.)

    – Most novelists rely on another source of income. Most people who “don’t make it” in television can’t get to the writing stage because everything leading up to that is paid so poorly and you’re treated so abysmally that pretty much the only way to hang on until you actually get a writing gig on a show is by having a partner who has a dependable income, or having a trust fund. People wonder why there’s a diversity problem in Hollywood? This is the big issue behind the scenes. I just finished the book “Careless People” about Facebook behind the scenes and my biggest takeaway was that pretty much everything in that book is happening on an industry-wide scale in entertainment. It’s literally so pervasive and normalized that it took me until I was about 90% through the book to realize that I’ve actually encountered most of what she’s writing about.

    Reply ↓
    1. Holly Gibney*

      Just thought of a few more!

      When you see “written by NAME” on an episode of TV, that’s the person who is sent home to put the episode in script form, but the storylines are almost always decided on as a group. Also, most of the producers listed in the opening credits are the other writers. There are non-writing producers who can get credited here, too. Conversely, there are some shows where you might see a lot of names of writers, but everyone on the inside knows that the showrunner doesn’t allow anyone to actually write or be creative. Their names are just for show and the showrunner controls all of it.

      If the group of writers doesn’t have time to send someone home to write the actual script, they sometimes write it together in the room. Until way too recently, many writers referred to this as a “gang bang.”

      Not sure if this is surprising, but I and literally. every. other. woman. I. know. in. this. field. has been harassed at work. When people think of “me too” they usually think of the more egregious acts of harassment and assault, but the amount of casual sexism and light harassment (by both men and women!) is staggering. Most of the time you feel like you can’t say anything about it because you’re lucky to just have ONE successful writer in your corner who might get you a job someday, and saying “hey, could you not comment on how great my boobs look in this shirt?” might hurt their feelings and make them less inclined to staff you. The person who said that to me was a woman, by the way.

      Reply ↓
    2. Hlao-roo*

      I recently read Burn it Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan and it was eye-opening for me about the behind-the-scenes diversity and harassment problems in Hollywood.

      Reply ↓
        1. Regina Philange*

          agreed on all counts! I was one of the low paid, oft-harrassed aspiring writers in TV, and I quit the industry bc of the low pay and constantly simmering toxicity. no one can actually be creative in that environment.
          I went to library school instead.

          Reply ↓
    3. JustaTech*

      I can only think of maybe two genre novelists who are either single or their spouse is a cowriter and both of them are near-compulsive writers – at least one novel a year, sometimes two, and neither of them have more than a “comfortable” living.
      Everyone else has either a day job or a partner with a day job or both.

      Reply ↓
  70. Bast*

    Attorneys — This is going to vary wildly depending on what type of law you practice and whether you are in a large firm or smaller one, but trials (particularly in civil lit) are not as commonplace as they used to be. Cases drag on and on, yet no one wants to go to trial. No one. It’s a pain. It’s a lot of paperwork. If you’re a one-man band or a smaller practice it’s days (or weeks) you can’t spend on anything else and you lose perfectly good, billable hours. There’s a lot less of the standing up and shouting “OBJECTION” than people seem to think there is, and a lot more time researching case law and fighting with Microsoft Work to make sure your motion/brief/whatever it is aligns with the latest BS the court decided to change. It is not nearly as dramatic as often portrayed, nor is it often about “justice” but rather, finding and exploiting loopholes and finding obscure case law to argue the most ridiculous point that will have you wondering “I went to law school for this?”.

    Paralegals – Have you ever heard of the new med school graduate who defers to the 20-year veteran nurse who has more knowledge and experience? Same with paralegals and attorneys. Don’t be fooled by title. I’ve seen many fresh law school graduates asking the 20 year veteran paralegal for their opinion or how to do something because law school really only teaches you the “in theory” of how to practice law, not the day to day practice of it. There are many competent paralegals who keep their office (and attorneys!) in check and catch things the attorneys do not. They also often spend more time on the cases and typically have the best idea of what is going on. They are not just glorified receptionists, and when you “must speak with the attorney” you are more than likely going to get the same answer from me, however, my rate is $200.00 higher than the paralegal’s.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lifelong student*

      Love this one as I was once a paralegal. I remember when a first year attorney asked me a question. I answered and told him how to do the thing. He asked me to do it and I said- no- you have to do it- maybe with my help- or otherwise you won’t learn. Of course it helped that I was almost old enough to be his mother.

      Reply ↓
      1. Lifelong student*

        Oh by the way- this first year is now a partner in a prestigious firm- and I paid him over $300 for an hour long consult!

        Reply ↓
    2. Lady Danbury*

      A relative (who happens to be a nurse in her 60s) always says “better an old nurse than a young doctor.” I agree for both nurses and paralegals!

      Reply ↓
    5. Legal Assistant LC*

      Trials are expensive! I work in personal injury/medical negligence on the plaintiff’s side, and we really do try to talk clients out of going to trial if there’s a reasonable settlement offer on the table. Whatever we’ve already spent on the case will easily triple if we go to trial. And our fee goes up, so the return on investment for the client goes down. Plus, there’s always the risk of loosing, and then it’s all been for nothing (or worse, as if it goes really badly the plaintiff can be on the hook for the defendant’s costs).

      Reply ↓
  71. Burnt Out Librarian*

    /laughs in librarian

    No matter how many times I tell folks horror stories about working in public libraries, they seem to be gobsmacked. We’ve really ingrained that false narrative about libraries being calm, safe, quiet places. They aren’t, and haven’t been for years. And I don’t want them to be! The times of shushing and quiet and being reserved also involved a lot of persecution and gatekeeping.

    But yeah, no, I don’t read all day, if you want to volunteer we’re not going to just let you host storytime, and there is a lot of drama going on at all times without any shushing involved.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rook Thomas*

      Another librarian here — and YES to all of this. We sometimes remind folks that we are open to the public, which means everyone . . . that includes people who are talking on their phones on speaker, little kids who are coughing, and all kinds of everyone in between.

      Reply ↓
    2. pinkjar*

      So true! I had to work with police to ban a patron for stalking behavior within 3 weeks of starting at a new library, and one of my friends was so shocked that anything even remotely unsafe could happen at a library. “But don’t people just go there to read?!?!”

      Reply ↓
    3. AnotherRetiredLibrarian*

      Preach it!

      Also, years ago, so many people believed public libraries got a free copy of every book when published. Even small libraries.

      Reply ↓
    4. foureyedlibrarian*

      Does it make you feel better at all to know that medical and academic libraries are like that too? (Probably not….)

      Reply ↓
    5. Jean Pargetter Hardcastle*

      My spouse is constantly saying, “I had no idea about libraries…” Like most people, I guess they didn’t realize a very normal library day could include checking security footage to see who started the fight; fending off marriage proposals; calling the police because someone stole all the video games; navigating parking wars; handing out after school snacks; and helping people apply for jobs, post Craigslist ads, and/or find their estranged family on Facebook. And, of course, listening to trauma-dumping with a smile. Check on your library worker friends; they’re not okay.

      Reply ↓
  72. NotAManager*

    Librarians GENUINELY do not care whether our patrons like to read or not. We’re just happy to have you, for whatever reason you want to use the library.

    Reply ↓
    1. Sparkly Librarian*

      I’ll go a step further. I don’t really care when you bring the books back. On a macro level, the library works if MOST people return their materials and do it on time. But individually, when you take the books away it makes space on our shelves and someone(s) gains the enjoyment of them. If you return them late, I hardly ever notice (no bells and whistles go off when they’re checked in; we haven’t had overdue fines in years) and there is no need to abashedly confess. Save that for explaining that you’ve lost a book entirely, and I will very likely forgive the replacement fee.

      Reply ↓
      1. M*

        I’m the one employee in the library who *does* care if you bring the book back on time, because I’m the one who has to replace it for the next person if you don’t. But I personally reach out to let people know to please bring the book back, and save my impolite comments for my officemates. The person at the desk when you bring it in won’t even know I’m mad about this James Patterson nonsense you’ve had at your house for 6 weeks, and they’ll be confused if you start apologizing.

        Reply ↓
  73. theinone*

    Not sure if this counts but as a student right now:

    We’re terrified. We know what you think about us, but we grew up only knowing standardized testing. Every teacher in my school said our grades don’t define us, but we knew they were lying to our faces because our parents and our school and our future universities and the government funding our school based on test scores was judging our grades. So what else could we focus on?

    And now we’re graduating into a hellscape of unknowns- even me, a sophomore, I have no idea what science will look like as a field once I leave college. Oh and if you want to go to grad school to delay that terror? Hope you got multiple first author papers as an undergraduate along with that 4.0, because admissions keep getting more and more and more competitive.

    We’re scared. All the time. And we keep hearing that we’re the generation that’ll fix it… but we’re not allowed to do anything to fix it.

    Reply ↓
    1. AnotherAllison*

      I feel for you. I work with college students, and I can tell that k-12 was spent teaching to the test. It’s really frustrating to see how unprepared a lot of students are, but I know it’s not your fault!!

      Reply ↓
    2. Lady Lessa*

      Just some encouragement, there is a fair bit of interesting science being done by manufacturing companies. I’m at the end of my career, only one or two papers published, but for me making new blends for the potential use of customers is fun. It can be challenging, like how do I solve this problem (like getting good thermal conductivity at low viscosity), aggravating when all you hear is “Make the cost lower”.

      But I’m still having fun and I had a lot of nice co-workers (and some stinkers).

      Good luck.

      Reply ↓
      1. JustaTech*

        Yes please, industry is not a dirty word! You do real science, the equipment is usually from this century, if not this decade, the building (usually) isn’t going to fall in on you, and they pay you money and not “exposure”.

        There are lots and lots of things you can do with a science degree in industry (Quality! Regulatory! Clinical trial management! Supply chain!) that you’ll only find by working. And far better to find out that you actually hate it *before* you go into debt for a PhD.

        Reply ↓
    3. Pocket Mouse*

      I feel for you. I was doing the math the other day, and for people around your age, earliest memories may have been shaped by the Great Recession, probably the first generation with active shooter drills in elementary school, high school disrupted by COVID, now this chaos as you enter adulthood… yeah. You have not had the easiest time of it, and it makes all the sense in the world you’d question the future ahead of you.

      I hope, though, that you know you have power. Higher ed is one of the first targets of this administration BECAUSE of all the power students like you and the skills you’re developing have, as has been demonstrated throughout this country’s history. Most everyone is capable of taking action to get elected officials pay attention to their concerns, but students frequently have a level of capacity and bravery and creativity—not to mention community—to be really successful in this. Wishing you and your cohort the best.

      Reply ↓
    4. Special Ed*

      I feel for you, but your teachers are NOT lying when we said your grades don’t define you. They do if you’re going into very narrow and competitive fields, but that is a choice. Maybe one you have been pressured into, but the world is so, so much bigger than academia and highly competitive grad schools.

      Life is long and unpredictable. I’m in my 40s and at this point I don’t even know if people around me went to college, much less where. The most well off people I know are in the trades.

      Reply ↓
    5. younger millennial*

      I work with a lot of young people (pre-K through PhD), and as a recovering grades-obsessed perfectionist myself, I’d just like to say: EXTREMELY few mistakes are so bad you can’t come back from them in some way. It is actually pretty difficult to permanently ruin your life!

      For example, even if you want to go into a competitive PhD program eventually, I talk to an absolutely wild number of current PhD students in top-ranked programs who had 2.x GPAs in undergrad. I recently met an Biochemistry PhD student who had a 2.3 GPA in undergrad, but who also spent a few years working in forestry services after graduation and was considered a highly competitive candidate. I don’t have concrete stats on this, but my general impression is that very, very few (if any) of the STEM PhD students I encounter at my R1 university have a 4.0.

      From the hiring side, as someone who hires a lot of students and recent grads for desk jobs, I would rather see a 2.x or even 1.x GPA with the ability to discuss how being an Applebee’s server taught you conflict resolution and customer service skills, compared to a 4.0 but no non-academic work experience. Frankly, the fact that you’re on this site at all is probably one of the best things you can do for your professional future. Alison knows her stuff!

      Your teachers are not lying to you. The world is bigger than school. You may be explicitly judged on your grades in an easy-to-prioritize way right now, but PLEASE develop weird niche ungraded interests to care about. Make bad art—I’m really so serious about that! It will make your life bigger, better, and more interesting.

      Millennials were also told that we would “save the world,” and in fact there’s a rather famous Time magazine cover to that effect, simultaneously calling us “lazy, entitled narcissists.” It’s just a way for older generations to offload responsibility and literally doesn’t mean anything. You’ll save some things and you’ll ruin some things, just like previous generations did and continue to do.

      The world as a whole will never reach a state of “being saved,” but maybe black-footed ferrets will, and isn’t that worth trying for?

      Reply ↓
    6. FD*

      It’s okay to be terrified.

      I don’t know if people still say this, but when I was growing up, people used to say college is the best time of your life. I think that’s nostalgia talking–college is an extremely difficult time! You’re expected to behave like an adult, know how to navigate systems like an adult–but you aren’t given the autonomy of an adult. It frankly sucks even when you *aren’t* graduating into a hellscape of unknowns.

      One of the things that sucks is that up to this point, everybody talks as if the scores you’re getting, the things you’re doing, are going to determine your life forever. It creates this image of two paths–one where you’re successful and another where everything sucks. In reality, school (and life in general) are a series of branching paths. There *are* things that will make the next steps more challenging, but that doesn’t mean that you’re doomed if you make one wrong turn.

      Grades don’t define you–people can get good jobs with bad grades and bad jobs with great grades. Also, to be very blunt, no one really cares about your grades after you’ve been out of college for a couple of years. Having a degree does help–it’s BS, but the number of jobs that don’t ask for a college degree is small–but I haven’t been asked about my GPA in many, many years.

      So, what can you do right now?

      The most important thing you can do is connect with people. I don’t even mean networking. I mean just having a social system. When things go bad, our social systems are what keep us all afloat, whether that’s chipping in to each other’s GoFundMe or giving someone a ride when their car broke down. But you can’t build those networks on a dime–they build up over time as you get coffee or share book recommendations or even send each other a meme.

      We also all need to re-learn a bunch of practical skills. Do you have friends who might be interested in doing a skill swap? Maybe one friend is an excellent cook but another person can knit. Learning together makes the entire thing less daunting and strengthens your community.

      You’re in college, which gives you a natural network to start with. Don’t limit yourself to your peers though. It sounds like you’re interested in science. Find people doing research you’re interested in and email them! It doesn’t need to be at your university and it doesn’t have to be fancy. “Hey, I read your paper about the mating behavior of basking sharks. I’m interested in marine biology and I was wondering how you came up with the study design” etc. It’s good to have people you see in person, but don’t forget about online groups, especially around things you’re interested in. (Have a favorite ecology podcast? I bet it has a Discord!)

      You aren’t responsible for saving the world by yourself–you aren’t personally and your generation isn’t. For that matter, there’s never going to be a day that the world is saved, when we blow up the Death Star and get medals and everything is fixed forever. But there are small steps you can do now that matter, even if they feel inadequate.

      Reply ↓
    7. Calamity Janine*

      well, as a millennial i can say: the terror doesn’t really decrease.

      it does, however, become easier to bear.

      similarly, as others have mentioned? we were also supposed to be the youth who saved the world. and so were the yuppies, and so were the hippies, and so were the bright young things going bravely to the second world war, and the children who were supposed to grow up with the last great war finished, and the dashing gents going to fight that great world war, and the blessed gilded ones riding the innovations of the turn of the century, and… you get the idea. this is not work you can actually complete. it always gets assigned in futility. that’s both terrifying and freeing. of course you’re not going to be able to fix it – no one has. but still, they have worth. you, too, have worth.

      to quote somebody who’s much smarter than me: do not be daunted by the enormity of grief. you are neither beholden to finish the work, nor can you abandon it.

      humanity is a hellova thing to be caught all up in, ain’t it?

      Reply ↓
  74. Freddy*

    Insurance agent. 1. We are not personally responsible for your rates. We are more akin to a cashier at the store. 2. We are not punitive, judgy, close-minded people. Most of us have an outrageous sense of humor. Don’t be scared to select us for jury duty. 3. We do a LOT behind the scenes to go to bat for our client. 4. Claims history is not the only thing factoring in to your rates. Lots of things are taken in to consideration. 5. A lot of cars that crash in to buildings crash into insurance agencies, for some reason. Assuming no one was hurt, we get a big kick out of that.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Other Evil HR Lady*

      That’s hilarious! I wish someone would have crashed into my former insurance agent’s office – petty b*tch that I am. He disappeared after Ian destroyed our home and we couldn’t find him, so hubby went on FB to see if, perhaps, we could find him that way – mother effer was at some restaurant away from the worst-hit area, laughing it up and carrying on.

      Anyway… we love our current agent, she’s amazing. :-)

      Reply ↓
  75. 3TrafficConesInATrenchCoat*

    I (30s F) used to work in the road construction portion of the civil engineering field (still a civil engineer, just a desk jockey now lol). People would say all the time “why do you need 5 guys just staring into an open hole all day!”.

    1. I’m one of those “guys”, so right off the bat, powers of observation leave a lot to be desired.
    2. Most of us aren’t just staring, usually we’re taking notes and photos, operating handled equipment, etc.
    3. Utilities require hand digging within a certain distance from their marked locations. Marked locations vary wildly in accuracy. So when we’re trying to locate, say, a 10-inch high pressure gas main that, if ruptured, could take out a 5 block radius of our location and render another 10 block radius in imminent danger.. Yes, we’re all staring into that hole waiting to see any hint of yellow so we can notify the person digging and the other crews on site that the main has been located.
    4. Underground work is specifically dangerous (as if working 10 feet away from life traffic wasn’t dangerous enough). The potential for trench collapse is very real, many construction workers die every year from either being buried alive or being crushed by wet soil and failed reinforcement structures. So we’re also staring into that hole to watch for signs of soil movement, reinforcement failure, and to spot the guy digging so if something bad happens, we can locate them quickly and possibly save their life.

    I just wish people knew that we hate wasting time, so if it looks like we’re just standing around, I promise it serves a purpose.

    Reply ↓
    2. RIP Pillowfort*

      My people! This is why I’m hard on engineers to go out in the field to see what they actually need to do in construction.

      Because I’ve done confined space work and you will have people at the top of the hole as part of safety. They’re doing a very important job! Try to avoid putting these workers in danger!

      Reply ↓
    3. Meaningful hats*

      Thank you for sharing. I never thought that construction workers were “standing around doing nothing”, but I was always curious *what* they were doing. Now I know!

      Reply ↓
    4. Kay*

      If only I could impart some of that mindset onto my husband when he insists on going out and wildly digging a hole for the newest plant. Much as I have tried I now just sigh and head to the garage to pull out the necessary equipment for repairing the landscaping lines in anticipation of whats to come.

      As someone who has spent lots of time digging large holes for various reasons, and prefer it to the gym, whenever I heard someone with the “why are they all standing around” comment I thought “you obviously have never shoveled dirt for any extended period of time”. That is hard work and you can’t expect people to do that for the entirety of their workday!

      Reply ↓
      1. Paint N Drip*

        you know someone has done no physical landscaping labor in their adult life when they ask… bro, YOU come dig this!!

        Reply ↓
    5. Antilles*

      Hello fellow roadway engineer!
      The way I’ve always heard it summarized is this: If there’s six guys on a construction crew and you happen to watch for any given 30 second period (e.g., a passer-by waiting at a stoplight), at least half of the crew will be standing around seemingly doing nothing. But if you instead stuck around and watched for a 30-minute period, you’d see every individual doing something over the course of that 30-minute period; it’s just that not that all six people will be doing it simultaneously.

      Reply ↓
    6. Myrin*

      That’s really interesting to learn! I mean, I figured that they weren’t just mindlessly staring, but I didn’t know what it is specifically y’all are looking at. There are so many things out in this world I’ve never heard about before.

      Reply ↓
    7. EllenD*

      Absolutely, also many people don’t realise how much is buried under our roads – broadband, cable TV & telephones at the top, with electricity cables, and gas pipes below and at the deepest level water pipes and below that sewage pipes and these can be 2-3m deep. As water mains and sewage pipes can be big, any work on them require very big holes, which need to be shored up securely for their safety and that of road users. There are real problems if you hit another utility company’s infrastructure. Also any utility works will require three separate teams – 1 to set up site with cones, barriers & traffic lights, 2 to actually dig the hole and finally, the specialist team to do the repairs, upgrade, etc.

      Reply ↓
  76. Debby*

    The secret in manufacturing plants is that if you work in admin, you aren’t considered to be really working. Higher pay, Raises, bonuses, supplies, etc. are given only to the plant workers. Understandably, the focus is on the plant workers; but it is forgotten that someone has to order supplies, pay bills, do payroll, etc. Admin is seen as expendable and easily replaceable.

    Reply ↓
    1. KathyG*

      To add to that:
      Admin is seen simply as “overhead”, an expense. However, you can be making the best product ever but if there’s no-one making sure your customers pay your bills, preferably on time, your business will fail.

      Reply ↓
  77. Safety is political*

    Just how political transportation engineering is. From potholes to new freeways, it all depends on politics. Local governments actually are aware of their citizens’ complaints, but when they’re dependent on federal grants and budgets, well, there’s only so much they can do – and it’s about to get a lot worse.

    CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Act) funded a ton of projects, because if you could show that your project helped reduce car idling, you could get partial funding. Might be signal retiming, might be a bike trail, might be adding a new travel lane. DEI initiatives fund a lot of city projects – public transportation, bike lanes, sidewalk. IIJA has been a huge influx of funding. Safe Routes to School. Vision Zero. Walkable/20 Minute Cities. All of these and more are on the chopping block, thanks to the current administration.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ms. Municipal*

      We are indeed acutely aware of your complaints – and we’re also very sorry to be subjecting our transportation engineers to them.

      One of the first things that my boss said back in November was “Thank crap we’re done with our SRTS project.” To which I pointed out we still had several ARPA projects. We’ve been moving at Usain Bolt speeds to try and close those out, especially as the ARPA emails have gotten … grim.

      Reply ↓
      1. Safety is political*

        Our planning group is scrambling to figure out how to reword proposals and plans so phrases like “environmental justice”, “inclusive facilities”, “equitable transportation” etc aren’t used and they can still nominally help local governments win grants. People really take for granted just how much their day-to-day depends on those kinds of phrases. Curb ramps, for example, are both an inclusive and equitable design as more people are helped by them than not, but when you actually use those words… yeesh.

        Reply ↓
        1. Bike Walk Bake Books*

          Feeling your pain here. I work with someone who was deleting the word “underserved” in front of “community” in the scope and just identifying the place that needs the work done, for example.

          This probably falls in the category of secrets that might surprise outsiders: “Places that have higher numbers of serious and fatal crashes” can easily replace every reference to redlining, environmental justice and equity and pick up the vast majority of those locations since redlining and locations of reservations is why they have those roads with all the crash exposure in the first place. Safety and equity are so closely coupled that safety data serve as a proxy for equity/EJ.

          Someone I respect as a leader in transportation equity suggested “transportation that works for everyone” as a descriptive phrase. Since we know “everyone” actually means everyone, and that people have all kinds of needs, modes, constraints, and destinations, as long as you really mean it you could do a lot under that umbrella. “This street will function better for everyone who lives, shops and works here, and we’ll save lives” = roadway reallocation, sidewalks, bike lanes, curb cuts, accessible pedestrian signals, traffic calming, street trees, transit stops. At least it does when I’m writing it, and when you’re writing it.

          So, so feeling your pain. So much being flushed down the toilet.

          Reply ↓
  78. MK*

    I’m a middle manager in a public library. It’s more important that I understand people and human behavior than being well read.

    Reply ↓
  79. Anony*

    I’m in non-profits – and people, your information is just not that secret. I can use a program to see your property, who you give to and how much, personal details, etc. All of this is public information; but the vast majority of people do not have the tools or knowledge on how to access it. These programs make it so easy!

    Reply ↓
  80. veterinarian#1*

    Many veterinarians are paid on production… meaning they get a certain percentage of what you spend…

    Reply ↓
  81. So much anon*

    Finance industry “loyalty tax.” If you stay at your job, you will usually get modest raises, but if you jump to another job at another firm, you might get a big raise. Also, the total number of promotions in a year is capped, so you could be freaking awesome at your job and still not get promoted. This compounds over time. Meaning, if you are ambitious and want to rise through the ranks quickly, you’ll usually have a resume showing a number of jobs at a number of firms – and sometimes going back to the same firm, to work with the same colleagues, who are still at the same level and similar salary, while you’re over them both in terms of hierarchy and pay.

    Reply ↓
    1. Resume Please*

      Yes! The “loyalty tax” is weird. Leaving then doing a “boomerang” back is a much more successful way to get promoted.

      Reply ↓
    2. Ancient Llama*

      Not just finance:
      My first job (1990s) in a DC area consulting firm to fed agency I quit because current firm has many issues (ex. HR director joked she should label a tissue box with one mgr’s name since different people from his team came in weekly to cry in her office). My last day a different mgr ran into me and, once he found out I was going to another consulting firm, commented he’d be glad to see me back in 2 years hired into the position my (different than those two) mgr had told me it would take me 5-7 years to get promoted to, because “that’s the way it works at all DC consulting firms.”
      I did not go back but loved his honesty.

      Reply ↓
  82. Public Health*

    When public health is working, it seems like there is really no reason for it to exist. The only time public health is in the news is when it’s been disregarded and an outbreak has happened or gone on for far longer than it had to.

    Reply ↓
    1. Quercus*

      This is true of nearly ALL government. Nobody thinks about their sewer lines working every day, or how they can buy flour and trust that it’s not mostly sawdust, or how the death rate from car crashes has gone down, or how most of what we buy would be near impossible if businesses couldn’t rely on a Justice system that enforces contracts impartially, etc etc.
      Sadly, for most people that means they think government has no value.

      Reply ↓
  83. Richard Hershberger*

    Personal injury law, with the proviso that how this works is very state-dependent. So at least in the states where I have worked: If you are in an accident, the value of your case depends on four things: (1) liability (roughly, whose fault it was), (2) damages (how badly you were hurt), (3) insurance available (might be yours, might be the other guy’s), and (4) venue (the value can vary wildly from one county to the next). People tend to focus on liability, which usually is straightforward, and then on damages. A professional will want to know the last two, especially insurance. Notably absent from the list are how much you “deserve” (whatever that means), much less how much you would like to receive. Also, those splashy big number verdicts? How much actually gets paid is a separate discussion, and in any case those verdicts are very rare, and generally a bad tradeoff. Money is nice, but not being in constant pain every day for the rest of your life is even better.

    Reply ↓
  84. Milton's Red Swingline Stapler*

    In my previous life I worked for the NYC Department of Buildings. I was shocked to learn that there are reports of cars crashing into buildings nearly every day.

    In my current life I work in public outreach for a major utility and 90% of my job is talking to people about trees.

    Reply ↓
    1. Meaningful hats*

      My 5-year-old said she wanted a “tree job” when she grows up. Another potential option to put on her list lol.

      Reply ↓
    2. VoPo*

      The first part surprises me not at all. I know 3 separate people that have had a car crash into their house sometime in the past couple years.

      Reply ↓
  85. VermiciousKnid*

    I’m in comms. Anytime you’re at a corporate event where there’s open Q&A, most, if not all of the speakers are plants with vetted and pre-approved questions.

    Reply ↓
  86. grizzled*

    I work in data & analytics. A common thing I see with people looking for jobs is a strong overemphasis on fancy technical skills. I spend most of my time working with leaders to understand business strategy, or operations decisions and how that translates into data products. The reporting and analytics part is often pretty simple.

    Reply ↓
    1. Edna*

      I’m in that industry too and wholeheartedly agree. It’s tough though, because sometimes the leaders and hiring managers themselves don’t even understand that. Especially when data science hype was at its highest, I’d often have some director or C-whatever bringing my team in and hyping up that they’d need us to do data mining and predictive analytics and probably get a neural net in there and once we sat everyone down and really talked through what needed, it was a little reporting and dashboarding, maybe a trend line on a chart. So you’d need the fancy skills on the resume to get the job, even if the job was just talking a direct through how they don’t need a predictive model to tell them what last year’s sales were.

      Reply ↓
      1. HugeTractsofLand*

        Yeah, this is the flip-side of working with non-data folks! They either don’t care how you do it as long as it’s done, or they think something flashy and high-tech would do the job better. It sounds pretty exhausting to have to cut through that nonsense to what they actually NEED, but it’s such a necessary skill.

        Reply ↓
      2. linger*

        Some colleagues excitedly proposed a neural-net model for predicting student language development (specifically, predicting the last of a series of test scores from the preceding scores). Though complicated to implement, it *was* moderately successful; but then I found I could get a more accurate prediction just by plugging the data into a simple linear regression model, using FORECAST in Excel.
        (To be fair, the neural-net approach might well prove more robust for longer time series, as there is no particular reason to expect language development always to be linear.)

        Reply ↓
    2. HugeTractsofLand*

      Same field, 100% agree. Data folks are problem-solvers for non-data folks. They generally don’t care how you solved their problem on the back end as long as it’s solved and they feel listened to. You have to be really good at teasing out what people want, really HEARING what they have to say, and then translating that into what you can actually do.

      Also, the people I work with will often say “I just want one big dashboard with everything on it!” and I have to tell them nicely that their eyes would bleed if I crammed all that data in one useless heap. More data is almost never better; you just want the data clean enough that you can shove your hand in there and pull out trustworthy answers as the need arises.

      Reply ↓
  87. Kindly Egg*

    In my front-facing librarian role, I’d say 30% of my day was spent helping people print, 20% was giving directions to other places, and 15% was pushing in chairs. A surprisingly small amount of the job is book-related.

    Reply ↓
    1. Kindly Egg*

      Also, while it’s a job that often stereotypically attracts introverts, front-facing library work is primarily a service job and you spend a lot of your day dealing with people (both patrons and colleagues).

      Reply ↓
      1. pinkjar*

        Totally agree. I think the most shocking thing, to most, is that librarians (with the exception of very small libraries) do not actually shelve the books. The movies lied.

        Reply ↓
        1. library cart*

          i am the very small library exception and man, i hate shelving. i guess i should do that today but i don’t wanna. if i don’t do it, it doesn’t get done, though; it’s just me.

          Reply ↓
        2. Wayne*

          Shelving is normally the job of aids or student workers. I run interlibrary loan for an academic (university) library).

          Reply ↓
    2. M*

      When I was in adult services (I’m in collection development now) I fell a little bit in love with everybody who pushed their own chairs in. People don’t imagine that someone with a masters degree is going to spend their day pushing chairs in, or that we’ll be in trouble with our boss for not doing so.

      Reply ↓
  88. Red*

    I’ve worked in Ag and Food most of my life at this point and you’d be surprised how few vendors control the majority of raw ingredients in food. You might see 30 different brands at the store but they’re all getting their ingredients from the same 5 vendors.

    Also you can predict world economic health based on tomato paste reserves. Tomato paste goes into EVERYTHING. If there’s a dip in reserves or costs start to fluctuate bad things lie ahead.

    The only thing I ever saw those kajillion Uline catalogs we seemed to get every month were good for is to be hollowed out and filled with product and then shrink-wrapped so the sales guys can smuggle our product into countries deemed ‘bad’ by the US (Libya, Gaza, Syria, etc).

    Lastly, the USPS WILL confiscate your seeds if they think you’re sending them into a conflict area and they will send you a letter with the reason code ‘mailing weapons’. (But you can reclaim the package for a price, of course.)

    Reply ↓
    1. Longtime Lurker*

      As someone who has worked on multiple veggie farms and knows just how gosh-darned finicky tomato plants can be…that factoid about tomato paste is a little alarming, haha.

      And WHY that particular code on seed packages? Why do they even care if you’re sending seeds to conflict zones? Do they worry about poisons, or something?

      Reply ↓
      1. Red*

        Because they’re so finicky that’s why there’s reserves which means if the reserves are dipping you either have a supply shortage which means a food shortage which drives up costs in most economies and has a ripple effect across multiple products and thus industries or its because they’re selling off the reserves to try and boost markets somewhere which also indicates economic trouble. Because tomato paste is a base for a lot of processed food products, it’s a keystone in a lot of modern food chains.

        Genuinely no clue as to why that code. As for the sending seeds into a conflict zone, the US is verrrryyy punitive and always has been. They aren’t worried about poisons, they’re worried your seeds will be planted and the common people of the conflict zone might not die. Like I worked the seed specific job 10 years ago and I’m in a diff ag product now and we still can’t send stuff to certain conflict areas. They won’t issue the export permit or phyto.

        Reply ↓
    2. Too Long Til Retirement*

      So for no reason whatsoever…..can someone NOT in the food industry check on the tomato paste reserve status??

      Asking for all of us.

      Reply ↓
      1. Red*

        Yeah, just google it. It lags a bit but there’s quarterly and annual reports.
        And yes, there was a sudden increase in demand last year that has sustained through most of 2024 and into 2025. :)

        Also follow the three biggest tomato producers in the world: MorningStar (USA), SUGAL Group (Portuguese), and Kagome (Japan). They constantly produce reports letting you know the health of the tomato industry.

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    3. C*

      Also you can predict world economic health based on tomato paste reserves. Tomato paste goes into EVERYTHING. If there’s a dip in reserves or costs start to fluctuate bad things lie ahead.

      So, um, how’s it looking just now?

      Reply ↓
      1. Red*

        We’re doomed. ^v^

        Jk., but it isn’t great. There’s been a spike in demand sustained over the past year suggesting global instability in supply chains as well as consumer faith. Honestly, most economic stuff is whether or not people believe in the market and starting last year people started not believing in the market.

        Reply ↓
  89. DataSlicentist*

    Health tech, specifically machine learning and data science.

    1) We do not all make $300k USD. There are a lot of certification programs that pitch themselves exactly like “get rich quick” schemes. Some people do make that kind of money, but it isn’t most of us. A lot of us do make very good money relative to standard of living, but I worry about people taking on debt based on promises of Silicon Valley salaries and the job market from 5 years ago.

    2) We should still learn good software engineering and statistics best practices. We have to do both and often work with people with both backgrounds. Just because we’re a relatively young subfield doesn’t mean that we need to re-learn the lessons that build those best practices.

    3) “Old” tech still works. Sometimes genAI is the right tool for the job. Sometimes it’s literally just linear regression. Or random forest. Or Latent Dirichlet Allocation. I really wish folks would stop coming to our team with a solution (ChatGPT, Claude3, etc). Give us a problem and we’ll work together to solve it.

    Reply ↓
    1. Karstmama*

      Fangirling! You’re doing what I’m currently in grad school for, though I want to be the nursing/medical SME and work between researchers and the database.

      Reply ↓
  90. Irish Teacher.*

    As a teacher, I’d say…all those things you thought your teacher didn’t notice? They did. They just weren’t worth calling you out on.

    I’m not talking about stuff like bullying or cheating in tests here, but stuff like talking in class or doing your homework for the next class under the desk or using the staircase that is only for teachers. Classrooms aren’t that big. We do see and hear most of what is going on, but really, correcting every time a person asks the person beside them “what time is it?” or finishes off a couple of sweets they had left after break would cause more disruption than what the kid is doing.

    There are exceptions. I have had some really sneaky students who I genuinely couldn’t catch when they were doing things that did meet the criteria for intervention, but a lot of the time kids think teachers don’t notice, it’s strategic ignoring or giving the kid a chance to self-correct.

    Reply ↓
    1. bamcheeks*

      I’d say…all those things you thought your teacher didn’t notice? They did. They just weren’t worth calling you out o

      Haha, this is true as a parent too. Do it quietly and don’t fight with your sister and like — whatever.

      Reply ↓
    3. Justin*

      I became a teacher when I was 21 (I’m still in education but professional development and curriculum development), and I learned this on my FIRST day. I really thought I was so slick in high school but you can see everything when you are standing above someone.

      Reply ↓
    4. C*

      I had a few teachers who insisted on “catching everything” and even as a kid I thought “Wow, they are wasting class time on this nonsense, and for what?”

      A five minute rant about how “you’re keeping everybody else from learning” every single time some kid passed a note or snuck a quiet candy bar? Geez.

      Reply ↓
  91. Miss Chanandler Bong*

    Accountant.

    Most of us do not have CPAs. Also, I know more than taxes than average, but since I don’t do taxes, I should not be a tax resource.

    Also, how many CEOs and C-suite staff are financially incompetent or cannot interpret financial statements. CEOs especially need to understand finances. The ones who don’t or who want to save on costs in the short term (often to line their own pockets) are usually the ones who drive their companies into the ground. Financial literacy really needs to be more of a part of general business education.

    Reply ↓
    1. Justin*

      Yes, I work with a lot of small business owners and there’s an understandable belief in “well I can do it!” because they do know their craft (eg laundry, food, whatever) but they don’t know how to run a business and it’s often why things fall apart.

      And that’s a small business rather than a larger one with a CEO!

      Reply ↓
    2. Just a Pile of Oranges*

      It’s unexpectedly harder to find a CPA than I thought. I apologize for somewhat recently being someone who believed it was very common. My accountant friend set me straight when I asked and she looked at me with disgust and said, “I’d have to spend time auditing.”

      And you know what, that’s fair. I’ve been a program auditor for like 8 years and audits are basically the worst.

      Reply ↓
      1. Miss Chanandler Bong*

        It’s also because of an education requirement. It varies by state whether you have to do work experience in public accounting (which I would not want to do for various reasons), but the education requirement is 150 credits. So an additional 30 from a standard bachelor’s. Plus you have to sit for four different exams that take about half a day each and keep up with continuing education requirements.

        It sucks.

        Reply ↓
  92. peregrinations*

    I work for a bird conservation organization. Many, if not most, of my colleagues are not birders. Which is totally fine, it’s not necessary to do this work! But new employees are often sheepish to admit it, and outsiders just assume we all know and are into birds.

    Reply ↓
    1. TCO*

      Sort of the same here! I work for an environmental conservation organization, and while all of our staff care about our mission (including those on the admin side), we’re not all granola tree-hugging hippies. Most of us drive to work, hardly anyone is vegan, most of us enjoy flying for vacations, very few of us have solar panels and electric cars and the like (those are expensive on our salaries–but there are a lot of Priuses haha).

      We’re very serious about our mission and people do love the environment. But we’re focused on systems change, not judging individual habits. I was worried that I’d be judged if I ever brought a prepackaged lunch or wore conventional deodorant or whatever, and that couldn’t be further from the reality.

      We do have several birders, though! But yeah, not everyone here is into birding, hiking, camping, etc. and that is totally, completely fine.

      Reply ↓
  93. Going anonymous just for this*

    I work for a nonprofit that does community development financing.

    We’re actually very successful and stable and pay well.

    But if you need funding anytime soon, it’s…. gonna take a while. Because our lenders are as slow as molasses.

    Reply ↓
  94. Very Anon*

    I’m a news editor and fact-checker. A lot of journalists (and some editors) are pretty bad at writing and get a lot of facts wrong. It’s really made me lose trust in what I read. I’ve worked as a journalist, so I know what it’s like to have tight deadlines, but some of the articles that come to me after multiple rounds of editing are just so inaccurate and poorly written.

    Reply ↓
    1. not like a regular teacher*

      In a past career I was frequently interviewed on behalf of my employer, and I literally cannot think of one time when I wasn’t misquoted.

      Reply ↓
      1. linger*

        In the 1980s Allan Bell researched the accuracy of newspaper reporting on climate science (e.g. ozone hole, greenhouse effect) by the brilliantly simple method of sending quotes back to their named sources for evaluation.
        Even then the results were disappointing: about a third of articles were reasonably accurate, a third had some minor error such as an incorrect term or name, and the remaining third had absolute howlers (e.g. one confused the two issues, thus claiming that the greenhouse effect would damage eyesight).
        Of course, today it is much worse, as subediting has been gutted, outsourced, and gutted again over the intervening decades.

        Reply ↓
    2. Ellis Bell*

      This is going to sound like “kids these days” but I’m seeing a lot of journalism get past the editing process that wouldn’t have done in the past. It’s not the fault of the journalists or editors either in my opinion; as someone who left the industry when it was heading for crisis, whole teams were being replaced by one brave soul with training requirements, and oversight cut to the bone.

      Reply ↓
    3. HowDoesSheDoItAll?*

      I’m also a news editor. I was totally going to post the same comment. People wouldn’t believe how bad most journalists/editors write. Honestly, I’m still surprised by it — i.e., how does a man with a 30 year writing career not know how to spell?

      Reply ↓
      1. HowDoesSheDoItAll?*

        Also should add: Professional writers need to get over their fear of AI. Seriously, get over your ego and use a chatbot to proof your copy.

        Reply ↓
        1. M*

          As an information professional: please do not do that. AI is prone to “hallucinating” and “paraphrasing” your text as something you didn’t say, and will introduce its own errors. It’s also very environmentally costly, using a lot of energy and water to respond to simple queries. If I could ban those chatbots tomorrow, I would.

          Reply ↓
    4. Classic*

      I just saw Bright Lights, Big City for the first time. Please tell me the world of fact checking was really like that in the 80s. If it wasn’t, I don’t want to know!

      Reply ↓
  95. arachnophilia*

    I work in a niche area of higher ed, where my primary role is to try to increase the amount of federal funding the university receives (in the US – my job is super fun now /s). When I try to describe my role, people think that either, we’re trying to cheat the system by helping faculty write their grant proposals, OR that we are glorified and overpaid copyeditors and thus, a part of “administrative bloat.”

    The truth is that 99% of people who get work in academia have little if any training in how to write a grant proposal. We are well past the days where faculty might be able to get federal funding based on their track record – we have to have professional-level graphics, writing that is unlike most academic writing that faculty do (writing a competitive grant means getting reviewers excited about the work – that means writing a compelling story and making an argument for why the work is important and will have significant impact). Most federal agencies prior to this current situation funded proposals at a rate of less than 20% of submissions – that means that it’s not just about having a good idea but about presenting that good idea in a way that it stands out among a bazillion other submissions with very good ideas. Grantsmanship – and being able to transition from arts to humanities to chemistry to neuroscience to environmental engineering – is an art, and it requires not just very good science writing skills, but also the ability to look at a project and be like, but what’s the power calculation for this study? How are you going to recruit the people you need? What happens if people don’t want to participate? What happens if that new technique you want to use doesn’t work? What happens if that site you want to do research on doesn’t get the federal, state and local permitting that you’re expecting to happen before your grant is funded?

    And we have to know all the federal and institutional regulations that govern external funding and work with a lot of different research support staff to make sure we aren’t missing anything.

    I love my work – I love knowing (when something is funded) that I helped make real impact on the world. And right now, I am utterly devastated by how the US government is destroying what has made this country a leader in science and technology. Angry and sad doesn’t even begin to cover it.

    AND! The people who work at federal agencies? They too are devastated. They took these jobs to fulfill the Congressionally mandated mission, and to help science move forward. They saw their jobs as a way to give back to the scientific community. I have IMMENSE sympathy for what they’re going through.

    Reply ↓
    1. UKReader*

      Oh god, as a professor who was never taught how to write a grant, bless you and all your officemates. The number of times our grants office has saved my bacon (or just hours and hours of horrible grinding work because they knew a hack) is beyond measure.

      Reply ↓
      1. arachnophilia*

        Honestly, my feeling has always been (in the 2 decades+ that I’ve been working in this field) that the subject matter expert (you) should focus on what you’re good at – the science – and the rest of us should help to enable you to do your best work.

        Others, however, think that we’re at best, a part of the ‘administrative bloat’ that makes universities so expensive. I wish there was a way to help people understand the roles that those of us in higher ed administration play. Seriously, some of the statistics around the administrative burden that faculty have to undertake to do grant-funded research is completely unreasonable.

        Reply ↓
    2. Rock Prof*

      Grant writing is my absolute least favorite part of being a professor, so seriously thank you for your service.
      I also have friends who work for NSF (as well as other agencies), and it’s been awful.

      Reply ↓
      1. arachnophilia*

        And I love writing grants! After I finished my master’s, I started a PhD program, and I realized that while I love learning things, I don’t have any desire to actually do them. Grant writing lets me learn SO MANY things, while feeling like I’m making a difference. I really, really hope that my job doesn’t go away considering the current environment :( And all the best to you, as part of the vast number of people taking the brunt of current federal impacts.

        Reply ↓
  96. Kelly*

    Digital advertising. Meta, Google and other platforms know SO much about you. And they don’t need to listen to your phones to do it!

    They have billion of data points that they use to create algorithms to predicts interest and activity. We know the things you’re interested in, how likely you are to convert on something, what your past and future predicted behaviors are, etc.

    Even with all that data though – we don’t know everything! And it doesn’t take much for you to take an unpredicted action that skews the algorithm. That’s why you see some ads that are SO relevant to you, and others that are totally out of left field.

    Reply ↓
    1. Goose*

      Can you share more about the “oh I was just talking about [brand] with a friend and I got an ad for it” effect? I know no one is physically listening but…

      Reply ↓
      1. Stan S Stanman*

        You’re served thousands of ads a day and completely ignore 99% of them. The ads for [brand] were there all along, but you didn’t notice them until the conversation with your friend.

        Reply ↓
      2. Hlao-roo*

        I think Stan S Stanman’s explanation is a good one. I have also heard an explanation that basically boils down to “most people are predictable.” Like Kelly said, Meta/Google/etc. don’t literally need to listen to conversations you’re having with friends through your phone microphone. They have a pretty good idea what age, gender, race, income level, etc. are and they know that [brand] is big with [demographic group 1] right now, so they serve you an ad for [brand]. And your friend who is also in [demographic group 1] got the same ad yesterday and tells you about a new brand they just heard about. When you check your phone, there’s and ad for [brand] waiting for you.

        Reply ↓
      3. Deborah*

        They also do analytics based on proximity to other phones. I was in the hospital and the OR control desk had a very weird and unique item. Very soon thereafter I got an ad for that same item. But I never spoke a word about this weird item to the people at the desk. So all I can figure is that my phone being close to their phones triggered the ad.

        Reply ↓
    2. The teapots are on fire.*

      I remember speaking sternly to the screen asking the algorithm (or rather, the wind) why it was showing me shoes that don’t fit me when I only search for wide shoes. It’s the trivia that gets me.

      Reply ↓
  97. Retsuko*

    I did 16 years in marketing and communications. In every single place I worked, literally every single one, I heard the words “how hard is it to write a sentence?? Why do we need comms here?” usually followed by a very last minute “OH WE NEED COMMS TO EDIT THIS 100 PAGE DOCUMENT BY END OF DAY” demand.

    Every workplace. I wish someone would have told me that the hardest part of my job would be convincing people that I had value.

    Reply ↓
    1. Miette*

      Amen, sister! Everyone’s a ad copy writer when the ad’s already in print.

      A co-worker once reduced my job to the following sentence: “Like what do you do anyway, sit around all day thinking up slogans?” Reader, I was not even in advertising!

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    2. Eleanor Knope*

      100%. So many times I had to look at my co-workers after an internal comm went out and say “I tried, they didn’t let me help with that one.”

      Reply ↓
  98. BecauseHigherEd*

    I used to be an admissions officer at a beauty school. Yes, there is an admissions process, and no, not everyone gets in. If anything we had to be kind of stringent with admissions, because lots of people just wake up and decide to go to cosmetology school without considering that it’s a trade school commitment that takes several months to years, depending on your state, specific licensure, and whether it’s a full- or part-time program. If you didn’t finish high school or a GED, demonstrate that you understood the commitment, and state how you had career goals in the industry, you weren’t getting in.

    Reply ↓
  99. Pickles at a Potluck*

    I work in mortgage default. Mortgage companies do not want to foreclose. Foreclosure is expensive and can be a very long process. NYC can sometimes take 10-15 years. Owning a property is expensive for a bank. They would much rather work out a payment plan, do a modification, or a short sale. If you have trouble paying your mortgage reach out to your servicer as soon as possible and ask for options. The longer you wait, the harder it is to get caught up.

    Also, I am not a lawyer or a real estate agent, but the number of times I have had to explain to members of those professions that both parties need to sign a contract astonishes me.

    Reply ↓
    3. Anon for This*

      In the average, everyday consumer world, this is absolutely true. If you have a non standard consumer loan in a foreclosure friendly state, this may not be true. I have lots of experience in an industry where the lenders can make so much more money by taking the property – some love to and are set up to do this very efficiently. It is gross but it is an extremely profitable business model in certain circumstances.

      Reply ↓
  100. Lou's Girl*

    I can’t speak for all US States, but in my state, at the Agency I work for, there are TONS of free programs for Elderly and Disabled individuals:
    – free legal advice/ will and trust help for anyone over 60
    – free respite help for caregivers who meet certain qualifications
    – seniors can attend a senior center (think daycare for adults) if they are lonely/ bored for free if you meet the qualifications
    – we offer free fitness classes for elderly individuals
    – we even have a program where you can get paid to take care of an elderly individual. So for those of you taking care of grandma, or your aunt, or even the neighbor lady, you can get paid for helping care for them (if you meet the qualifications).
    Please search the internet for Elderly and Aging in your state. I was surprised to learn how much we had to offer when I started working here.

    Reply ↓
    2. Exhausted nonprofit*

      Just a note that what’s available varies greatly by state and even by municipality because of variations in funding. The federal government provided funding for a basic level of services & then local/state/philanthropy can beef up service. And most of the services mentioned are very much at risk under the new administration

      Reply ↓
  101. spuffyduds*

    Public libraries get rid of so many books. SO MANY. Often because we had to buy a ton of, say, the newest John Grisham to keep the holds list from being six months long, but after it’s been out for a while demand dies off and we don’t need 10 copies per branch anymore. Also a truly startling number of books come back from patrons damaged–usually liquid damage, and then it’s a danger to the other books to put it back on the shelf because it might start a mold infestation.

    We don’t generally publicize this because people tend to freak out about it. (I have worked in libraries where we were told to sneak the discards out to the dumpster after closing.) But y’all, we gotta clear space for the NEXT bestsellers!

    Note: The above refers to decently funded libraries. When you can’t afford to buy many new books you do end up keeping books that are in cruddy condition just so the shelves aren’t bare.

    Reply ↓
    1. Dust Bunny*

      I work in archives and we regularly get offers to donate books. We don’t need most of them, and I often think the offers are mostly just looking for permission to recycle them (none of them are valuable. Think old, widely-available textbooks with completely outdated information).

      Reply ↓
      1. M*

        And nobody wants your old encyclopedias or National Geographic collection. I know someone told you these things were valuable, but they aren’t. You were duped, I’m sorry.

        It really takes far less time for a nonfiction collection to become dated than most people think. Like, the clock started ticking on any medical or financial advice when the author proposed the book to a publisher, not when it landed on our shelves. 2015 doesn’t sound like it’s that long ago, but if your cancer doctor or financial advisor was operating on 10-year-old information you’d be worried.

        Reply ↓
        1. Dust Bunny*

          In fairness, nobody when my grandparents were hoarding these things in the 1960s and 1970s realized you’d be able to find it all online at some point.

          Yeah, I’m in a med school archives and we mostly see historians, not medical students. You do not want your medical students studying what we have!

          Reply ↓
    2. foureyedlibrarian*

      Back when Twitter wasn’t owned by You Know Who, I remember all the Weeding Discourse that would come around every few months when people kept re-discovering what it entails.

      Some books are requested for purchase by patrons AND THEN NOT EVER CHECKED OUT

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  102. Rook Thomas*

    Lots of comments about libraries/librarians, so I’m adding something else —- e-books (and e-audiobooks) are expensive. Like, 2-3 times as much as a print book. And we often need to re-purchase them due to the licensing agreements. So when you’re wondering why Libby doesn’t have 5 copies of the book you want, please consider that we cannot spend our entire budget on just e-books. We’re doing the best we can to stretch our money (because it’s often never enough) as far as we can, to provide materials in all kinds of formats for our communities. It’s not because we don’t want to provide 5 copies of the newest bestseller in e-book.
    Also . . . this is why in many communities, your access to e-books on Libby (or Hoopla) is limited to just your home library. It’s not only because of the business contract we have, but also because it’s $$$ (especially to provide Hoopla).

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    1. Dust Bunny*

      Seconding. I’m at an academic library that holds almost entirely discipline-specific journals. But now they’re digital and the licenses are hella expensive, and if you don’t keep paying them you lose access, unlike with print. It’s not just buying and downloading a .pdf.

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    2. Yet another librarian*

      Digital library access is so expensive. As part of a larger event at my college, one of my colleagues made a trivia quiz activity that asked questions like, “which costs more: One year of Web of Science database access, or four years of full-cost tuition?” Required research access always beat out gold bars, luxury cars, house purchases, etc. Of course, costs go up every year, and we have to make cuts to keep affording scientific journals.

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    3. Anon because I told all my colleagues this story*

      Everything is expensive! I had a conversation with a patron recently who didn’t realize that the library has to buy most of the books that are on the shelf. They thought all the books were donated by the publishers. (Some are, but they generally aren’t even good enough for the book sale.)

      Reply ↓
    4. Natebrarian*

      Oh and btw, the IMLS cuts will absolutely affect the ability of your local public library to provide access via Hoopla and Libby.

      Reply ↓
    5. Burnt Out Librarian*

      The newest challenge with e-books I’m running into is the AI content mills. EBSCO has a bunch from a place called Publifye (sic) that are less than $10 each, which would make them tempting for institutions without much of a budget– until you realize you’re just paying for slop.

      I’ll also add to the “we can’t afford 5 copies of the newest bestseller in e-book format” point to add that some companies won’t *allow* you to buy more than a small amount. The years-long hold list is the fault of the publishers and their silly e-book prices and rules, not the library’s doing.

      Reply ↓
    6. Rex Libris*

      This. To add more detail, it is common for a library to get somewhere around a 30% discount on hardcover bestsellers. With Libby (OverDrive) we usually have to pay about double the hardcover list price for an eBook ( or more.) They are often sold on a subscription model, so we have to buy it again after a designated time (usually 1 or 2 years) or a specific number of checkouts (often 26, for reasons.)

      …And the licensing agreements only allow us to check out that eBook to one person at a time, just like a print book.

      Reply ↓
  103. Alex F.*

    I own and operate a small business (hand-knit apparel) and I sell as my own business at conventions and also work for my best friend when she sells her crochet amigurumi and embroidery keychains.

    Anyone with a small business knows it’s definitely not “oh that sounds nice, you can just work whenever you feel like it!” Well I don’t feel like starving or having my lights shut off, so the constant anxiety keeps me working every moment I can. I even take yarn to doctor appointments and my partner’s place.

    The convention scene can be rife with gossip too. Some is just informative like “that booth got booted because they use images without a license” but it definitely includes letting new artists and vendors know which string of conventions to avoid because the organizer has had police reports filed on him for inappropriate encounters with minors.

    But overall, I’ve never encountered a more wonderful group of people. My first couple years selling at a local convention, artist friends bought a large booth space and gave me half, free of charge! The scene has never been anything but helpful and supportive to myself and other artists, from “do you want me to watch your booth while you run to get food and use the restroom” to “we have extra space in our hotel room if another artist doesn’t have a room yet” and “Joann Fabrics is closing, we’re creating a list of other craft supply resources and checking our local stores to see if they have stuff our long-distance friends need.”

    It’s incredibly stressful a lot of the time, but I will never go back to working for someone else. I like the autonomy of being able to tell jerks to get stuffed (hasn’t happened yet but I’m ready lol) and the support system is priceless.

    And when you add in the cosplay/costuming community in which both my best friend and I are active, the support is even more wonderful. I haven’t yet met a cosplayer even in a competition who behaves like it’s a competition. Advice and help are asked and offered without attitude, and congratulations and praise are all around.

    Also I’ve bought two swords at conventions, and you can’t go wrong with swords.

    Reply ↓
    1. High five*

      Disclaimer: You can absolutely go wrong with swords. Please use caution when handling weapons. Display weapons still present risk of bonk. Do not insert into electrical outlet.

      Reply ↓
      1. Alex F.*

        Fair points. My partner and I joke that since we both have swords now, our mutually assured destruction should prevent any conflicts from getting out of hand lmao

        Reply ↓
        1. High five*

          Do you ever pretend to be rivals and hold the sword point under their chin and say something dramatic and then kiss? Maybe it’s time I get a sword…

          Reply ↓
  104. Mornington Crescent*

    Project Coordinator here for a website company- I think 80% of my role is talking to people! Both clients and other teams (design, development, sales) for work to be completed and fact finding. The other 20% is task lists and emails.

    Also, if a project stalls, it’s almost always because the customer is holding us up for some reason!

    Reply ↓
  105. Yep*

    Work in Health Insurance- Most people who work there actually care about the customers and think we are helping them. insurance companies provide a lot of supplemental services and education programs.

    IT side- no company has good data, it is all a mess and you wonder how they stay in business

    Reply ↓
    1. Art3mis*

      I used to work in health insurance and was going to say the same thing about most people caring. Even management cares, mostly though with some exceptions of course. I’d also add that there’s a difference in companies, some are for profit like United Healthcare and some are not for profit like most Blue Cross Blue Shield companies. (Though not all, Anthem is for profit) And also, Blue Cross Blue Shield is not all one big company.

      Reply ↓
      1. JustaTech*

        I’ve got to say, the one time I’ve had a serious issue with my health insurance, the actual humans I talked to were all very nice and genuinely wanted to solve my problem which was only 50% of their making (the other 50% was a supply chain thing).

        I was mad as spit at the policy change that meant that if I filled my prescription at the one pharmacy that actually had my medication the insurance wouldn’t cover it – but the people I talked to went out of their way to help me find solutions. (And I made to sure tell them I appreciated their help!)

        Reply ↓
    2. Burnt Out Librarian*

      I used to work in the processing department and would add new members and make changes during open enrollment. It was actually a nice little bright part of my day when I got to add new babies to the database. But I was majorly overloaded at times and had nothing to do at other times, and every attempt to get assistance or get some kind of balance was stomped down by admin. I was a temp so I couldn’t work overtime. Their cost-cutting on labor made the job untenable and I had to leave.

      Reply ↓
  106. Trick or Treatment*

    The most fun tidbit in my eyes is that my industry has a job called “Qualified Person”. That’s it, that’s the standardised job title across companies & countries. (It’s someone who is authorised to sign off the quality of medications for human use in UK/EU – they are indeed highly qualified and have a lot of responsibility. I just find the job title funny without the context.)

    I can’t actually think of any shocking facts about my niche (pharmaceutical development, specifically clinical development). Just that people in general underestimate how complex, labour-intensive and thus expensive it is. Affordable and accessible medicines are a big deal, and we need to do much better in that regard, but holy moly, is medical innovation expensive as hell to get it to a usable stage.

    Reply ↓
  107. Lulu*

    I’m at one of the big, famous research libraries you’ve definitely heard of.

    We lose a LOT of books. And sometimes not-books. Oops!

    Reply ↓
    1. Professional_Lurker*

      won’t say who or where, but one of my professors almost purchased a rare book that, upon provenance inspection, turned out to have been stolen… from his own rare books library.

      Not surprising, really. Things go “missing” and no one person knows every item in their library, museum, or archive.

      Reply ↓
      1. JustaTech*

        When my mom worked for Harvard one time one of their rare book hunters went into a shop in Spain? Portugal? Some place like that, looking for books, found one on the list, opened it up and oh, wow, there was the stamp of his library, from which it had been stolen (which was why it was on the “to find” list).

        The bookseller didn’t know it was stolen, but could not give it back fast enough.

        Reply ↓
    2. One Duck In A Row*

      I once had to write a slightly nasty-gram email when I was in grad school in response to an email from the university’s library telling me I owed them a whole bunch of money for the books I didn’t return. But I had returned them. Every one. I know this for sure because I’d made a list and accounted for them all, and also because I’d just moved apartments and the last thing I wanted to do was to lug piles of heavy books from one place to another when I could just return them to the freaking library bit by bit at the end of the semester, bringing a few every day with me when I went to campus.

      Anyway, I pointed out how often I found completely mis-shelved books in the stacks, and suggested that perhaps mine were among those. I feel kind of bad about it, because a lot of that is probably from students accidentally mis-shelving a book they are putting back, instead of leaving it on a cart to be properly shelved by staff. But also, the email they sent me was pretty nasty, and I did not have the patience in that moment to rise above that in my response. Anyway, I never got a reply, but the amount due was wiped from my record. Dunno if I shamed them or if they found my books, in the drop box where I’d left them.

      Reply ↓
      1. Lily C*

        Oh, I had the satisfaction once of being able to march over to the bookshelf, pull out the “missing” book, and hand it to the librarian to prove that I had indeed returned it. I’ll own up and pay a fine for an overdue book if necessary, and I’m a big fan of libraries, but I also don’t allow people to be rude to me about their mistakes.

        Reply ↓
      2. Fraidcat*

        We double-discharge in my library so that I don’t have to have those conversations with patrons. The return process goes wrong way before books get back on the shelves.

        Reply ↓
  108. Survey Researcher*

    Survey researcher (I’ve worked across industries):
    1. We hate NPS (Net promoter score, the question where we ask how likely you are to recommend to a friend or colleague on a scale from 0 to 10) as much as you do. Executives and consultants love it though, so it stays in the survey.

    1a. If there is a follow-up open end about why you gave that rating, no one with any power to do anything about the question will actually see your snarky reply about the question itself; we will agree wholeheartedly with you but not be able to do anything.

    1b. The way that question is reported is the percentage of people choosing 0-6 subtracted from the percentage of people selecting 9 or 10, then multiplied by 100 so it reports as number between -100 and 100. (I reiterate, we generally hate this metric). So when answering the question, the way to think about it is: Is your experience positive? If so, select 9 or 10. Is your experience neutral? If so, select 7 or 8. Is your experience negative, If so, select any number between 0 and 6. The gradations don’t actually matter.

    2. There is a subset of survey respondents who take every question as a personal affront (which is not the same as a sharing a negative experience). I cannot make you fill out a survey and as much as I want people to take the survey, they don’t have to and I wish this angry group would remember that.

    3. I say this with the caveat that this applies to survey programs I have worked on and generally organization that has either a dedicated survey department or hires a third party vendor to do their surveys. However, I *am* aware that there are organizations where there is a lot less care put into surveys, it might not be designed by a trained researcher, etc. and in those cases, this may not apply but: The demographic questions are designed around survey best practices. When I was in a role where I was working on surveys that had demographic questions, I used the census as a starting point and then consulted other survey science sources to make sure they were even more up to date (for instance, for the gender question, I used guidance from Scientific American to make sure the list of options was most inclusive). We use these questions primarily to make sure that the survey does not disproportionately represent a group of people. We got complaints from people that “there are only two genders” and complaints about the race question that are clearly from white conservatives.

    3a. When I say “we got complaints” the complaints made their way to me after these people emailed the CEO of a Fortune 500 to complaint.

    3b. I now work in a context where it doesn’t make sense to ask demographic questions and I’m kind of overjoyed about that.

    4. Survey incentive sweepstakes caused me to have literal nightmares and I wasn’t even supposed to be the one managing it.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rhetcon*

      Also a researcher, and I share your NPS pain.

      It’s pretty fun sometimes to be the one person who actually reads people’s comments! The other day I even got some juicy gossip when a respondent wrote, “I don’t trust your company because of [a court case I’d never heard of]” and I got to read all about the wrongdoing of a bunch of people who got fired, and how my company tried to sweep it under the rug. Le sigh. Good times.

      Reply ↓
      1. Survey Researcher*

        Ouch, that sounds rough.

        In an old job, I had a file of nonsense comments that I quite enjoyed–My favorite was someone who filled out the comment from the perspective of (I can only guess by context clues) a Labrador retriever.

        Reply ↓
    2. I feel seen!*

      “1. We hate NPS (Net promoter score, the question where we ask how likely you are to recommend to a friend or colleague on a scale from 0 to 10) as much as you do.”

      Ah! Someone has been reading my snarky replies to the NPS questions!

      Reply ↓
      1. Nightengale*

        My “favorite” is asking if I would recommend this web site. It’s usually a web site for a hospital or other service. I am on the site because I need a phone number or the lab hours or to see if the ENT department treats a specific condition. If you need the information, this web site is the place to get it and the site may be well designed or poorly designed. And I am happy to comment on the design. But does anyone actually tell a friend, oh go check out Anytown Community Hospital’s website, or don’t go to Metropolis Hospital’s website, it’s terrible?

        (obviously there are sites people go to for the site itself, but that’s not typically where I am getting this question)

        Reply ↓
  109. AnonForThis*

    I work for a circuit judge, and have for over 25 years. TV and movies would have you think we get one big case at a time, but in reality, my relatively small county deals with over 2000 civil cases (50% of which are ours), around 2000 family court cases (20% ) and almost 1000 criminal cases (30%). If you want a hearing that is longer than an hour, you’re going to wait around three months. So when you hear “we can’t get into court for a long time” that’s probably the case.

    Reply ↓
  110. call me wheels*

    Video game writing – perhaps not that exciting, but I was very surprised to learn a regular spreadsheet is one of the most common tools in the business and where I do pretty much all my work, rather than some fancy special program like I had been imagining

    Reply ↓
    1. Maria R.*

      I think spreadsheets are far too common in various game disciplines where something else would probably be a better tool.
      Like creating schedules, for instance. Heh.

      Reply ↓
    2. sky*

      I’m so curious about this! What would spreadsheets for game writing look like? My friend and I are planning a Twine game as a summer project, but we’re still figuring out the nuts & bolts of our workflow. I hadn’t thought to consider spreadsheets, so I am intrigued. (I’m a software dev, so I’ll be handling setting up collaboration/hosting/deciding what any dev environment looks like/all that jazz.)

      Reply ↓
  111. Orange Cat Energy*

    I work at a very well-known museum in the US. The type that was immortalized in a famous 80s movie. Folks think that we have large budgets and staff like Facebook or Amazon, but we don’t. A lot of monetary donations are not unrestricted use (the donors state a specific use for the money). We have the minimum number of staff to get things done, even for critical systems like our various websites. I’m actually the sole Web Developer for our online ticketing platform. Yep, just one person to maintain one (of many) critical websites. My salary isn’t a Facebook salary either. The museum is a non-profit, so it’s a non-profit salary. There’s actually not a lot of staff turnover. A lot of people stay for many years because they love museums. One perk: The museum community does offer complimentary admission to other museum staff. When I travel to other places in the US, I can get free admission to the city’s museums.

    Reply ↓
  112. Anonymous Interpreter*

    I’m a Video Relay Interpreter: All businesses and government entities are required to accept relay calls for deaf and hard of hearing people. Yes, even financial institutions and medical offices. You cannot require deaf/HOH people to come in person to do their business if a hearing person would be able to do said business through the phone. There is also no requirement for the deaf/hard of hearing person to tell the other person that the call is through a relay service. So if you get a call where the voice you hear doesn’t match what you think that person should sound like, do whatever extra verification you need to do and go about your day. Don’t refuse service or repeatedly hang up, because you’re risking an ADA complaint and can get slapped with huge penalties (example: Wells Fargo).

    Reply ↓
  113. Mouse named Anon*

    Elder Millennial here. I didn’t graduate with a highly specialized degree. I basically received a Gen. Ed. degree. I don’t think people realize how little of an earning potential you can have with that. I didn’t bust over $40k a year until I was 36. Now I have leaned into a niche career that I really like, with a good company and I have FINALLY making a good salary at 40. Please don’t be like me. Find something you like, and get a degree in it.

    Reply ↓
    1. I'm A Little Teapot*

      I think its more, have a plan of some sort. Bouncing aimlessly around in life is not generally going to result in success.

      Reply ↓
  114. Colorado Winters*

    I work in higher education in the advancement department, where all of the fundraising happens. I also work closely with the president’s office and university communications.

    – Most of the time, when senior leadership is quoted/a communication comes from senior leadership, someone else has written it. Senior leaders will approve what we’ve written, but they aren’t writing it themselves. (Maybe this isn’t surprising to anyone, but my husband was surprised.)

    – 99.9% of donors are making a gift to something very specific, meaning that the money can’t be used for ANYTHING ELSE. For example, if a donor makes a $10m gift to a program, that money can’t be used for salaries or to decrease tuition or for anything other than the program.

    – Most donors make gifts because they genuinely care about students and making positive improvements in the world. They might get a tax break or whatever, but that is not their primary reason for giving.

    – At my school, 2/3 of the staff members make under $70K. It doesn’t matter how much we raise, it isn’t for salaries.

    – We HAVE TO spend money to keep up with technological advances, meet workforce needs, meet student needs through programming and building new buildings, etc. If we don’t, students will go elsewhere.

    – At least at the school where I work, charging tuition does not equal “making tons of money.”

    Reply ↓
    1. WantonSeedStitch*

      LOL…I should have read what you said before I posted! I also talked about restricted gifts and tuition not being what people think.

      Reply ↓
      1. Colorado Winters*

        I also think that people think that just because SOME university presidents make a lot of money, or schools are spending money on stupid things like lazy river pools, that means all of higher education is doing the same thing. Our president could make SO much more money if they went to a school with more $$$, and we’re just trying to find money to update classrooms that should have been gutted years ago.

        Reply ↓
      2. JustaTech*

        I know enough about higher ed money to know that unrestricted gifts are best, but then I see my friend’s name on a plaque saying they endowed a professorship and I’m like “but I want *my* name on the wall!”.

        Maybe I should suggest to the planning office that they should have a wall for everyone who’s given unrestricted gifts.

        Reply ↓
    2. Red Sox are the best Socks*

      And in my experience advancement tends to get mad if donors are approached Willy nilly without running it past them, is that your experience?

      Reply ↓
      1. Colorado Winters*

        Yes. The reason being that sometimes, gift officers have been working for YEARS to lay the groundwork for different asks. The largest one in our university’s history took something like four years from start to finish. The last thing they want is some random person contacting a donor without it being vetted. The other issue is, people outside of advancement rarely have any clue as to how gifts and gift agreements are handled – they’re willing to say yes to anything.

        Reply ↓
      2. WantonSeedStitch*

        To add to what Colorado Winters said, professors running off and approaching donors willy-nilly without going through advancement can lead to gifts coming in from very questionable individuals.

        Reply ↓
        1. Colorado Winters*

          Ugh – yes! People don’t often think about the fact that there might be some donors that we DON’T want to take money from.

          Reply ↓
    3. Strive to Excel*

      At my university we had a donor give a tremendous amount of money…to put a carillon of bells on top of the ugliest building on campus. I’m not talking weird architecture ugly, I’m talking “this looks like a parking garage” ugly. And I never ever heard those bells rung.

      I hope the university got something else out of that donation, because the bells were utterly useless.

      Reply ↓
  115. Craig*

    I worked at Starbucks when I was in high school. The hot cider is literally just apple juice heated with the milk steam wand. Also, even though it’s only sold seasonally, the apple juice is there all the time because kids can order a cup of juice.

    Reply ↓
    1. Regina Philange*

      Yup! I remember trying to tell people this when I worked at Starbucks, and they didn’t believe me even though I had made like 5 that morning.

      Reply ↓
    2. The customer is always right I guess*

      I worked at a chain restaurant that didn’t have ginger ale on the menu. If someone ordered it anyay you just gave them Sprite with a little Coke mixed in. No one ever seemed to notice…

      Reply ↓
  116. ChaoticNeutral*

    I work in an aviation-related field and have colleagues who work in traffic safety. In the United States alone, around 40,000 people die in motor vehicle crashes. GLOBALLY, just over 400 people died in aviation accidents and incidents in 2024. The majority of those were general aviation. Commercial aviation incidents have been in the news lately and are definitely scary and shocking when they happen, but it is interesting to me that Americans have accepted car crashes and deaths almost as a way of life. You are far far far far FAR more likely to die driving to the airport than in an aviation accident or incident.

    Reply ↓
    1. ChaoticNeutral*

      I should clarify–this is obviously not a secret (these are statistics anyone can look up), but rather a common thing I find myself correcting a lot! Folks still ask me, what is the FAA doing to address these new safety concerns, or should I feel afraid of flying, and my reply is uhh no you should feel afraid of driving lol.

      Reply ↓
    2. Strive to Excel*

      Yeah, I think the vast majority of aviation accidents are people in their personal Cessnas, not commercial stuff.

      Weird fact: that’s how we got the modern system of trauma management in hospitals. A surgeon went down in his small plane with his family. When he got them to the local hospital they were completely unprepared for what to do with the injuries they got in. At least one of his kids died as a result. He spent the rest of his life working for hospitals to have trauma management protocols. You might hear someone refer to a hospital as being a “Level X”? That’s an indicator of how well they can handle traumatic injuries. Level 5 can give you some bandaids and put pressure on the wound. A Level 1 has everything needed to keep you alive as long as possible, and if you don’t live there you weren’t going to live.

      There’s not a lot of Level 1s. I think the entire West Coast has 2, one in California and one in Washington.

      Reply ↓
      1. Flora*

        Are Levels 1s really that rare on the west coast? There are three in my metro area, and a few more around my state (Minnesota)…

        Reply ↓
        1. Strive to Excel*

          No, upon further research I’m corrected, but they’re still relatively rare. Washington has 1. Oregon has 1. California has several but they’re clustered; there’s a bunch near San Francisco and another cluster near Los Angeles. Idaho has 0. I’d guess that I mixed up the numbers for Pacific Northwest and the West Coast.

          In all of the US there’s ~200.

          Reply ↓
          1. JustaTech*

            For a lot of that kind of stuff, and disaster management, Washington Oregon Idaho and Montana work as a unit because (especially for those last two) there just aren’t enough people once you get away from the coast to support it.

            Heck, for some stuff there are partnerships with Canadian provinces! (Or at least there were.)

            Reply ↓
            1. goddessoftransitory*

              Yep. Harney County in eastern Oregon (where I used to live) has 47,000 people. Which sounds not too sparse until you hear that it’s several times the size of Connecticut.

              Reply ↓
  117. Nusuth*

    Part of my work is in due diligence investigations. I do a lot of different kind of investigations, but friends are always a little discomfited to hear that I do a LOT of investigations into individuals that clients are considering hiring. If you’re applying or being considered for a high-profile position like C-suite exec, board member, or even just the kind of job move that may be covered by trade media (like a regionally well-known attorney lateraling to a new firm), someone like me is probably doing a really in depth personal investigation into you.

    This is beyond a background check: in addition to confirming all publicly discoverable information (did they actually graduate this school? is their professional license in good standing?) I’m looking at public financial records, social media, close family, etc. The main purpose of this is to identify risk factors, like (fair or not) significant financial mismanagement or debt (this makes you more vulnerable to scams or blackmailing), posting everything on social media (or your spouse posting – this makes you vulnerable to all kinds of targeted scams or physical threats), or any falsehoods beyond the normal stuff that’s hard to confirm (red flag for obvious reasons).

    Reply ↓
    1. Nusuth*

      Sorry, keep thinking of more. As far as “the normal stuff that’s hard to confirm” goes, I think most people would be surprised to learn that it’s pretty hard to decisively confirm that someone graduated or even attended the college that they said they did. If I can’t find a digital copy of the college’s commencement list for that year, or someone listed in some kind of alumni publication with their grad year listed, I basically cannot know that they graduated. It’s so common to not be able to confirm this that we don’t consider it a red flag at my firm at least – unless there’s other indications of a pattern of falsehoods/exaggerations, we take most people at their word.

      If we do want to dig, the only two ways I personally know of to confirm are to call the college (which typically will not give out that information) and to ask the National Academic Clearing House, which will not give records to most people.

      Reply ↓
      2. Liz*

        Most schools have a Degree Verification form which the student submits to let them confirm the info to you. Or some sort of third-party verification.

        Reply ↓
        1. Nusuth*

          Yes, sorry – I meant methods without asking the target of the investigation. Clients may do that later if it’s important to them to confirm prior to hiring, but it’s not an option open to us as a third party.

          Reply ↓
  118. Diomedea Exulans*

    I work in AI/machine learning/software engineering. People are surprised that you make it into this industry with a social science/human adjacent field, even though it is very strongly related.

    Reply ↓
  119. Bookman*

    In the banking industry there is an internal blacklist linked to peoples social security numbers. This is usually used to to block fraud and it warns financial institutions if someone tries to open an account at another bank. Although not perfect, Banks also use it as a hit list to get people to pay them back. If you overdraft your account a red flag is placed keeping any other bank from opening an account.

    I’ve seen so many people try to overdraft their accounts and try to not pay it back. They usually comeback in a few weeks to pay it off because they can’t use another bank other wise. Ive seen amounts as small as 2.00 being flagged by super petty banks.

    Reply ↓
    1. JustaTech*

      And if you’re the victim of identity theft you can get blacklisted for *someone else’s* $2. Even if you’ve got the police report and everything.

      It’s annoying.

      Reply ↓
  120. Anonymous Mouse*

    Manufacturing: there is very little actual innovation between the top companies. We all just copy what everyone else is doing. Product, ads, brochures, you name it.

    Reply ↓
  121. Human Embodiment of the 100 Emoji*

    Being an Archaeologist (especially later on in your career) is in fact mostly a boring job that involves a lot of the same desk work as any other white collar job. So many young people go into the field thinking they will eventually become a prestigious professor excavating fantastic sites in their region of interest. In reality, most of us end up doing legal compliance work for engineering companies or the government and spend a lot of time writing and reading reports. This isn’t to say that there aren’t some really cool moments, but you have to be a certain type of person to do this as a career.

    Also, we don’t dig up dinosaurs.

    Reply ↓
    1. JustaTech*

      I’ve been thinking about a mid-life career shift to archeology because I’m frustrated with my current career.
      Is it really mostly just paperwork for pipe-diggers?

      Reply ↓
  122. Lacey*

    Graphic Design

    – It’s not just (or even mostly) about making things pretty. It’s about making them functional.

    – When you see a poor design call, it’s because the person who makes the final call is usually not a designer or someone with any design knowledge at all. It’s a department head, an exec, a small business owner.

    – There are lots of different types of design that get lumped in under graphic design. Most graphic designers know how to do a few of them, but not all.

    Reply ↓
    1. ChaoticNeutral*

      I work with some fabulous graphic designers and truly could not do my job without the work y’all do!!

      Reply ↓
    2. Margaery Tyrell*

      fellow graphic designer, co-signing all of this! just to add some of my own observations:

      * designs are rarely made for aesthetic; it’s made to complete a business objective / satisfy 5 different departments weighing in. so if something looks like 25 people are trying to get their point across, you might be right!

      * “just photoshop it” is not the quick fix you think it is.

      * being able to articulate the reasons behind my design choices is at least 30% of my job.

      * i once spent 3 hours re-exporting files because someone thought they needed a comma. so think about what really matters when you ask your designer to change something.

      * picking up another designer’s work is entirely dependent on how cleanly they set up their file. 90% of the time i would say it is more of a headache than building it again on my own.

      Reply ↓
      2. Potato Potato*

        I did user experience design for about a year at my company and gave up because of that same “30% of the job is being able to articulate the reasons behind my design choices”. I can design okay, but I’m terrible at using words to tell you why

        Reply ↓
    3. I don't work in this van*

      UX/content designer who came here to say your second point: when you have a bad experience on a website or in a software product, 9 times out of 10, the person who designed the experience knows it’s bad and has way less power than everyone else in the room.

      Reply ↓
    4. ArtsDesigner*

      All of this, plus:

      — Generative AI is not coming for my job any time soon. I would love for an algorithm to resize my landscape ads into usable vertical ones but I instead have to spend hours every week just churning through that boring kind of production work.

      — Illustration is a completely different skill set from design. Plenty of designers can draw and vice versa but they are different disciplines. Do not expect to get both when you hire a designer. Ditto coding, motion graphics, photo retouching, video production…

      Reply ↓
      1. creative director*

        Yep. I’ve had multiple friends ask, “Are you worried about AI replacing you?”

        I tell them, when AI can transform an “I’ll know it when I see it” client brief and “could this be more…funky? but not like FUNKY funky” feedback into something usable, maybe then I’ll be worried. But what gen AI currently does is more or less the opposite of what I do! It’s simply not capable of iterating with precise direction–Janelle Shane’s AI Weirdness blog has some fun examples of ways in which trying to iterate with AI goes horribly off the rails very quickly.

        Reply ↓
  123. The Other Evil HR Lady*

    I used to work for an environmental/ecosystem restoration company. Essentially, you take out the bad plants (think: invasive species, exotics, nuisance species) and you put in the good plants – the company has its own native plant nurseries. Here’s the kicker: you’d think that getting rid of invasive plant species like Brazilian pepper and melaleuca trees is just chopping them down. Nope. You need chemicals – tons of them. My guys used to put blue dye into the herbicide so you can see where you’ve sprayed. They came back from the field looking like they’d just killed a Smurf with their bare hands. Some customers used to ask to not use chemicals and to get rid of the plants by hand (using tools, but no herbicides). I honestly don’t know what they were expecting. I mean, plants leave seeds? They just come back… We refused to guarantee those jobs.

    But, yeah… if you see a crew of people with those spray backpacks inside a state or national park, you’re seeing herbicide being applied to plants that don’t belong there naturally. All to protect the ecosystem in the end.

    Reply ↓
      1. The Other Evil HR Lady*

        Indeed! Melaleuca trees were brought over in the early 1900’s to “drain the swamp,” AKA the Everglades. The trees are from Australia. AUSTRALIA! You have to drill into the trunk and pump a crap-ton (actual unit) of herbicide, then hope for the best. In the middle of said swamp. In FLORIDA, in the summer, with the gators. My guys are aces :-)

        Reply ↓
      1. The Other Evil HR Lady*

        I don’t work there anymore, and I’m kinda breathing in relief. They rely on federal money a lot – sometimes we were the subs to larger companies, like dredging and highway construction, and they depend on federal money that they would then pass on to us. I’ve kept in touch with my coworkers because they’re really wonderful folks, and I hate the uncertainty they’re feeling.

        Reply ↓
    3. One Duck In A Row*

      Totally believe it! I’ve been working on manually getting rid of invasive plants in my relatively small yard. Because of the size of the yard and the joy I quite often find in getting my aggression out on unwanted root systems, it has been possible to get things relatively under control without pesticides. But yeah, there is no way that would be manageable on a larger scale! Our town has a huge problem with a couple of species of invasive plants, and efforts a few times a year to have folks gather at various parks and pedestrian paths to manually remove them. They are resistant to using pesticides, and I think it’s complicated because apparently it would need to be done as part of an official municipal project, by paid and trained staff, and not allowed by volunteers? But it needs to be done, or else the freaking bittersweet is going to keep on taking down trees. It is so incredibly destructive and fast growing here, and as fun as it is to pull up, the amount of frequent work needed to manually eradicate it from a small yard over a period of years is not at all possible over a vast area of public land. (I occasionally stop to pull some up as i’m walking, but am very aware that it looks weird at best and suspicious at worst, and could give folks the impression that any wild growth is theirs to pull up as they wish.)

      Reply ↓
      1. The Other Evil HR Lady*

        Volunteers can’t spray herbicides because you need a license to apply any kind of pesticide. My guys needed to take a test and the math portion was always a killer. Even some of my exceptionally gifted environmental scientists would come back with a 72 (passing, but barely) on the math portion. I’m in Florida, so it’s administered by UF/IFAS – University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. In Mississippi, where you can’t get a reciprocal license, they make you take the test at a University of Mississippi campus, and nowhere else – which I get; they’re next to a rather large river ;-)

        Reply ↓
    4. C*

      I can believe you about the pesticides! I have this invasive weed all through my yard, I spent literally all last year doing nothing but digging it up, root and all, and putting wildflower seeds down so limit how it can come back. I can already see, a few weeks into growth, that I’ll be spending a good portion of this year the same way.

      (I may have to cave and use pesticides to get at the root system that’s encrusted under our patio. It’s either that or pull up every brick and then put it back down.)

      Reply ↓
    5. I Have RBF*

      I have an infestation of that infernal “Tree of Heaven” in my yards, plus all throughout my neighborhood. The damned things are networked, so it’s hard to get them all.

      Reply ↓
  124. I Need Coffee*

    You can be too mentally ill to receive mental health services.

    I’m a school psychologist, and we have kids turned away from in-patient programs for being to physically aggressive. One former student was expelled from residential treatment for trying to kill herself too frequently.

    These kids then return to their public schools the next day, and unlike treatment programs, we are legally required to support them as best we can and address their mental health needs. In practice, this means that it’s someone’s only job to keep a kid from killing themselves or significantly hurting someone else. That person often doesn’t have much, if any, background in mental health. It’s heartbreaking.

    Reply ↓
    1. Squaredler*

      I have seen actively suicidal people get kicked out of day programs for refusing to participate. Now you’d think that if someone is sick enough for a day program, but refuses to participate, it would make sense to step them up to the next highest level of care, which would be inpatient. But nope, they get kicked back to their outpatient services. It makes absolutely no sense.

      Reply ↓
    3. Empathy*

      Can confirm; I worked in an adolescent residential treatment program and multiple children were evicted/expelled for physical aggression and extreme property damage. In part it was because of needing to protect the children who behaved less aggressively. Several of them were sent to juvenile detention.

      Reply ↓
    4. APlus*

      I have a friend with a (likely) bipolar 14 year old girl who has basically refused school for two years (in person and online). She is now being admitted to an inpatient psych program with a school attached. This is after years of trying everything and being on SCHIP.

      Have you seen where bipolar kids can manage their illness and go to school?

      Reply ↓
  125. anon for this*

    Many unions’ own staff are not unionized, and guess how much those organizations know about union-busting?

    Reply ↓
  126. Cabbagepants*

    No, neither I nor any of my colleagues in the math department can calculate the tip without a calculator.

    Reply ↓
    1. Meow*

      It was my experience in college that the higher level math the professor taught, the worse they were at arithmetic. My Discrete Math professor wouldn’t even take points off for incorrect arithmetic as long as we had the algorithm correct.

      Reply ↓
    2. linger*

      In grad school, as the most statistics-conversant* member of a department in a historically statistics-averse** field, I became resigned to bringing my calculator to restaurants.
      [* A “country of the blind” thing: I’d done one undergrad course and read a few manuals.]
      [** As late as 1990, the biggest name in the field was still routinely rubbishing all statistical evidence-based approaches. Things have since changed markedly. I’d now be counted as one of the less stats-conversant dinosaurs.]

      Reply ↓
    3. Bike Walk Bake Books*

      I, an English major, drop the last digit and that’s 10%. Double that and it’s 20%. Offered in case it comes in handy someday. :D

      Reply ↓
      1. Bike Walk Bake Books*

        It may be relevant that I went to school before calculators were a thing and learned to do math with (gasp) a pencil. On paper. I didn’t use a calculator until high school when I got a TI-30.

        Reply ↓
  127. Counselor*

    Some of this is dependent on area, but most mental health counselors in the community make very little money unless they go into private practice and/or patient self-pay. It is possible to be a salaried counselor but many organizations (at least in my area) are hiring counselors on as independent contractors. The pay model for this is typically only for clients seen, which means no pay for the counselor if the client cancels or does not show for their appointment.

    Counselors can receive better pay if they work in different settings/specialties. Community care just seems to be the default setting most counselors gravitate toward.

    Reply ↓
    1. Tea Monk*

      And no insurance or vacation. I hate my job ( social services- no, we can’t help you) but at least it is secure. People wonder why there’s a shortage of mental health help!

      Reply ↓
    2. Squaredler*

      To add, most private practices are in fact small businesses. If you don’t pay your copays, or your insurance drops you and you don’t notify the practice, it is a very big deal to their finances. (The exception being therapists that only take private pay clients and who don’t deal with insurance.)

      If you no show or late cancel your appointment and you don’t get charged a fee, or the fee is minimal, your therapist is losing money. We are not in it for the money, but we do need to pay our bills like anyone else.

      On the other hand, any therapist who works for a big agency is almost certainly overworked and underpaid.

      Reply ↓
  129. April Ludgate*

    I work in a hospital as a nurse. I think people might be surprised to know that unless you work on a specialty unit like labour and delivery or pediatrics more than 80% of your patients are seniors. TV shows will have all the patients be young or middle age adults, but in reality most hospitalized people are over the age of 70.

    Also, doctors are very busy and are not taking blood, sitting with patients over night, walking to the lab to read their own scans and MRIs. There are way more jobs in a hospital than TV would have you believe.

    Reply ↓
    1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      When I was in the hospital in 1999, I was 19 so an adult at a regular hospital (not pediatric). People treated me like I was an unicorn because I was so young to be admitted. I was also coherent most of the time and that also helped- they could hold a conversation with me when clearly a lot of people around me couldn’t.

      Reply ↓
    2. No Longer Gig-less Data Analyst*

      I am a relatively healthy 54 year old who has only recently developed high blood pressure, we think due to menopause. We’ve been trying to get my meds straightened out, and a few weeks ago I had a crazy spike (hypertensive urgency) that put me in the hospital overnight for observation and cardiac testing in the morning.

      The nurses seemed confused that I was independently mobile, did not have any skin flaps or sores to be concerned about, and the only medication I was on was my recently prescribed BP med and HRT for hot flashes. They asked if I wanted assistance to the bathroom and I told them that I run 3-4 5Ks every summer, so no thank you. It was obvious they were used to caring for people in much worse shape than I!

      Reply ↓
      1. Jinni*

        This is so true! I had very minor surgery and the number of people who asked me if I could move on my own…while I had to ignore everyone so I could log in to sign up for next week’s exercise classes. (Which in LA is a competitive sport).

        Reply ↓
      2. K*

        Yes! I’m 47 and was recently hospitalized for pnuemonia; the nurse asked me if I needed my lungs suctioned (I felt crappy enough that I was like “sure, if you want.”)

        Reply ↓
      3. Sylvia*

        My 23 year-old daughter needed gallbladder surgery, and the only hospital room available was in the orthopedic wing. The patients were all at least 80 years old and the nurses were very insistent about the rules. They turned on the bed alarm and would come running whenever she got up to use the bathroom. One of them insisted that she press the call button and wait for the young male nursing assistant to take her to the bathroom (not happening). It was more funny than annoying, and to be honest, I would totally trust them to take care of an elderly family member– they’re 100% committed to no falls. Up until then, our only experiences were with the pediatric and maternity wings where they leave you alone.

        Reply ↓
        1. Nightengale*

          I was admitted to the hospital for new diabetes as a 30 year old medical student who walks with a cane. They asked if I had a history of falls and I said yes, actually in fact in this very hospital I fell a week or so ago (as a medical student, not as a patient.)

          So they labeled me a falls risk and wouldn’t let me up without holding onto me.

          The number one thing that causes me to fall? People touching me. I don’t trip. I don’t get dizzy. But if you touch me, I instinctively pull away, and sometimes loose my balance and topple over. This is one of the reasons I use a cane. I had to beg my doctor to tell them to stop grabbing me to walk to the bathroom – for my safety.

          Reply ↓
      4. Meow*

        I had a similar experience when I was on the cardiac floor for suspected postpartum cardioyapothy (it turned out to be pulmonary edema from my c-section, nothing a little lasix wouldn’t fix). I was asked, per policy, at least 3 times a day if I had dentures or a walker. They generously turned off my bed alarm, since I was constantly having to get up to wash bottles for pumping. I dropped the shampoo bottle in the shower and like 3 nurses showed up in 10 seconds to check on me. Everyone there was so wonderful though.

        Reply ↓
    3. JustaTech*

      And as a side note: except in very specific and unusual circumstances you do *not* want a doctor drawing your blood, you want a nurse or phlebotomist doing your blood draws.
      Doctors just don’t get enough practice and often their technique is, well, rusty.

      (I had a research MD draw my blood a couple of times for a study and one time he did something wrong and I had a bruise from mid-forearm past my bicep for a *week*. He was very apologetic.)

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        I try to donate platelets every other week, and the Red Cross phlebotomists are very experienced. None of this “I can’t find a vein” or “Oops, perforated the vein” or “Hey, looks like you’re a spurter!” (The phelebotemists also tell me I have “lovely veins”, which is always nice to hear.)

        Reply ↓
        1. goddessoftransitory*

          I had the most wonderful phlebotomist when I had a blood draw a few weeks ago–he was this adorable boy young enough to be my son who told me “Every day’s a dance party for me, Miss Ma’am!” as he went from prepping the vial to finishing up in under one minute.

          Reply ↓
      2. Styx-n-String*

        I work in pharmacy. It’s not a secret, but the thing that seems to baffle and confuse so many patients is that WE ARE NOT YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY. We don’t set your copays, we don’t decide what’s covered and what’s not, and we can’t make them cover something if they don’t want to. Every day someone gets mad at me for decisions their insurance made, and can’t or won’t accept that I can’t do anything about it. if you want to argue about it, call your insurance company.

        We also can’t make your doctor send in a prescription that you want. That’s for the lady that demanded I be fired yesterday because her doctor didn’t send in a prescription for over-the-counter mucinex…

        Reply ↓
      3. Styx-n-String*

        VERY true! I recently had an issue where I was very dehydrated and I only have one good vein, but 3 different nurses/phlebotomists couldn’t get a stick on me in that vein. So the doctor had to come and find a vein in my inside upper arm by using an ultrasound. I was SO nervous having a doctor stick me, and in such a tender place and so deep. Thankfully he knew what he was doing and was very gentle, but I work in medical and I know you almost NEVER want the doctor doing your blood draw!

        Reply ↓
      4. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

        My workaholic neurologist was, surprisingly, a very good phlebotomist. He kept in practice because he was still seeing patients for routine appointments until 6 or 7 o’clock, after the nurses and phlebotomists had gone home.

        But “surprisingly” is the key word here–even with that experience, I’d rather have a nurse or phlebotomist draw my blood. And it wasn’t a good use of the doctor’s time for him to run an IV one afternoon and tell me to call his pager when it was finished, when there were other staff nearby.

        Reply ↓
    4. le bureau des conneries françaises de Chicago*

      Ain’t that the truth. I was admitted to roch methodist (mayo) for a kidney surgery (remove RCC tumor) and at 28 I was probably the youngest on the floor outside ped-onc (may God bless them, and their parents). Felt weird as shit.

      Reply ↓
  130. CommanderBanana*

    I’m in conference management and the markup on food and bev / AV equipment is insane. I spend a lot of time trying to convince people that no, I am not making up that a hard-boiled egg is $14 per plus 25% service fee plus tax, and no you can’t just “bring in your own food” and yes, if you want alcohol you have to have a bartender, and yes the AV tech charges a set-up and tear-down fee and minimum labor rates, etc. etc.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      Yup, I organise an annual conference and non-events folk are always shocked by how much it actually costs to run. There’s a reason we have sponsors and the reason is that no sponsors = no event.

      Reply ↓
    2. goddessoftransitory*

      Oh, God. Trying to get the general public to understand liquor laws and licensing is a continual heartbreak and source of rage.

      Reply ↓
  131. Proud HR Professional Who Loves Their Job*

    Human Resources: HR professionals can interpret policy, communicate policy, and offer guidance on policy. HR professionals rarely (if ever) make policy. If your CEO/President/Higher-Up communicates an unpopular decision and frames it as “HR said we have to DO UNPOLULAR THING” it’s 99% a lie. They want to DO UNPOPULAR THING are too afraid to stand behind it so they blame HR.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rusty Shackelford*

      Or presumably “HR said we have to do a thing” sometimes means “HR pointed out that *legally* we have to do the thing?”

      Reply ↓
      1. Proud HR Professional Who Loves Their Job*

        Yes, you are correct! If I say we need to do something, it’s not because I thought it up. It’s because it’s the law.

        Reply ↓
      2. Always Tired*

        Ding ding ding.

        The frequency with which I have the conversation “Can I do X?” “No, that’s not allowed.” “Why can’t we just change the policy?” “Because it’s not mine, it’s the government’s.” And X is anything ranging from allowing make up time on another week (must be done on the same week, you have to ask before doing it.) to docking pay for late time cards (I have to pay them for their hours worked in a legally defined reasonable time frame, and it’s on the company, not the employee.) To OSHA standards about wearing hearing protection (no your headphones blasting Rebecca Black or whatever do not count as hearing protection).

        What gets my goat is when I point out we have to do something that BENEFITS the employees, the boss gets the credit like he’s doing us a favor. Sir, you’re REQUIRED to spend that much per employee per hour on healthcare, it’s not a new benefit from the kindness of your heart.

        Reply ↓
    2. Eleanor Knope*

      Yes! Or managers who say “HR didn’t let me promote you/give you a raise/whatever” when really we let them know if they did that, they’d have to consider XYZ and THEY decided it wasn’t worth it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Always Tired*

        HR said “here’s the available amount of money in budget for your team” and the manager decides to blame us for how he asked it to be split.

        Reply ↓
    4. The Other Evil HR Lady*

      *rant incoming*

      If I’m asked one. more. time whether I can add the kid that was born 4 months ago to your health insurance (who never had health insurance, but now it’s getting expensive to take the kid to the doctor), I think I might go screaming for the hills. I always, always say: it’s not a company rule, this is an IRS rule… but, why didn’t you tell me about your kid when they were first born? Oh, I was busy. No $hit, Sherlock! I have 2 kids of my own and always managed to add them to my insurance. You’re not special!

      *rant over* I do love my job ;-)

      Reply ↓
      1. Always Tired*

        When my team asks about maternity/paternity leave, I give them the paperwork to add Baby to their insurance, and tell them to finish it before the leave the hospital, with all the other new baby paperwork that has to get done. Then when I see the announcement, I remind them. Which is absolutely not my or your job, but I find it solves a lot of problems, and is easy since I am a team of 1 and handle both the leave paperwork and the benefits paperwork anyway.

        My current rant is the employee who came to me wanting to add his kids to his dental insurance because they found out ones needs braces and mom’s insurance doesn’t cover orthodontia. He doesn’t understand why needing braces isn’t a Qualifying Life Event. I have explained it three times now.

        (For those outside the US: you have two opportunities to add people to insurance. The main one is the annual Open Enrollment, a 2 week window that can be different for different plans/providers, where you can add or change insurance for the coming plan year. The second in called a Qualifying Life Event, which opens a window of time to be added to a plan mid cycle. These are things that happen where you either lost coverage you had, or only just became eligible to be on the plan. Examples are being born or adopted, marrying the plan holder, you were on you’re spouse’s insurance and they lost their job or you divorced, you were on your parent’s plan and turned 26, etc. You’ll note none of those involve gambling you didn’t need the insurance and changing your mind half way through the year.)

        Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          Can’t braces usually wait up to a year? I’d think this was one of the cases where the gamble isn’t much of a gamble. Unlike, for example, waiting six months for that root canal.

          Reply ↓
    5. HRneedsAdrink*

      My favorite:
      “Hey HR, what’s the policy on this random thing that’s in the handbook, that I have a copy of, but it’s easier to call you?”
      “The company’s policy is X.”
      20 minutes later:
      From Supervisor- “Hey HR, did you tell my employee they could do this thing that’s against policy?”
      “Um, no”
      “She said you did. She said she TALKED to you about it”
      Every. Single. Day.

      Reply ↓
  132. spiffi*

    I do product support for our application as part of my job. Customers expect me to be able to answer questions and solve problems about so many things that are NOT anything to do with our application.

    I use google A LOT. I will literally be on phone calls/screenshares troubleshooting issues and I am using my other screen to google the answers in real time. I have no idea how to solve your problem – I’m just really good at finding answers using search engines :D

    Reply ↓
  133. Justin*

    I will say even though I’m not a full time academic I still do write articles and books that are academic adjacent but I refuse to make my writing jargon-y and inaccessible.

    I say this because, anyone who tinks that academic writing is garbled nonsense by chance doesn’t quite understand that we are disincentivized from writing clearly in a way that non-academic audiences can understand – speaking in plain language will usually get you rejected from journals etc. And within the field, it’s those exclusive places that add to the CV, etc etc.

    This is a huge problem, I feel, because we’re out here watching All This happen, and yet the people we disagree with have figured out that you need to be able to go out and podcast/youtube/write plainly if you want people to listen.

    The “secret” is the insistence on inaccessibility, though, is my point. Oh and if you aren’t part of a university, journals literally cost hundreds of dollars.

    Reply ↓
    1. Certaintroublemaker*

      Internal communications in a university—co-signed. I feel like we can get close to plain language for generic comms to staff/faculty. But anything from higher levels sounds like it’s talking to the faculty, not the staff.

      Reply ↓
    2. foureyedlibrarian*

      I do a lot of database searching and I always stress I know how to find articles but DO NOT ask me to attempt to discern what they say or mean

      Reply ↓
    3. higher ed-itor*

      If I could add some nuance to this: communicating accessibly is a specific skill that isn’t usually taught to or practiced regularly by researchers, and in my experience it’s typically less a matter of choice than ability.

      We literally run a (fairly successful and popular) program every semester to teach faculty, postdocs, and grad students how to communicate their research to the public, and we really have to start with the absolute basics because SO MANY of them have never even considered how dumping a load of jargon on their audience COULD be inaccessible. They’re giving the audience more info, isn’t that better? /sarcasm

      There’s a fairly long waitlist on that program, and I think that reflects the fact that most of our scientists know they’re not great at public-facing communications, and they genuinely want to get better. Unfortunately, it’s NSF-funded which means we may need to slash it after the next cohort.

      In terms of related “secrets,” though…if you email a scientist and ask politely for a copy of their paper, regardless of paywalls, they’ll probably just send it to you for free. In my experience, most academics are absolutely champing at the bit to tell everybody every little detail about their research, which is why those “secrets scientists don’t want you to know!!” clickbait headlines are so hilarious to me. My job often consists of reining in scientists from trying to tell everyone everything, and just getting them to focus on telling their immediate audience a few specific, digestible things without getting into a full rehash of their dissertation. Guess I’m part of the evil knowledge-hoarding elite those podcasters keep talking about…

      Reply ↓
      2. MigraineMonth*

        I think this is definitely a factor whenever you become expert in a topic: https://xkcd.com/2501/

        Something else I’ve noticed is that experts often want to communicate the details that are important to them, rather than considering which ones are important to the audience. I can’t count the number of meetings I’ve been in where the software engineer asks the requester for the datatype of the data they want to collect (since they have to add that to the database), skipping over what the requester cares about (how that datatype choice affects how easily the data can be collected or reported on).

        Reply ↓
  135. Pretty as a Princess*

    The most effective people in the software industry don’t come from software/computer science educational backgrounds. They come out of the liberal arts.

    Reply ↓
    2. Mainframer at Work, Web Designer at Heart*

      As one such person, I can say, that’s very true. Soft skills are EXTREMELY important in computer science and most programmers are, well, programners.

      Reply ↓
  136. April Ludgate*

    I work in a hospital as a nurse. I think people might be surprised to know that unless you work on a specialty unit like labour and delivery or pediatrics more than 80% of your patients are seniors. TV shows will have all the patients be young or middle age adults, but in reality most hospitalized people are over the age of 70.

    Also, doctors are very busy and are not taking blood, sitting with patients over night, walking to the lab to read their own scans and MRIs. There are way more jobs in a hospital than TV would have you believe.

    Reply ↓
  137. Kali*

    Law enforcement (investigations).

    Where to start. Pretty much everything you see on television and in films is a lie. This isn’t news for a lot of people, but I spend a lot of my time dispelling notions of what we can and cannot do (legally, ethically, and practically). Fingerprints are sweat, so it’s entirely possible that someone will touch a smooth surface and not leave prints, especially in winter. Video is king, but it often looks like it crawled out of your grandfather’s 1982 giant camcorder, and often the surveillance cameras don’t work at all (or if they do, no one knows how to download the footage). Enhancing video is not a thing. While investigations and patrol are on the same team, we often come into conflict – we have more drama than a high school cheerleading squad. Fire and police usually get along, except in a few cities where there’s long-standing bad blood. Most of this life is paperwork, not car chases and gunfights. There are a dead people and even more naked people. This job needs a certain sort of personality, which is also often the sort of personality that gets in trouble in this job. It’s also a job that can consume your personality and change you forever, so it’s up to you if that’s going to be a good change or a bad change.

    Reply ↓
    1. Pretty as a Princess*

      My husband and I yell “ENHANCE!” at each other every time we watch a cop show where there’s batcrap “oh sure the tech can just do this” stuff.

      We also now yell it when one is recounting a “can you believe this nonsense” kind of story at work. We use “And then he asked me to ENHANCE!” or “And then that guy basically told my client he did an ENHANCE!” – which instantly encapsulates the problem.

      Reply ↓
      2. Kali*

        That’s hilarious! I don’t get a lot of people saying that I should enhance video, thank goodness, but so many people believe that just because there *is* video, I should be able to ID the person and solve the case. Often, it’s like, “yes, that is a person shape there. Or Bigfoot.” So maybe the “enhance!” is unspoken, lol.

        Reply ↓
      3. JustaTech*

        I once had to spend a week watching actually-pretty-good quality surveillance footage of people doing their jobs and by the time I was done my two coworkers and I were just shouting “enhance!” at each other for no reason.

        Also, I do not know how reality TV or international intelligence people do that. It’s sooooooo boring.

        Reply ↓
  138. FloralWraith*

    Social Media Manager (in higher ed, but applies elsewhere)

    A lot of this work is unglamorous. People think it’s like Duolingo and Wendys, but a lot of social media management is very droll and routine, and has to be taken seriously (for a big organisation, it’s often customer service, not marketing).

    Reply ↓
  139. WantonSeedStitch*

    I’m in prospect research. Most people don’t know our field exists, so let’s say higher ed fundraising in general. People hear about the idea of decreased federal grants for research, etc., and say “so why don’t universities just make it up out of their enormous endowments?” I mean, I’ll be the first person to say yes, our endowment (at my university) is huge. But a LOT of it, I mean a LOT, is locked up in restricted gifts that are legally able only to fund certain specific things, due to the agreements we made with the donors. That goes for the interest earned when those gifts are invested as well as the principal. We CAN’T just decide to use it for other things. So, you ask, why does the university make these agreements? Well, if we didn’t, we wouldn’t get the money. And if John Q. Richman’s gift to support, say, prostate cancer research funds that research, we don’t have to cover the cost of that research with funds from the general budget, which can instead be used to, say, repair the shitty HVAC in an older campus building. You know, the unsexy stuff no donor will ever agree to fund directly.

    (Also, tuition is not the amount it costs to educate a student. The cost of educating a student at my university is significantly HIGHER than what we charge for tuition. And we still make tuition free for many students.)

    Reply ↓
    1. ABC123*

      Very interesting and something I was wondering about.

      What about sports revenue/profits, especially from the major D-I football and basketball schools. Could any of that money be redirected, or even add a 75 cent surcharge on alcohol and food sales at sporting events should do *something*

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        You’re assuming that college sports make more money than they spend. According to PBS in 2023, “Athletic expenses surpass revenues at the overwhelming majority of Division I programs.” [emphasis mine]

        Reply ↓
  140. spcepickle*

    I do construction on roadways and am a licensed engineer – if you live somewhere earthquake prone you should very much consider your commute over bridges. There are bridges in my community I will avoid because of how vulnerable they are. It is pretty easy to find the report card issues by every roadway owning entity on the state of their bridges (they are public information). You can then do the risk assessment on likelihood of failure compared to how often you drive over it, compared to how bad the fall or crush (depending on if you are over or under it) will be.

    Reply ↓
    1. Toot Sweet*

      100%. I live in Pittsburgh, PA. Most of the many, many bridges here are ancient and severe need of repair. We can hardly get anywhere without crossing a bridge. We live in fear of a bridge collapse like the Fern Hollow Bridge every day, and we’re constantly calculating the risk. Part of the problem with Fern Hollow was that the condition and risk were being ignored by those who could have fixed those issues sooner. I’m hoping that those people saw that as a red flashing light in their faces.

      Reply ↓
  141. ghostlight*

    I just left the theatre industry but from someone who worked at everything from a small blackbox to a giant entertainment/theatre complex:
    You can get just about anywhere in an all-black outfit and walking with a purpose.
    Every venue is being held together by gaff tape, tie line, and underpaid/overworked staff.
    My previous job, at multimillion dollar venue, would not be operational without volunteers.
    If you ever have an issue with your seat/nearby patrons at a theatre, please go talk to the house manager. If you are patient and kind, they will do everything they can to move you to a better seat.
    Historic theatres are wildly inaccessible, and even newer builds often aren’t built with disabled performers or staff in mind, only patrons.
    VIP events and meet-and-greets not worth your money 99% of the time.

    Reply ↓
  142. Allegra*

    Scientific publishing: there is a vast, vast difference between small nonprofit publishers and the immense for-profit ones, and it is extremely detrimental to the two when you conflate them.

    Trade publishing: selling a book does not make as much money as you might think.

    Both of these fields (and this is unpopular to say but it’s true): piracy actually, genuinely, can impact people’s livelihoods. I’m not saying paywalls or restricted rights are Good Actually but it’s very common to say “this isn’t a big deal/you’re only sticking it to Big Media” and that’s untrue.

    Reply ↓
  143. former sped teacher*

    Many teachers or administrators will get their own children classified as SpEd to ensure they can pick their courses first and receive accommodations on SAT/ACT that they normally wouldn’t even qualify for.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mid*

      Sorry, I’m gently calling BS on this. Can you give any sort of data/numbers for this? I worked in education for years, my parent worked in education for decades, my partner and about 50% of my friend group work in education, in multiple countries and continents, and I’ve never seen this happen. I’m sure it happens on occasion, but very rarely.

      Reply ↓
  144. Moggie*

    Public Librarian here: Please do not verbally or physically abuse my staff because 1) The printer is broken 2) Your toddler ate an expensive book so you have to pay to replace it 3) The workbook you picked up off the shelf has been filled in already 4) Someone is sitting at your preferred seat.

    If you make one of my staff cry, I will walk you to the door myself and stand there so you can’t come back in.
    Also, we are not a babysitter/ senior center. We will not watch your family members or call you when they leave the building.
    Vocational Awe has never yet translated to a working wage, so don’t be surprised when you see me at the food bank.

    Reply ↓
    1. That Library Lady*

      Seconding all of this! Though I would like to add: If you are a jerk, you best believe every staff member will know about you. (If you are a regular library user but are kind and respectful every staff member will also know about you but we will be fond of you)

      Reply ↓
      1. Moggie*

        Yeah, running joke around here is “If the staff have a nickname for you, that’s generally bad.”
        We make it a point to get the actual names of the good ones, but Hawaiian Shirt Guy and Bathroom Screamer are not our favorite people.

        Reply ↓
        1. Potato Potato*

          I’m afraid to ask, but how many times did Bathroom Screamer do that before they got their nickname?

          Reply ↓
    2. Magnolia Clyde*

      Your point about not serving as a daycare is so important!

      When I worked at a small public library, we would have folks walk in with a toddler (or toddlerS!), plonk them down in the children’s book area (beyond the view of the reference desk), and happily head over to the exit, without glancing around to see who was or wasn’t watching.

      I was grateful to have a coworker who would immediately notice the unattended kids. She’d catch up to the adults and let them know that there were No Lifeguards On Duty.

      This kind of thing happened often enough that I was surprised. I couldn’t believe that people didn’t understand that the library not only doesn’t offer babysitting services, but also that it *really* isn’t the ideal place to leave an unaccompanied child.

      Reply ↓
  145. Mainframer at Work, Web Designer at Heart*

    You know that thing about how the entire internet, and much of the IT world in general, is basically being held together by duct tape and string? That one’s not a secret.

    But I work in mainframe. (Often called “legacy software/hardware” even though the machines themselves are quite modern – we just got the newest model last year.) An important thing to know about mainframes is, the world runs on them. Airlines, banks, major corporations, government agencies – worldwide they’re all using mainframes as the backbone of their entire system (if they’re smart). If every mainframe were to stop working tomorrow basically the entire global financial system would grind to a halt.

    The secret is, all that stuff about duct tape and string? In the mainframe world that’s multiplied by ten. Every single shop running a mainframe is using several operationally critical programs that were written 40 years ago and the source code has been lost since the 90s. Meaning if the program suddenly stops working for whatever reason, say because the language it’s written in puts out a new, non-backwards compatible version, it will have to be re-created from scratch. Including figuring out what other programs that program interacts with and whether they need to change. And basically every program interacts with other programs in intricate and complicated ways, making it so one little thing stops working and suddenly four different, unrelated departments experience downstream effects.

    Also everyone in the industry is retiring at the same time (read: right now) and there has been nearly no ongoing education about said industry in the meantime. I’ve been interested in computers and tech my whole life – when I first got this job I couldn’t have told you harry a mainframe even WAS.

    So we have that to look forward to, as a global society.

    Reply ↓
  146. Rocinante2112*

    Unpopular to say, but here it goes:

    As a network guy of 20+ years, there IS a strain on the network placed by heavy data users. Enterprise/Provider grade routers, optics and transport is very, very expensive. There are some instances where data caps and overage fees ARE necessary. It isn’t just a money grab in all cases.

    Reply ↓
    1. commensally*

      I am always having to point out to people complaining about “enshittification” of free websites that actually running a large media-heavy website is very expensive even just in computing costs.

      Like, yes, it sucks that they have to ruin the service in order to make their investors happy. But also, the site’s been hemorrhaging money for years and keeping their investors happy is the only way they can keep the lights on. When I give them actual data on how much it’s costing just to send the data back and forth and store it, not even pay staff, they’re always shocked.

      Reply ↓
  147. Lillian*

    Librarians don’t have or get time to read while on duty. (“Oh, it must be so nice to get paid to read all day long!”)

    Reply ↓
  148. KDO*

    I used to work in health tech, and we had to be HIPAA compliant. The dirty secret is that if you violate HIPAA – for example, sending a hospital a list of a different hospital’s patients by accident – you return to compliance by just having a hospital employee tell you they didn’t see it and that they’ve deleted/destroyed the list. We never had to actually confirm that the violation hadn’t occurred. It’s almost guaranteed that your personal health information has been shared to the wrong person or group, and we all just have to hope bad actors aren’t hanging out just waiting for the next violation.

    Reply ↓
  149. anonymous worker ant*

    I’m not giving a job field as this applies to every white collar job and most customer service jobs I’ve ever done but:

    We don’t really know what we’re doing, regardless of our education/certification we were never properly trained for the vast majority of our actual job duties, most of what we were trained in was by co-workers who were never trained themselves, and when we got professional trainers or mentors it was still mostly people making stuff up on the fly. We’re doing our best but if we have any actual expertise it’s a combo of being lucky in our coworkers and experience.

    This is how everyone does things for all of history and it mostly works fine tbh but so much of the professional world is set up to pretend the person being paid is a true expert in all of their job that it’s always a bit of a shock when I remember they’re probably making it up as they go along too.

    Reply ↓
    1. Throwaway Account*

      When he was about 22, my son came home from work very angry with us. “You are all faking your jobs!’ he said.

      He thought that to get promoted out of an entry-level job, you shadowed the new role and learned all the things about the new job BEFORE you got the new job. As in, you were perfectly well-trained for every role after the first one.

      It was a very good revelation for him! And charmingly funny for us!

      Reply ↓
      1. anonymous worker ant*

        When I was that age I thought you got the new job and then they sent you to lots of training courses or assigned you to an experienced trainer until you knew what you were doing! But no, they give you maybe a half-day of orientation and a link to some youtube videos and then it’s sink or swim and ask your coworkers if you have a question.

        Reply ↓
  150. Cabbagepants*

    I have worked for several big tech companies (Fortune 500 or 100). The software we use day to day is not the gorgeous shiny stuff you see in movies. It is the ugliest, hacky stuff you’ve ever seen, and often ancient, too. As of 2021, the software underlying the manufacturing line of a particularly large company was still running Windows 98.

    Reply ↓
    1. Liz*

      +1 for this. those big shopping and social media websites? held together with the software equivalent of rubber bands and duct tape.

      and also a data privacy surprise: the big companies actually do care about customer privacy and have very strict policies in place, much more so than every one tends to believe. but the surprise is how easy they are to get around if someone choose to. 9/10 times your data is only safe cause the engineer with access isn’t having a bad day

      Reply ↓
    2. JustaTech*

      The underlying computer running the machine that did blood counts for probably half the labs in the country up until last year was running Windows ME and used floppy disks to update the standards.

      Reply ↓
  151. Alyce*

    Something I only discovered about my field (teaching) this week, was you need to let your headteacher know you are job hunting. So, if you apply for anything, the new jobs ask for current references and even if you don’t give them the head as a reference (which they often ask for), your line managers still have to inform the head. So, basically you have to walk up to your grandboss and let them know you have applied for something; which is totally not done in the private sector. I had no idea because it’s weirdly not spoken of, and I came in from an agency.

    Reply ↓
    1. Special Ed*

      In my state letters of reference are required with the application. Like, when you apply. So before you can even start job hunting you have to get 3 people to write you letters, thus ensuring at least 3 people at your organization know you’re job hunting.

      Reply ↓
  152. researcher*

    When colleges offer students “scholarships,” they are not primarily focused on student need or merit; they are focused on meeting enrollment goals. Internally, “scholarships” are called “discounts.” Many institutions use sophisticated algorithms to figure out, for each student, the minimum discount that will entice that student to enroll. This means that often, wealthier students with more options get the largest scholarships, because colleges figure they have to offer them more money to enroll them. They essentially see their tuition pricing as open to negotiation, and those with more negotiating power or savvy get the best rates. Colleges’ overall “discount rates” are built into their budget and pricing models. Most of them could lower their published tuition rates quite a bit, but they would have to get rid of these discounts/scholarships which they see as essential to student recruitment.

    Reply ↓
  153. teensyslews*

    Worked for years in supply chain for clothing. Sometimes, if a shipment gets mold in transit, it is more cost effective to send it out to be cleaned than to write it off. Always wash your new clothes before wearing them, you never know what has touched them :)

    Reply ↓
  154. FuzzBunny*

    Community college professor here: No, we did not “settle” by working here instead of at a 4-year school. We’ve frequently got the same graduate degrees as those faculty do (in my department all faculty but one have PhDs, and some from very prestigious grad programs), and our full-time positions are competitive. We’re here because we love teaching, not because we couldn’t get a job elsewhere.

    Reply ↓
    1. Forrest Rhodes*

      A standing O from me for you and your community college teaching colleagues, FuzzBunny. You are my heroes.
      My first two years of college (as a nontraditional student) were at a CC, and the profs I encountered there are why I continued on to university. They engaged with us students, generated in us their genuine enthusiasm about and interest in the subjects they taught, and I looked forward eagerly to pretty much every class.
      As you said, many were PhDs who chose to teach at CCs because it gave them more direct contact with students (as opposed to university profs, most of whom had to spend their time on publishing rather than teaching).
      You-all were then and are now champs, and I’m eternally grateful to you.

      Reply ↓
  155. Not Ted Faro*

    I do AI work for the US govt. The US military is far more excited about AI that will do their paperwork for them than they are about killer robots.

    Reply ↓
    2. Burnt Out Librarian*

      Unfortunately, I worry the people who make decisions would rather invest in the latter as opposed to the former. Using AI to do busywork is much more realistic, but it’s not “cool” enough to demo for funding.

      Reply ↓
    3. Fluff*

      Same with doctors. We don’t need it to operate – just please do the paperwork and letters to insurance.

      Reply ↓
      1. allathian*

        I long for the day when my doctors will have an AI assistant taking notes, writing prescriptions, and do all the other paperwork. That’ll give the physician more time to actually examine the patient. Obviously they’ll need to read and sign off on the notes, but it’d save a lot of time. Medical transcriptionists have been phased out and the physicians doing admin tasks is an expensive waste of time.

        Reply ↓
        1. MigraineMonth*

          We should start by requiring *so much less* paperwork/documentation. Now that templating or copy/pasting is common, doctor’s notes have gotten both incredibly long and much more likely to be inaccurate. A lot of what is included isn’t medically necessary, it’s necessary to squeeze money out of insurance or administration requires it to defend against possible malpractice suits. (Just because it’s not written down doesn’t mean the clinician didn’t do it! Stop insisting they write down every single thing they do!)

          EHRs were supposed to make life easier for clinicians, but they actually allowed non-clinician administrators to add lots of requirements to clinicians, and it’s burning out all of our medical professionals.

          Reply ↓
        2. KathyG*

          One of my doctors is using AI to transcribe sessions. I only know this because there is a sign in the exam room.

          Reply ↓
  156. AnonyFed*

    Recently retired federal agency employee here. Things people would be surprised to hear? We’re not lazy. We work HARD. At my agency, we worked tons of overtime, without extra compensation. We had too much work and not enough people to do it. But we didn’t complain about it, because we believed in our mission, which was serving the American people. (Do I sound defensive? You betcha. We are being regularly demonized, called lazy, incompetent, unprincipled, corrupt, and criminal. In reality, the people I worked with for years had strong work ethics, high integrity, believed in public service, and could have made loads more money outside of government.)

    Reply ↓
    1. UK Public Sector*

      I think we posted at the same time! My person experience of working in UK local government has been largely the opposite BUT I don’t disagree with you. I have definitely encountered a few teams who are brilliant and work hard with a capital H.

      Reply ↓
    2. AnonyFed*

      p.s. Specifically, I was a consumer protection lawyer for the federal government. We did things like prosecuting fraudsters who sold snake oil masquerading as health cures. Upheld laws guaranteeing that consumers didn’t have to pay for false charges on their credit cards. That sort of thing.

      Reply ↓
    3. Percy Weasley*

      Yup, also true of my experience in state government. Most of the people I’ve worked with are conscientious, hard working, and committed to doing the job well.

      Reply ↓
    4. Court worker*

      THIS. I’m at a public-facing agency and provide direct client services to the public as well as internal services, and the scorn and entitlement we receive from the public is shocking. They genuinely seem to think we either sit around eating bonbons all day or spend our valuable working hours conspiring against them. (Un)fortunately, access to justice is paramount and I have to provide client service to multiple-murderer/rapists in prison for life who have nothing better to do than file frivolous claims just the same as I have to provide to political dissidents trying not to get deported to their death. And then there’s everyone who thinks they can ask the court to overturn a tax authority decision just because they don’t feel like paying the 20 grand they owe.

      Reply ↓
  157. UK Public Sector*

    I’m in the UK and previously worked in an education related field (local government, overseeing local schools). I feel like no one in the country knows that our education system has been effectively privatised. Not college or university level, but actual schools.
    And the amount of wastage in the public sector is horrifying and duplicated across each county… but thats a given!

    Reply ↓
    1. Mornington Crescent*

      I’m in edutech (websites), and signed and agreed. Most folks have no idea how the multi-academy trust system works or why it exists (to make money).

      The amount of money we see wasted too- the sheer number of addons and extras some of our customers plumb for and then never use is crazy.

      Reply ↓
  158. ToolGal*

    I work in customer service for an international manufacturer here in the US. I deal with our customers (middle guys) and end users (the consumer) all day. One thing that people don’t understand (generalization alert!) is that all Americans don’t communicate in the same fashion. Depending on the region, I can usually count on the interaction to be unique. So, what sounds like anger in the North East is not. People in the south might need something urgently although it doesn’t sound that way from the conversation. Customers in the midwest are easy going, and you need to prod them a bit to make sure you are helping them completely. And so on. I know this sounds like sterotypes, but I can tell you from 40 calls a day and about 60 emails that it is not. Plus, I can always tell when a person migrated from one place to another just by the way they communicate (and I don’t even mean by their accent). I love this country but one thing I’ve learned from this job is that just because we all have McDonalds near by doesn’t mean we are all communicate the same.

    Reply ↓
    1. Throwaway Account*

      This is so true! I don’t know why people try to pretend it is not!

      I hate being treated like I’m rude bc I’m from the NE (we are just focused on the task!) and midwest nice is very hard to navigate. Southern sweet is like NE focus with a pretty and often hiddenly snarky cover – that I can handle)

      Reply ↓
      1. ToolGal*

        Been in this line of work for nearly 15 years now and it truly was a breakthrough moment when I realize that the way NE customers treated me wasn’t at personal. Now, its very – very easy to just match the customer in style. It’s comforting to them and it’s fun for me. Besides, obviously since I love what I do – I truly just want to help everyone.

        Reply ↓
  159. Witch of Oz*

    I left the magazine publishing industry a few years ago but used to laugh at TV shows set in glamorous magazine offices. Some offices were tidier or less rundown than others but they were all pretty much cubicle farms or open plan (not conducive to concentrating on writing, editing etc) and there was NOTHING glam about them.

    Reply ↓
    1. Little Bobby Tables*

      And let’s not forget how often all the writers were at the glamorous magazine office all the time, instead of being freelancers who don’t live in the same city and have never seen the office.

      Reply ↓
  160. LabSnep*

    This one surprised ME as a neurodivergent person (and the way it is portrayed in the media), but a medical laboratory is mostly pretty average neurotypical people.

    We are not all awkward nerds, but I wish there were more awkward nerds.

    Reply ↓
    2. Zona the Great*

      Former teacher here: And contrary to almost every mission and vision statement held by schools– no, not every student can learn and succeed in our school system. We leave behind and fail so many people through pigeon-holing.

      Reply ↓
    3. Throwaway Account*

      My first week at my public library job in about 2014, someone called with a question — no hello, no easing in, just:

      Patron: yeeeaaaah, who is the girl with the big butt they keep talking about on TV.
      Me: K-k-k-im Kardashian???
      Patron: That’s it!
      Bang – she hung up the phone.

      Reply ↓
    5. foureyedlibrarian*

      There are definitely stupid questions because I’ve asked some real dumb ones, despite being a librarian

      Reply ↓
  162. Head Sheep Counter*

    Not a secret … but looks at news … not well understood …

    By in large, the staff working in Federal Jobs could have better paying jobs (in normal circumstances) in private industry. People work at agencies for many reasons, but generally, its because they care about the scope they are supporting. No one has gotten rich being a Park Ranger, and FDA Researcher, a postal carrier, supporting the mission of the Department of Energy, working for the USDA, working as an air traffic controller or any of these jobs.

    That people do not appreciate their Federal Workforce has been eye opening and disheartening (this website being largely an exception).

    FYSA the agencies are forbidden from lobbying but clearly when the dust settles and if there are any agencies left… a campaign of education will be needed (although when you can’t get whatever it is you used to get… perhaps that in and of its self will be educational?).

    Reply ↓
  163. Special Ed*

    Special Education is more about writing about how you’re going to do your job rather than actually doing your job, i.e. teaching students. Everyone is afraid to get sued so all the time is spent on paperwork.

    Reply ↓
    1. Frances*

      There is always the saying accountants and CPA’s make a lot of money. Unless you move into being into a Director or Vice President or President you won’t be seeing a cent of your money. Also there is no overtime pay. You get paid your standard 40 hours a week whether you work overtime or not. And if many bosses had a choice you would have no other life but working.

      Reply ↓
  164. I'm on lunch break*

    I work in a garden center and I have lost count of the amount of times folks have said “I want your job! I would love to take care of flowers all day!” Err…this job is PHYSICAL. You need to haul 25-50 lbs a day dozens of times a day all day long between trays of watered plants, bags of soil and large trees and shrubs. Plus you’re doing it in all kinds of weather. The 5 min that you see of me watering a plant is not an accurate representation of my day.

    Reply ↓
    1. Koala*

      OMG this is so real. I used to be a horticulturist and people totally think you stand out in the sun smelling flowers all day. I mean sometimes you do, but sometimes you shovel gravel in the freezing rain.

      Reply ↓
        1. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

          I agree. I do enjoy my current profession, but if I could go back I would really like to go into horticulture. I mean, I shovel gravel (and other things) in the freezing rain in my own garden for free, so…

          Reply ↓
          1. TheGreenGirl*

            Sorry to burst your bubble – horticulture is even worse than working in a gardening center! I’ve worked at both, and landscape construction and especially maintenance is backbreaking labor while you are being looked down on because you are “the help.” In your own garden, it’s different because you can stop and take a break. Garden maintenance team are paid (poorly) by the hour but have to keep going till the job is done. And in most cities, “horticulturalist” is a fancy name for someone who is pulling weeds and raking leaves in a corporate setting, and not allowed any input on what’s planted where. Nothing is more soul-crushing than having to install plants you know WILL die in a week because the “designer” has no real world experience in your climate zone.

            Reply ↓
  165. Koala*

    As a social worker, it isn’t the clients that burn you out — working with them is generally the rewarding part of the job. It’s all the other bullshit — bureaucracy, working with ineffective or outright punitive systems, constantly shifting expectations, lack of resources, etc.

    Reply ↓
    1. bamcheeks*

      Yeah, this always makes me so sad. I’ve worked with hundreds of graduates, and there is absolutely no shortage of people who want to work with people who needs lots of help, whether it’s direct support work or social work or special needs teaching or mental health nursing or drug and alcohol counselling or youth work or whatever. Hundreds and thousands of people want to do those jobs (which isn’t the only criterion, because it also matters that you’re good at them, but it’s a start.) The problem is always the massive shortage of people willing to pay for it, so everyone’s workloads are horrendous and you have no job security and you can barely afford to pay your own rent and bills. Nobody wants to get rich doing that stuff, but they do want a decent and secure standard of living, and as a society we refuse to provide it even though it’s important work. It’s such a tragedy.

      Reply ↓
  166. juliebulie*

    Technical writer. I wish I spent my day writing technical stuff, or even editing. No, I spend most of my day writing emails asking people to please please review something. Or asking them to clarify their review comments. Just last week I did a “shadow session” with a non-writer coworker who wanted to know what tech writing was like. When you have a half-dozen things in review and more in the pipeline, it’s like a goat rodeo.

    Oh and also you often have to vet the review comments because they’re WRONG! Like the time someone made edits to a wiring diagram for DC power. The problem: as stated in the caption, the diagram was for AC. wtf

    Reply ↓
    2. BlueJay*

      I was going to comment something similar: Technical writing involves surprisingly little writing. It’s a project management role with writing as a hobby.

      (And bless all the hopeful anti-social introverts I see popping into places like the tech writing reddit, asking about how to get into the role because they’re dreaming of something they can do by themselves, at home, without communicating with people. To be fair, many of my colleagues – like myself! – are introverts, but we’re of the ‘happy to chat to people before going home to recharge quietly’ variety because boy oh boy does this role require the ability to nag proactively communicate.)

      Reply ↓
    3. lanfy*

      Don’t forget structuring information. I spend so much more of my time trying to figure out what text should go where than I do actually writing it. Does the user really need all this extra detail here, or will it confuse them when they’re just trying to do something simple? Can I somehow embed a spiral learning paradigm in a set of topics that I can’t rely on being read in a specific order (or at all)?

      And how do I deal with the fact that Marketing and the upper echelons want me to write release notes or introductory text that is almost completely unrelated to what the new feature actually does or how it works?

      And don’t forget the amount of time spent actually debugging and running software so that you can explain it *properly*, rather than relying on secondhand information.

      Reply ↓
      1. TW*

        Your last paragraph is my life. Spending all day looking at the Jira ticket, looking at a design document, looking at the code, Googling WTF that Perl module even is, installing the product, testing it out, Googling how to do XYZ in Linux, looking at the merge request again, asking questions, waiting for the person I asked to get back online in their time zone, clarifying why it was done one way and not another, waiting until they fix the code because “oh, good point, we missed that”.

        And finally: writing one sentence.

        That I then need five people to review.

        And all this because I am good at my job and didn’t just copy the developer’s run on sentence paragraph from the initial ticket. And I consider myself lucky to be able to do all this; I have access to the source code and an easily updated environment. I cry for new-writer me, who was in no way allowed source code access, was not permitted a VM, and besides, knew nothing about Linux or databases, so could not have even begun to set up the product even if I HAD a VM.

        Reply ↓
    4. lanfy*

      …and I also remember, early in a previous job, being told to go to our ‘architect’ to review one of my initial documents. The ‘architect’ had not worked with the actual code in a year. He ‘corrected’ a number of things that I had written based on actually looking at the code, to say that they used a different metric than they actually did.

      Now understanding where some of the inaccuracies in the legacy documents came from I thanked him for his comments, quietly ignored all of them, and never asked him for a review again.

      Reply ↓
  167. Baska*

    I’m the office manager of a small church. My friends are constantly surprised that the church is actually a business that has need of an office manager. Even barring all the other volunteer work that our members do, I have to deal with room rentals, payroll, depositing donations, paying bills, bookkeeping, preparing and maintaining documentation, facilities management, newsletter and social media, compliance with new government policies, issuing tax receipts, arranging for congregational and board meetings, IT support… y’know, a whole bunch of stuff that a small business needs an office manager for! There’s all sorts of business-as-usual stuff that happens outside of Sunday services!

    Reply ↓
  168. Another Academic Librarian*

    I’m a cataloger (now they are called Metadata Librarians) in a university library. I create the records that go into the online catalog to allow everyone to find the books that they want/need. I’ve known a lot of people who think that catalogers spend their time reading books all day. Nope… mostly I’m at a computer creating those records.

    Reply ↓
  169. Busy Middle Manager*

    Day trading. One thing that was weird is that you can fail even if you’re handed a profitable strategy on a silver platter. Why? It’s more about psychology. Actually following a strategy is one of the hardest things you can do. What if it’s profitable 75% of the time, but loses a lot the first day and scared you? Do you panic sell when your position is down -2%, before it was about to skyrocket 10%? Do you get caught up in fear and sell as soon as it turns mildly profitable, when it would have had a longer rally, had you just waited? Do you have the temperament to just walk away for a couple of hours, and not care what your money is doing?

    Reply ↓
  170. Helvetica*

    Diplomacy – you can excel if you are an introvert.
    I think people assume you have to be extroverted/people person extraordinaire to be good at it but I find it very easy to separate my outgoing, socialising work-self and my more internal, alone time appreciating private self. Obviously you can’t completely loathe socialising but not all of us are gregarious people persons either.

    Reply ↓
    1. Anon for This*

      I like to say we are extroverted introverts! We can turn it on when needed, but then need to go home and recover.

      Reply ↓
  171. Dust Bunny*

    Archives: We do spend a lot of time snuggled in among the collections and not interacting with the public, but that probably means we’re working on a tedious inventory of something.

    The times we’re not hiding in the stacks, we’re helping patrons with things when they themselves are often not clear on what they need. You have to have very, very, good communication and people skills. You also have to have some pretty solid tech skills, especially if you’re a department of one.

    Also, this might be because I was in college in the 1990s before Internet research had really gotten going, but I, even as a history major, wasn’t taught a thing about archives or how to use them. In retrospect, that seems nuts.

    Reply ↓
  172. AnotherAcademic*

    As a tenured professor at a state university:
    1. Most of my time is spent on research, not teaching (or at least that’s formally what I’m expected to do).
    2. When I publish an article, I don’t get paid, and I don’t get paid when someone reads it or downloads it. All the money, basically, accrues to the publisher.
    3. To get tenure, I had to meet certain expectations, by my sixth year of work. It was basically like being on probation for 5.5 years!
    4. I don’t attempt to indoctrinate students. I want them to think independently and be able to solve (life) problems. In fact, I work very hard to not let my political beliefs influence my teaching (and I often teach about ethical dilemmas).
    5. As in most professions, a few kind words mean A LOT. Every once in a while, a student will send me a kind email, and I absolutely treasure those.

    Reply ↓
    1. AnotherAcademic*

      To be clearer, I don’t really think #2 is a problem. I get paid to do research, and the output/ evidence of that research is a publication. So I think that I do, technically, get paid for articles, through my university salary. But this seems to be a minority opinion amongst my colleagues.

      Reply ↓
      1. UKReader*

        Oh man, the article thing is real! Nope, I don’t get royalties every time someone downloads or cites me. Would be nice though!

        Reply ↓
    2. Fluff*

      And my teacher told me and I learned is true for medicine:

      Most of the article writing occurs after hours, on your weekends and holidays.

      ::eye roll:: And that is exactly why I am published 3 x and promptly noped out of the academic track.

      Reply ↓
  173. No Longer Gig-less Data Analyst*

    How much perfectly good pharmaceutical product is destroyed by the ton because it is either returned prior to expiration in error, or because the drugs are absolutely effective past well their expiration dates.

    The fact that Epipens only have a 1-year expiration date when nearly every other pharma product is 2 years is driven by nothing but greed. When there was a shortage a few years ago the FDA approved their use for 6 months past expiration without batting an eye.

    Reply ↓
  174. Peds rn*

    PEDS RN. No we don’t get kickbacks from big pharma. Yes we are able to analyze data. I’m advising you to vaccinate because I see the benefits. There is no financial benefits to me. The one benefit really, is less sick children

    Reply ↓
    1. JustaTech*

      *hugs* Thank you! My kid would thank you too but he’s still too young to understand. (I don’t know why he doesn’t get it, I’ve been explaining antigen presenting cells and memory B cells and memory T cells since he was 6 weeks old!)

      Reply ↓
    2. Just Here for the Llama Grooming*

      Louder for the folks in back! And thank you, many times over, for your work. (Our first grandchild was born at 31 weeks and spent five weeks in the hospital. NICU and PEDS nurses ROCK.)

      Reply ↓
  175. MxLibrarian*

    I’m in rare books librarianship, cataloging specifically, and part of that is explaining to everyone that no, we don’t actually use those iconic white cotton gloves to handle old books anymore, it actually makes it harder to handle them safely.

    Reply ↓
  176. Carl T.*

    I work in the contemporary art world. There are a surprising number of Republicans/Trump supporters (working in this world and buying contemporary art) for an industry that so outwardly projects liberal/progressive values and even makes money by being branded as liberal and free-thinking.

    Reply ↓
    1. linger*

      No surprise: Mostly what they really believe in is (a) making money and (b) paying as little tax on it as possible.

      Reply ↓
  177. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    College students think that their professors and other university staff make great money and are well off. They may even think they have great big houses and property. In reality they aren’t making that much, especially non tenured or adjunct professors. The other university staff don’t make about the same as someone working at Walmart or target. Benefits are ok but still expensive.

    Reply ↓
  178. MuseumCurator*

    Museum curation: white gloves are a personal preference, not a mandate. I’ve seen curators who will only wear them during formal scenarios (VIP tour, lecture) or if on camera. Many of us are subject “generalists” (esp at small, local museums) and learned preservation standards on the fly or not at all. We may be doing it wrong too. The vast majority of our collections will never be seen by the public. They will be put in a box, shuffled onto a shelf, and never go on display. Curators loose artifacts all the time. We don’t always know how an artifact came into the collection. The vast majority of our workload is spent working in databases/spreadsheets, and less like Indiana Jones, answering public inquiries on whether we can provide sale values for Great Grandma Sally’s 200-year old doll (answer: we ethically can’t and your doll is likely not from the time period you think it is). We burst a lot of bubbles that way.

    Reply ↓
    1. goddessoftransitory*

      This reminds me of the great Simpsons episode with John Waters: “That’ll make your bull run!”

      Reply ↓
  179. Yes And*

    Theater: I think people would be shocked at how much union stagehands make. Decent wages get compounded by overtime, penalties for everything, separate payouts for every kind of PTO (whether or not they actually take PTO), and so on. Of the top ten compensated employees at my org, half are crew heads. That’s pretty typical for a unionized theater.

    Conversely, how little actors make. The starting salary for actors at top-tier theaters is decent if an actor worked at those theaters year-round, but most of them don’t. You basically can’t make a living as an actor unless you’re a star. And writers can’t make a living in theater at all – that’s why your favorite playwrights keep turning up on the staffs of TV shows.

    And for both stagehands and actors, how much of their workday is spent standing around waiting. The really amazing thing about these professionals isn’t the part you see from the audience – it’s how they go from 0 to 100 on a dime, and back, over and over again, all day, every day.

    Finally, how irresponsibly written most female leads in musicals are. Little girls ruin their voices playing Annie. If you have a friend playing Elphaba, don’t expect to hear her voice ever while the show’s running – she’s on vocal rest.

    Reply ↓
    1. Silver Robin*

      I had never thought about music being irresponsibly written, but it totally makes sense that one could do that and disappointingly unsurprising that it would fall on women’s roles more heavily.

      Reply ↓
  180. PEBKAC*

    I’m an IT Systems Administrator. Everyone who doesn’t actually work with servers wants to send them to “the Cloud” to save money and be safer. But:
    – “The Cloud” is just someone else’s servers and storage at a different location, not a magical environment.
    – Unless you only put data into a cloud environment and never want to retrieve it, the costs to access it again can get expensive quickly.
    – Unless you set up specific backup procedures, either an extra product with your cloud vendor or a 3rd party product, you can still lose your data. The cloud vendor provides you with computer platforms to run on, but they are not promising to retrieve important files you or a hacker deleted.

    Reply ↓
    1. I Have RBF*

      Plus, for any large infrastructure, “the cloud” is often more expensive than running your own DC and VMware boxen, because it’s someone else’s DC and virtualization environment, with an added markup for providing you the convenience. It doesn’t back itself up, you have to do that, and pay for the storage every month.

      I know of one group of users that was told to get out of the cloud because their costs were too high, and bring their stuff into our own data centers to save money.

      I have over 25 years in the field, and the worst thing is some hyped crap that some executive things will replace us or let them lay off 95% of us. Cloud, Agile, AI, etc are all boondoggles.

      Reply ↓
  181. 2025*

    I work for a state Bar. People would be surprised how flat out stupid some of these lawyers are. I feel very bad for their clients; simple rules and procedures are too confusing for these folks to understand. And oh my Ceiling Cat, will they whine about it!!

    Reply ↓
    1. Just a Pile of Oranges*

      Have you ever come across the blog Lowering the Bar? It’s run by a lawyer who basically just posts about funny things in law, and also funny things that lawyers do.

      I enjoy it a lot.

      Reply ↓
    2. Anon for This*

      If you’ve ever worked with lawyers, you know this. The amount of lawyers who are so confidently wrong about their own specialty is staggering. Maybe it varies by area of law but man is it bad when the non lawyer gets to tell the lawyers they are wrong – all. the. time.

      Signed,

      Non lawyer that has the joy (not) of telling lawyers they are wrong

      Reply ↓
  182. UKReader*

    Another professor coming in – in addition to all things shared by others in higher ed up thread, other things that surprised/shocked me when I got into the field:

    – the training you get during a PhD varies WIDELY according to your advisor, and 95% of it is how to do research. Research (in the sense of reading, thinking, investigating, and then writing about an issue) is about 15% of my job these days as a permanent contract academic; emails, teaching, admin, service, public engagement, recruiting, helping students ‘adult’ or find jobs, or all the stuff that enables research (grant writing, ethics approval, recruiting graduate student researchers, managing RAs, etc) is the other 85%. Most of us are less qualified to teach (in terms of formal training) than the class assistant in your child’s primary class.

    – related, I teach ONE class in my specific area of specialty (and I’m lucky). The other courses I teach are either larger/foundational concepts behind my area of specialty or stuff I’ve frantically self taught, but I’m not an expert in! (As in, my area of expertise might be Eastern European drug trafficking organisations, so I get to teach a class on transnational crime, but I also teach Intro to Criminology, Prisons 101, and Research Methods. Oh and also Cryptocrime, because we needed a course on that even though I had to teach myself the whole thing). So your classes are being taught by experts! But not necessarily experts in that specific thing they’re teaching. Really, what we’re generally good at is taking in a LOT of information quickly and organising it in a way that it can (hopefully) be understood by other people.

    – a PhD is a better measure of tenacity and privilege than intelligence. Some of the dumbest people I know are doctors.

    – the university is definitely being run by an Administrative Assistant named Peggy.

    Reply ↓
  183. Former lab animal caretaker*

    For my former field: if you work with lab animals some of your boundaries may erode, since you may be showering at work multiple times a day or even wearing company-provided underwear for biosecurity reasons.

    Reply ↓
  184. Blue Pen*

    In communications, most people at the top aren’t great at writing at all. But they are (or should be) good at messaging; the writer is the one who translates those big ideas and guardrails into a statement, release, speech, etc.

    In academic publishing, there is no fact checker on staff. The publisher relies on a peer review process to make sure a manuscript is accurate.

    In U.S. higher education, many schools and universities employing thousands of staff are major (if not the only) employers in that area. If the attacks on them from this administration continue and layoffs come through (in addition to the gutting of federal positions), many local and regional U.S. economies will be in big trouble.

    Reply ↓
  185. Late Bloomer*

    My work is developing one of the major student assessments known by an acronym that no longer stands for anything. The thing I would like people to know is that we aren’t just sitting around dreaming up questions to trip kids up, based on exclusionary content and concepts. To a person, everyone I work with is deeply invested in striving for fairness, promoting representation and diverse topics/viewpoints in our content, and creating a tool that can help open doors for students.

    Reply ↓
    1. Late Bloomer*

      Oh, and the actual secret is that students will get the biggest boost to their scores if they simply take the time to work through a few practice tests so they get a sense of the test item constructs + how to pace themselves while testing. It’s not about studying–it’s about comfort and familiarity. It’s also free; the org I work for provides abundant practice materials with content from actual past tests, with explanations of incorrect and correct answers so you can see where you may have gone astray. You can do all of it yourself. I wish more kids and parents knew that the only significant reason to shell out $$ for test prep is if you need the handholding to sit down and do it.

      Reply ↓
  186. Jules the First*

    Most architects will never actually “design” a building on a blank piece of paper after they finish school. You can go your entire career without ever sketching a novel design, especially if you work on public buildings. Most architects spend most of their working lives sorting out the details of tiny bits of buildings on paper.

    Reply ↓
  187. Half April Ludgate, Half Leslie Knope*

    I’m a writer, and I think all of my friends assume my job involves 40 hours of writing and interviewing subjects. Sure, maybe some weeks, but the dominant part of my workload is sending things out for review (at my workplace, our work goes through at least four rounds of internal reviews before publication) and pinging people to get their edits back to me. Sometimes my entire week is just emailing people for updates.

    Reply ↓
    1. Blue Pen*

      Yes, same. In many cases, the actual writing is only 10% of the work and shepherding it through the review process is the rest.

      Reply ↓
  188. michelenyc*

    I have worked in the fashion/apparel industry for over 20 years and have worked for some of the largest companies in the world and some small of the smallest. People have zero understanding of what goes into the development of their garments. For a polo shirt you will have a designer, tech designer, product developer, materials (fabric) developer, trims developer, overseas office contact, and production manager to name a few. Depending on the season you can be working on at a minimum of 25 styles but typically it is closer to 75.

    Everyone just thinks I just play with clothes all day and that it must be so much fun. Depending on the company you work for it can be really fun but you can also have days where you are crying in the bathroom or meeting your friend at the bar around the corner from the office to cry. It’s so frustrating when people make comments like it’s just a polo; how hard can it be? Well it can be really hard when the cost of cotton or polyester fluctuates on a daily basis or your government imposes ridiculous tariffs that keep changing everyday so you can’t negotiate costing since you don’t know if it is going to change in an hour.

    And no we can’t just move all apparel manufacturing back to the US because we no longer have the workforce here to do it. So while it would be easy to set-up domestic factories we don’t have any one to work in them. The factories that are still here struggle to keep their current team in place.

    Reply ↓
    1. Tradd*

      I buy tops (women’s) that are sewn in the US of imported fabric. They are on average about $80, sometimes more. The labor is why they’re so much. This floors people when I point it out.

      Reply ↓
      1. michelenyc*

        $80 is a really great deal.

        It’s actually a combination of the CM (Cut & Make) and fabric that drives cost. Trims unless you are using a specialty trim tend to be the cheapest thing on the garment. Depending on where the fabric is from, type of fabric (knit or woven), fabric width, and yield. You could easily spend more on fabric than what it costs for the garment to be made.

        Reply ↓
    2. goddessoftransitory*

      It makes me nuts when factory work and manual labor are referred to as “unskilled.” To quote the late, great Barbara Ehrenreich, there is no such thing as unskilled labor.

      Reply ↓
  189. roisin54*

    Yet another public librarian here. With the exception of things like eBooks that we purchase individually for Overdrive, we have zero control over the content in the online resources we subscribe to. Nor do we control their policies and how they are designed/function. We’ve gotten soooo many complaints from patrons about why we “got rid of Overdrive” and why we removed such-and-such a title from PressReader. A) OverDrive and Libby are the same thing and they are the ones who decided to discontinue the OverDrive app and B) PressReader does whatever the hell they want with zero input from us.

    Reply ↓
    1. Tradd*

      I was so disappointed when The Economist digital edition went away about two years ago, as it’s very expensive to subscribe to (maybe $250/year?). I contacted my library and they explained The Economist changed something about the digital edition. I googled and found this was an issue for many libraries. I understood once it was explained to me.

      Reply ↓
  190. CXEmcee*

    I work in customer service, the kind where you contact us, not the other way around.
    If we say something isn’t possible, I promise we’re not lying. We’d love to just do what you want, it makes our lives 100% easier. You don’t want to talk to my manager. They have way less experience in what we can do/exceptions that can be made. When you contact us, don’t just say “not working.” That’s not helpful, we need information to be able to help you. Some of the best contacts we get are people letting us know they love our product/how it helps them. It can absolutely turn around someone’s entire day on the CX team

    Reply ↓
    1. Dust Bunny*

      We don’t, either, most of the time. Gloves are abrasive and then have to be laundered. We just wash our hands a lot before we handle delicate things.

      Reply ↓
  192. pally*

    Request: I’d like to hear from someone who works on or designs public transportation systems for major cities or counties in the USA.

    Reason: the job position of someone who manages this for the county (where I live) is open.

    Folks feel that the low to mid-six figure salary that comes with the job is way over-inflated.

    I know there’s expertise here that justifies this salary figure. I just can’t explain this myself. Maybe someone here can?

    Thank you.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lady Lessa*

      This won’t answer the question that you are asking, but the book “Killed by a Traffic Engineer” by Wes Marshall should provide a lot of insight into the job and its problems.

      Reply ↓
      2. Bike Walk Bake Books*

        Everyone who works in transportation should read that. Also on the must-read list:

        – Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities by Veronica O. Davis (good intro by an engineer for non-transpo people who want to advocate, centered in transportation equity)

        – When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency by Anna Zivarts (really important work on the needs of nondrivers and how the systems fail them)

        Also good, on traffic safety and beyond: There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster―Who Profits and Who Pays the Price, by Jessie Singer

        Reply ↓
      1. pally*

        No, I don’t. They have a lot of responsibility and have to bring a lot of experience to the job.

        AND, they have to somehow correctly anticipate the future transit needs of the county and plan for same. And be creative about finding solutions. All on a tight budget. I don’t know how they do it. But they do!

        On a neighborhood forum, the mayor of my city asked folks to comment as to whether the current person who manages this in our county was overpaid. I argued that he was not.

        I was in a minority of one. Was even accused of being the manager’s wife (because his first name and my last name are the same-SMH!).

        Everyone -including the mayor- said that the job was so easy a child could do it. So, I suggested that when there was an opening, they all ought to apply. I even wrote to the county and asked them to consider hiring the mayor for the position. I pointed out that the mayor could be hired at considerably less pay, saving the taxpayers a lot of money.

        Reply ↓
    3. Jules the First*

      Hi! Among the many hats I have worn over my career is designing the procurement parameters for these systems (so setting out the qualifications and skills for the design team, the delivery team, and the operations team). Typically you’re looking at six figures plus for the lead designers because it will require a higher level engineering degree (so 6-8 years of university) plus a minimum of 15 years relevant experience, which basically means six figures is a given. When you are on the county side leading the delivery of a project like this, you need to have the technical skills to understand the design proposals and plans as well as the social skills to bring together a diverse group of technical, non-technical, political and community participants. You’re likely also accountable to the county for a multi-million dollar procurement budget and complex service level metrics. It takes a complex mix of technical engineering, cost management, project management, operations and people management skills to do well and there’s a pretty small pool of people who have all those skills, getting smaller as the size of your network increases. If you are building the network from scratch or expanding the network significantly, you could easily be talking fractions of a million dollars for the county-side lead. The consequences of managing a project like this badly are many multiples of that to fix, so it’s worth spending on the expertise at the start.

      Reply ↓
      1. pally*

        Thank you!
        I would also add, they have to mind all the regulations – federal, state and county too! -while doing all this.
        Like I posted earlier, it is child’s play per many in my community including the mayor of my city.

        Reply ↓
        1. Hlao-roo*

          I don’t work in transit personally, but these articles are good overviews of why it’s so expensive to build new transit in the US (largely because of all the regulation!):

          https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs-america

          https://www.npr.org/2023/07/21/1189450206/why-public-transportation-is-especially-expensive-to-build-in-the-u-s

          Posting these because they give examples actual transit projects that backs up what Jules the First said.

          Reply ↓
    4. Bike Walk Bake Books BUS*

      If your public transportation system includes rail (light rail, passenger rail, subways) you already have some good answers. The full scope of the job depends on the size of the agency.

      If you’re talking about a bus system it’s still highly complex. I work in an adjacent field (active transportation–how most people get to/from the stop, as one element of walk/bike transportation). Jarrett Walker’s business Human Transit has tons of great blog posts that I read when I was a volunteer advocate before I got into the field professionally and he has a book by the same name worth reading (or skimming, if you just want top-level points).

      Among the things someone planning bus transit has to consider, and I know this list isn’t exhaustive:

      – Stop locations that serve the bulk of human needs and that can also safely accommodate the size of the vehicle and the traffic interactions when it pulls over and when it reenters the lane. This will include whether you do near-side stops (before the traffic signal or intersection) or far-side stops (past the intersection), with all the implications a traffic signal will have for whether the bus can hold to its schedule.
      – Considering, for those stops, the total population in the catchment area, stop spacing and what this means both for the human energy cost to get to the stop and the bus schedule overall.
      – Less urban areas like a county: How (and how often) you serve transit-dependent populations, how to deal with it if you have a large rural area (do you serve that area at all, do you run once-daily service).
      – Traffic volumes and patterns of all those people driving themselves alone when instead they could much more safely and efficiently be moving on the bus. More implications for whether the bus can keep to its schedule.
      – Tradeoffs and issues around frequency, reliability, and cost.
      – Dealing with people who get mad because “that bus was empty”, not recognizing that people have been getting on and off for the whole route and at times it may have been standing room only.
      – Considering how routes interconnect and what this means for total travel time for the O/D (origin/destination) patterns in your community.
      – Redesigning the route plan and having half the people who will comment on the route plan mad because they have to go two more blocks to the stop and the other half mad because you’re providing transit, period. The majority who will be served better by the new route will mostly be silent because they haven’t yet experienced the improved service.
      – Trying to do something with the fixed-route service to help keep paratransit needs down because para is by far the most expensive service a transit agency provides and they’re federally required (at least for now) to provide it.
      – Negotiating with the agencies that actually design and operate the roads the buses run on and all of their politics concerning transit, particularly things like dedicated HOV and BRT (bus rapid transit–fewer stops) lanes and whether you might be able to get a bus priority signal timing plan, bearing in mind that the vast majority of people working in those agencies and in particular the elected officials don’t actually ride the bus so they don’t have a clue.
      – Anticipating what the land use decisions made by those same elected officials will do to your service. Nothing like a community that tries to push all the low-income housing to the fringes, then demands that the bus system go out there because those folks can’t afford a car, either, without considering whether this route makes any sense at all for the system as a whole.
      – Dealing with the huge backlog in orders for new buses! The wait time for new vehicles, particularly electric, hydrogen-fuel, or hybrid, is long. So in the meantime your maintenance needs grow.
      – Participating in or leading grantwriting to get FTA funds either directly or passed through the public transportation division in your state DOT, or whatever route the money takes in your state.
      – Participating in emergency management planning because your buses are going to become a big part of evacuation plans for whatever kinds of disasters and extreme weather your area is prone to.
      – Depending on which part of the planning you may have something to do with labor relations and dealing with the shortage of bus drivers and people willing to learn to drive a bus; as a lot of people learned during the early COVID years those are critical positions.
      – Performance measurement that intersects with all of the above.
      – Working with the communications team so they can do a good job of communicating the value of the service, the need for any changes and what that means for improvements they can highlight, data on people served.
      – If you have any kind of advocacy organization(s) in your area for transit service and the people who most rely on it, staying in relationship with them, keeping them informed so they can be effective where that’s good for your agency and not do damage through getting something wrong (not that they’re going to love you 100% of the time, but you need them doing things you can’t do as the agency employee to push for more funding and support).
      – All of the above meaning you have to really understand the community, its people, the destinations they go to most often, land use planning, the employment and educational rhythms, the weather and geography, local politics, so much more!

      I live in a community that has fare-free transit thanks to the realization that updating all the fare collection systems wasn’t actually cost-effective when grants could be used to buy bus service instead of technology and accounting labor. We don’t have great frequency but I can plan around that. So freeing to walk out the door, go a couple of blocks (we deliberately bought near a transit stop that isn’t likely to shift), get on the bus, and go downtown. Thank you, bus transportation planners–I hope I did your job justice with my list.

      Reply ↓
      1. Bike Walk Bake Books*

        That was a lot of thoughts and I’m going to add one more: It would be awesome if you and others in the community promoted Week Without Driving (dot org). This year it’s Monday Sept. 29-Sunday Oct. 5. Launched by Anna Zivarts, the author of one of the books I listed in another comment here, it’s specifically aimed at getting elected officials and public agency staff to experience what it’s like to get around your community without driving alone.

        The site has resources and America Walks is helping promote it nationwide. The stories, aha moments, and highlights from past years will give you an idea of the value.

        Reply ↓
  193. Opaline*

    Not my current job, but how much of ‘all natural’ products is just branding. I once worked at a big name bath and beauty store. I won’t say who, but think somewhere with stores in multiple countries and a big reputation for non-animal tested products, activism and natural ingredients.

    One of the sales pitches was how much better their face creams and body butters were for you than drugstore brands because “those have so many preservatives and could have been sitting in a warehouse for months or years before you buy them from the drugstore”. Those ‘all natural’ face creams with zero preservatives sat in our unrefrigerated attic warehouse for months at a time, and corporate ordered us to keep the Christmas boxes with ‘fresh’ ingredients back to be relabeled with new use-by dates next year.

    Reply ↓
  194. sarah denis*

    I work in state public health, licensing and certification of healthcare facilities like hospitals and nursing homes. People often ask for a nursing home to be shut down but then when a nursing home actually is shut down we get so many sad calls about friendships being split up, care crises, and other things it’s awful.

    People call in about all sorts of things like you’re their therapist or the government will do what you requested for some reason even if illegal. I have had to explain to so many people that we can’t guarantee a result in their favor. They will also lie about anything and everything because they didn’t like what they heard. Lots of elderly women think any large black man was a rapist and will say he sexually assaulted them and the woman may or may not have dementia.

    I think what surprises people the most beyond the witnessing upsetting situations and the fragility of the system is that the state has constant tech problems. IT once gave everyone computer docking stations that weren’t compatible with the computers. Things crash randomly if you ask it to print anything. I have had to remind my coworkers about drop down menus.

    Reply ↓
  195. Sasha*

    Adult Education/Exam Preparation Industry

    1. Most adults that need to take extremely hard national exams could pass if they learned HOW to study properly and gave themselves 3-6 weeks of time to do so.
    2. Most online study programs do not come with good directions and people make the mistake of just reading the exam sample questions over and over. (The biggest tip I can give for free is to take the exam and read all of the “Reasoning” for the right and wrong answers EVERY time.)
    3. This industry exists because most adults taking national exams have not been in school for years and consider themselves “mediocre” students but in reality, they were all fully capable the whole time, they just never knew how to study properly.

    Reply ↓
  196. Jane Bingley*

    I have a side gig as a grader for university-level courses. If you read and follow all the directions and accomplish the tasks listed in the grading rubric, you will get an excellent score. It’s incredibly frustrating how often I have to give a lower grade to a student who wrote an otherwise great paper but missed an entire portion of the main point of the topic.

    Reply ↓
  197. No Witty User Name*

    Ive worked in a call center in years passed. When we say we are going to get a supervisor and then put you on a ‘brief hold’??
    WE LIED.
    Its almost always a fellow coworker just telling you the same stuff.
    And we keep you on hold a while hoping you’ll just hang up.

    Reply ↓
    1. Advicebod*

      I’ll actually go to my colleagues and say ” I’m just breaking line of sight” to enable a client to accept the info I’ve already given when I reappear…

      Reply ↓
  198. vacationaddict*

    I work in HR. Two things I would share
    1. HR people are not always the ones trying to get you fired. Quite often we are the ones advocating for you as an employee. However, managers aren’t obliged to do what we recommend.

    2. Don’t believe everything you hear. Most people who get fired–at least at my company—deserve it. One of my favorites–true story—we fired a guy selling drugs while on the clock, wearing his company uniform, out of a company vehicle. We had dashcam video of several transactions. We even had a witness who called the police, who weren’t able to arrest him because he left before they got there.

    His division was up in arms because he told them he got fired for reading the Bible during his lunch break. They all threatened to walk off the job because of how unfair we were to poor Billy.

    Reply ↓
    1. Eleanor Knope*

      So true. When I transitioned over from Comms to HR, everyone stopped talking to me because I was the enemy now :) But really, I see my team advocating for the employee more often than not. When they say HR is there to protect the company — it’s true, but often protecting the company is treating the employees fairly/well!

      Reply ↓
    2. HRneedsAdrink*

      Thank you! The LAST thing I ever want to do is terminate someone. The thought of taking away someone’s lively hood, money for meds, food, etc., is devastating to me! Yes, sometimes we have to lay off good employees, but rarely terminate them. Honestly, I don’t even like writing someone up, or putting them on a PIP. PLEASE just come to work, on time, don’t touch anyone (or say stupid stuff), and don’t do drugs.

      Reply ↓
  199. Advicebod*

    Advice industry front desk – I send way too much time having to send people away who really need us and too much time helping those who just need more financial support generally.

    I see 100 problems as a front desk person and all their frustrations but may see 1 solved as that’s not part of my role. I know they do us get help but it can be heartbreaking.

    Reply ↓
  200. Benihana scene stealer*

    I work in logistics software.. I don’t think outsiders have even given that any thought, so probably even the most mundane facts would be new to them.

    Reply ↓
  201. Dust Bunny*

    I used to work for a veterinarian. Veterinary medicine is terrifyingly expensive. It uses a lot of the same supplies as human medicine except your vet probably can’t buy them in hospital-scale bulk, and they don’t get a discount because it’s just going to be used on a dog. It also takes a lot of staff because, unlike with most humans, you can’t explain to a cat why it needs to keep its leg extended so the IV doesn’t crimp–you have to put it in a splint or possibly pay a kennel tech to sit there and hold it all afternoon. Your vet and her staff are not getting rich.

    I have never met anyone in the veterinary discipline who wouldn’t charge you much less if they could. It’s also extremely stressful; nothing is worse than having an animal that needs treatment that the owner can’t or won’t pay for (and if you have pets you need to have an emergency plan, because at some point something very expensive is going to happen). Vets don’t get tax money like public hospitals do; they’re medicine on a small private business platform.

    Nobody who has ever said to me that “they should do it for love of animals” has ever offered to do whatever they do for a living, at a discount for veterinary staff to make that possible.

    Reply ↓
    1. ThatGirl*

      I appreciate vets so much, emergency vets even more so; that said, I do hate the trend of private equity-owned places. Seems sus to me.

      Reply ↓
      1. Dust Bunny*

        It’s absolutely sus. It’s not a good thing. I wish I believed it gave veterinarians more leverage when purchasing supplies and providing benefits, but I think we know that’s not the goal. (My vet is independent and determined to stay that way.)

        Reply ↓
      2. The OG Sleepless*

        We hate it too. I was hoping to go my entire career without working for corporate, and my boss quietly sold us to corporate at the end of 2020. I just didn’t have the spoons to go job searching at the end of 2020, so I stayed. Fortunately, our particular corporate entity barely interferes with us at all. They raised prices just a little, dropped our paychecks just a little below industry standard (sigh), gave us slightly better insurance, and occasionally gripe at us about our constant requests for new equipment.

        Reply ↓
    2. Dust Bunny*

      I guess this is not so much a secret as something clients just don’t understand. I know it seems like treating your 25-pound dog should be cheaper, but it’s just not.

      Reply ↓
    3. The OG Sleepless*

      This is all true! Also, a fun fact that I forget most people don’t know: out of what you pay at the vet, about 22% goes into the doctor’s salary. The rest goes to drugs, supplies, utilities, the mortgage on the building (bet you didn’t know there was one, right?) and the (criminally low) salaries of the support staff.

      Another also: the doctor is probably not in charge, and has no control over the prices. They’re probably an associate. (Or they might be the medical director, with corporate overlords in charge of them. A whole lot of animal hospitals are secretly owned by corporate chains these days.) Your charges are produced by somebody entering line items in the software, not just somebody deciding you look like you could pay $XXX.

      Reply ↓
    4. Bike Walk Bake Books*

      My stepdaughter worked as a vet tech for a while, which cured her of thinking she wanted to go to vet school. The problem wasn’t the animals, it was dealing with the humans, who made up the bulk of the work.

      She said the worst part was people who would bring in pets to be put down because they just couldn’t deal with them or didn’t want them anymore rather than take them to the shelter. I don’t know who those people could be, although I now suspect them of being in power in DC.

      Reply ↓
  202. Nat20*

    I used to work in hotels/hospitality. The “secret” is that the travel industry is making bedbugs more common. At this point it’s impossible for any hotel, no matter how fancy, to always prevent bedbugs. You might think a nice hotel should never have bedbugs, and that’s going to be true 99.999999% of the time even at the normal places. But any hotel can get bedbugs coming in with travelers, so the (very) occasional one is not necessarily a sign of low quality.

    Why are they spreading more and how does it happen at even the nice, clean places? Say you’re on a road trip and stay somewhere with a bedbug, which gets in your luggage because they like dark crevices. Then you go to the next perfectly clean hotel and bam, now that hotel has bedbugs too. The whole time you might be none the wiser; they can hitchhike like that without ever biting you. It’s usually no one’s fault.

    Hotels do take them very seriously; housekeepers (and even other staff) are obviously trained to spot them so you don’t have to. If you do see one definitely let the hotel know; just don’t blame them for it, please. If they’re a remotely good hotel (and it is in fact a bedbug, not just a bug on the bed) they’ll immediately start treating it and move you to a new room. Most of the time this won’t need to happen because housekeeping will spot the bug before a guest does. But you can check your room with a flashlight and the naked eye, they’re not actually that hard to spot. (They especially like the corner where the headboard meets the base of the bed.) If you want to be sure you’re not taking any home, the little suckers die in the heat of a dryer, so just unpack straight into the washing machine and you’ll be fine.

    Reply ↓
    1. goddessoftransitory*

      This. Unless someone is an entomologist, they won’t have any idea how quickly infestations can spread.

      Reply ↓
  203. Come at me if you must*

    I am in marketing and we do use AI. We’re not proud of it, but when you’re a 2-person department trying to keep your head above water with 10 sales people breathing down your neck for deliverables and two trade shows in a month, trying to write 40 different takes on the same offer for Facebook ads is frickin’ ponderous, man.

    Reply ↓
  204. Allegro Assai*

    I work in fundraising at a performing arts organization. The amount we get from selling tickets does not even come close to covering our operating costs. If you want to support the arts, kick in $5 when you buy your ticket. I promise we are not spending it on champagne toasts for the staff, that’s a completely different budget.

    Reply ↓
  206. Violently Purple*

    Banking- customers who are considered bad with money and get lots of over draft or late payment fees on their account are actually making us more money in many cases than someone who consistently pays their loans on time or doesn’t overdraft their account.

    Reply ↓
    1. Silver Robin*

      not surprised at all; the punitive measures are only there because they make money. exploitation at its finest

      Reply ↓
  207. ArchivesPony*

    archives: We all don’t work in dark dusty caves. oh and we actually talk to people. I talk to a lot of people ..

    Reply ↓
    1. Dust Bunny*

      In the past month we’ve given eight tours and hosted four sets of researchers. This is a high rate for us but it’s still a thing that can happen.

      Reply ↓
  208. Academic Librarian Again*

    We are legion here! A “secret” is that it is virtually guaranteed that you will have to move to get your first job- and your move will be where the job is, not because you wanted to move there. I don’t know how many family members said to me, “Why are you in Flyover State? University X is just an hour from us- why don’t you get a job there?”

    I know a number of people who got their MLIS and never got a job in librarianship. In every case, that person was geographically bound, often for very good reasons. But pools are huge and jobs are scarce, and the local libraries don’t care that you want or need it more than other applicants.

    Also, don’t go into archives unless you don’t need money. Few jobs, most part-time, temporary, or grant-funded.

    Reply ↓
    1. academic archivist*

      All of this!! Academic archivist here, and I managed to (magically) get a term job in the place I wanted to live, then hung on long enough and was good enough at my job to get a permanent one in the same place. That is NOT normal, and I am quick to point that out to any aspiring archivists I run into. I was part of a cohort of 8 baby archivists working at the institution at the time I started; out of all of them, I am the only one still employed as an archivist, and the only one who ever managed to get a permanent position.

      Also, most archivist jobs involve interacting heavily with the public, either through reference or outreach. It’s very rare to find an archives job that is entirely behind the scenes where you just do technical archival work, and don’t also do archival reference. (Another way in which I was stupid lucky; I’m in one of the few institutions where we have an entire team of people doing the behind the scenes work, and a different team doing reference).

      Finally, I’m not an expert on all of the subjects in my archive. We have several very different collecting areas, and it would be impossible to have subject knowledge in all of them. Instead, I know how to do good research to be able to write about them in basic unbiased language at a 7th-8th grade reading level. Do I understand all the science terms when working on science collections? Absolutely not. But I can still write a description of that collection, and am expected to. I also have to be able to work on collections in languages I don’t understand, and still be able to describe their “aboutness.” It really is a learned skill that takes a lot of problem-solving and puzzle solving. I do a lot of work on Japanese materials….I know nothing about Japanese.

      Reply ↓
  209. Name*

    HR for public schools K-12. The number of times I have had to reply and rewrite something in the same email chain or repeatedly ask for X to be completed in order for Y to happen may not shock some.
    Would it if I told you that the majority of times it is to teachers. I need to reopen enrollment because they weren’t able to complete it in time even though we’d sent out multiple emails about when enrollment period was, had providers come and do Q&A, etc. I need to fix the tax deductions on the paycheck that hits the bank tomorrow and it’s 3:00 pm. They didn’t realize training was due even though it happens same time every year, multiple email reminders, and campus leadership talks about it. I didn’t tell them about an opportunity they wanted to do but somehow I have 5 sent emails telling them about it.
    But please, tell me about how your students don’t listen, don’t get assignments turned in on time, etc.

    Reply ↓
    1. Special Ed*

      As a teacher, this is because all of that stuff takes time away from our incredibly demanding core responsibilities of, you know, teaching. And we’ve done the damn trainings every single year for ten years. Also do you know how many emails we get and also how much of our time is allocated for emails (a ton, and zero, respectively).

      I appreciate that this is frustrating to you but I promise you were just as frustrated by the never ending requests.

      Reply ↓
  210. Helen Allen*

    I am retired from a state health department
    Many people don’t realize that clerical workers at health departments are working with multiple programs such as WIC, family planning, STD and AIDS treatment and prevention, vital records, home visiting programs, helping people enroll for insurance, health education and medical care. Depending on the states and federal funding there will be several other programs as well. Health Departments often see people going through difficult events in their life so the stress level is high. State and federal audits are routine. More than once when I was interviewing candidates for an open position and I asked something like ‘what excites you or interests you in this position’ the job candidate told me that they were looking for something easier or less stressful than their current or former position.

    Reply ↓
  211. Sovreignry*

    I work in the legal field as an attorney. Something that most people probably don’t think of is that most of us are about as specialized as doctors are, we just don’t have the internship/residency requirements to start practicing.

    If you ask me, an insurance defense attorney, about a contract, I could certainly take a look at it and talk about general principles of contracts and such, or I can technically write a will/trust, but you will be much better off with someone who practices in that field regularly.

    Reply ↓
    1. Jules the First*

      This! This is why my big corporate international firm (not a law firm!) has a legal department where we have general counsel, insurance law, a couple of barristers, licensing and corporation law, NDA and GDPR specialist, employment and HR law, and procurement law, and then we have a completely separate department which is purely contract law. God help you if you bring a contract to legal or an NDA to contract!

      Reply ↓
    2. Just Here for the Llama Grooming*

      Retired law firm staff here: co-sign in every possible way. Lawyers, like doctors, have a lot of knowledge in one very specific area. Knowledge about anything else is (maybe) one law school class. When the lawyer says, “That’s not really my area,” BELIEVE THEM.

      Reply ↓
    3. goddessoftransitory*

      I mentioned this below! It makes me nuts to see older lawyer shows like Perry Mason where he spends half his time interfering with police investigations and the other half advising on wills and taxes when he’s a CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY.

      Reply ↓
  212. Area Woman*

    I work on the manufacturing and analytical side of pharmaceutical development. Ask me anything! I can start with the expiration dates on pharmaceuticals. Those dates are real and tested experimentally. They industry puts billions of dollars worth of drugs on stability studies. They are stored at multiple temperatures/humidity conditions and get tested at regular intervals out to years and years. Often the first studies start at minimum 3 years. If they change anything about the formulation, packaging, they have to initiate new, multi-year studies.

    I can’t tell you how many people will just make up stuff about that, “oh those expiration dates are meaningless they can’t really know… “. Trust me, I’ve tested pills, syringes, eye drops, you name it, that sat in a temperature-controlled chamber for 5 years.

    Reply ↓
      1. SB*

        Kay, I’m not the original poster, but I do work in pharma and I’ve done this testing too. The answer to your question is “it depends”

        Some expiry testing is related to the preservatives in a medicine. Think about an insulin vial. The end user is going to be repeatedly puncturing the stopper to remove it. Do they have a clean needle? Have they been able to keep it refrigerated? If the preservatives stop working, that insulin because considerably less safe the next time they have to us it. Stuff will grow in there.

        Some drugs, especially liquid presentations can lose their potency over time. Things like antibiotics aren’t dangerous to the patient in that they become poison. But they can be dangerous because they aren’t the right dose. It might not work at all and your infection gets worse. It might kill part of it but leave the bacteria that’s more resistant to keep growing. (That said, in an apocalypse situation, i would take expired antibiotics because what else am I going to do?)

        Most expiration dates are based on how long the patient is likely to use the med, how stable the medicine it, and how expensive it is to keep testing it past those first two variables. That said, most companies will do extended stability testing on their products for “just in case” data…because sometimes things happen that disrupt the global supply chain. (hey, COVID). That doesn’t mean it’s perfectly fine to use them past their expiry. It means it’s less bad than not having it at all. It’s kind of like putting off getting an oil change in your car. You should replace the oil when it’s recommended as best practice…but you can also push it as long as you understand the risks and decided the reward is greater.

        Reply ↓
    2. Silver Robin*

      my guess is people are extrapolating from food, where “best by” and “expiration” dates etc are more inconsistent in how they get applied and definitely have the vibe of “don’t sue us if you eat it after X day”. Makes sense that the medical stuff would be more rigorous but I am also not surprised people think their Advil etc does not expire; maybe because it barely registers as “medicine” since it is so easily available/commonly used? Who knows

      Reply ↓
    3. Pocket Mouse*

      When you say those dates are real… I’m aware that some medications are shelf-stable for many years, like on the order of decades, yet I’ve never seen an expiration date more than maybe 5 years out from the date of purchase (on really mundane OTC pills). Are there intentional changes to formulation or packaging in order to restart the testing clock, or is there another explanation for this?

      How often do expiration dates change as a result of the kind of testing you do? I’ve only known it to happen with items that are crucial—and rather visible—in public health: COVID tests and Narcan. What are the factors (beyond the kind of evidence you generate) that determine whether a product shown to be stable past the printed expiration date will have its expiration date extended?

      Thanks in advance!

      Reply ↓
  213. TokenJockNerd*

    I taught gymnastics for ages.

    The largest parts of my job were
    -helping kids through big feelings
    -explaining my very solid rationale to parents for skill and level placement choices, even if they were mad
    -being the No Fun Safety Police
    -teaching physics to kids way too young for a physics class. gymnastics is half math, half mental.

    I also judged gymnastics and what people are surprised to hear about that is
    -judges have to be within a fairly close range of each other
    -sticking the landing? actually in the grand scheme not that important. there’s other far larger deductions
    -many of the deductions are for things that are dangerous, not just things that are aesthetically displeasing
    -we can and will disqualify athletes (and coaches!) for poor behavior

    Reply ↓
  214. Alianne*

    Speaking as a legal assistant for over a decade, most attorneys have courteous professional relationships. If you hire an attorney expecting them to denigrate and insult the other attorney (and their morals, ethics, friends, family, favorite sports team, etc,), you’re going to be disappointed. Most attorneys would much, much rather coordinate and come to an agreement that satisfies their clients than prepare for an all-day hearing before a judge.

    Reply ↓
    1. Bast*

      Yes! In my comment above where I talked about things not being as dramatic as they appear to be on TV… this is part of it. While there are certain attorneys that have a “reputation” and that no one really likes dealing with, for the most part, people are professional at the very least, if not friendly. You tend to encounter the same attorneys over and over again, (especially in the area where I live) so burning bridges is not generally advised, as you WILL have to deal with this person again on another case.

      Reply ↓
      1. Sovreignry*

        The worst part is when attorneys from out of town start coming into your market and start acting like they’re still in your market.

        There’s certain streets that I see in opposing counsel’s addresses that I absolutely dread seeing.

        Reply ↓
  215. Not a Vorpatril*

    High School (secondary, students are 13-18ish years old for non USAians) Math Teacher here:

    All teachers require a college degree to teach. The degree requirements for an education major will vary by school, but often have one of, if not the lowest, math requirement to gain the diploma. So all of those elementary/middle school teachers, who do not have a subject-specific test to prove they can teach the subject? Often some of the worst math students, some of which hopped into education because of how bad they were at math.

    Not all teachers, of course, but there is a reason that many k-8 grade teachers will penalize smart kids for not solving problems one exact way: because the teacher does not know better, and is working through the book requirements. This makes my job so much harder as it both removes inquisitiveness (students asking why are not given answers, at best, for math questions) and teaches bad habits often times because math is framed as “only one right way” instead of just a series of rules that, while you need to stay between them by keeping things balanced, are actually pretty open to variation and odd ways of solving things.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rainy*

      My fourth-grade math teacher could not do math at a fourth-grade level. She read verbatim from our math book to “teach” us how math concepts worked (at least she could read, I guess) and could not actually do the math herself. The book did not explain how to multiply fractions well at all, and I had a hard time with it. When I asked questions, she would just yell the same sentence in the book at me over and over until I shut up. Luckily it was fourth grade and the operations were simple, because I spent that whole unit converting all the fractions to decimal, multiplying the decimals, and then converting the result back to a fraction. Once I had the answer, I’d fill the steps back in to try and get at least some credit for the work.

      If I believed in hell, I know for a fact Mrs Wilhite would be there.

      Reply ↓
  216. Anonymous Engineer*

    I work in oil and gas.

    It’s not a secret (to intelligent people) that POTUS doesn’t control gas prices. But I was shocked by the number of my coworkers who think he does.

    Reply ↓
    1. RIP Pillowfort*

      I think another good point is how volatile that industry (and mining) can be. It can be very good work but I was personally put off by having to move to where the work was if it dried up in your area.

      Reply ↓
  217. Freelance Designer*

    Freelancers have to use different basic systems for every single client.

    For example, I’m a designer, and what I am required to use day to day is:

    Presentations: Powerpoint, Slides, Keynote
    Communications: Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, Slack, Asana
    Creating things: Figma, Miro, Adobe Creative Suite, Word, Google Docs/Sheets
    Sharing things: Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Sharepoint/OneDrive
    I also have four different emails, because some clients require you to have an email on their domain.

    Reply ↓
  218. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

    I haven’t read through all of the comments, so this may have already been said, but public libraries throw away tons of books. Just toss ’em out. Often into locked dumpsters if they are available, because there are always people who will have a fit if they see “perfectly good” books in the trash, but there is just only so much space and if patrons want the new stuff, then something’s gotta go.

    Reply ↓
  219. Web of Pies*

    My partner works in a customer service help desk (like who you call if your internet goes out) and they are required to take calls AND multiple chats simultaneously. So if you’re calling or chatting with support, please be kind and patient with them if they’re slow to respond. They are probably juggling helping several people at once.

    Reply ↓
  220. Thuns*

    This is a secret I learned from my partner, who’s an artist: a LOT of famous artists are not physically making their own work. Some of this pretty widely known and seen as okay, even if the artists are not including that information anywhere publicly: legendary painter Jasper Johns, for example in his 90s, and still produces huge pieces, sometimes with industrial equipment. All of those are designed by him and physically fabricated by assistants.

    A lot of other artists are not even hinting at this reality and are letting assistants make significant portions of work that they could physically make themselves. Some of this is time management, some of it is just lack of creative inertia. This is the case even where part of the artist’s practice – the point of their work – is their unique touch or technical prowess. Gallery owners likely know this but most buyers absolutely do not. Assistants are virtually never credited.

    One especially bonkers example of this is a very trendy NYC painter who was creating paintings for a show, with help from an assistant. This artist is really bad at painting but the show was paintings for some reason. She was so embarrassed about how bad she was, and how much her assistant was contributing, that she hired a SECOND, SECRET assistant to come in the middle of the night to add to the paintings, to make the first assistant think that the artist was a better painter than she was. In the gallery show, it was presented as if the artist had physically completed all of the paintings.

    Reply ↓
    1. Thuns*

      I should clarify also that I don’t think it’s necessarily a horrible thing for artists not to be the ones physically fabricating their work. Not every artist’s practice relies on their physical touch – lots of sculptors, for example, design their pieces and have them fabricated by others. Printing presses wouldn’t get credited, and if assistants are applying a stencil, or something, is that okay? Where is the line between legitimate outsourcing of labor that’s not inherent to the final product, vs duping the buyer or the viewer? Idk. But imo a LOT of artists are leaning towards the latter.

      Reply ↓
      1. Lady Lessa*

        One artist that relies on help, in part because of the size of his work is Dale Chihuly. Really breath taking, if you appreciate glass work.

        Reply ↓
        1. Thuns*

          Yes, Chihuly is very much an example of an older school type of artist that relies on a “school” of assistants and technicians in the way that old masters did. In the same way that art historians can still identify that a painting came from, for example, da Vinci’s “school” because the styles are so similar. There are many working glass artists who emerged from the Pilchuck Glass School or were employed by Chihuly and are sort of considered part of his “school.”

          You would also prompt some fierce debate in NYC galleries when discussing Chihuly over whether that is *art* or *decoration*. Snobbishness, probably, but it would change the perception of the propriety or impropriety of having assistants openly fabricate the work.

          Reply ↓
  221. Old Lady at Large*

    I worked in medical transcription for 25 years, and I have to say that I preferred to transcribe reports on people in other states than reports on people from the hospital where I first worked. The reason for this is because I learned things about people that in many cases I was at least acquainted with, and I know who got in trouble and what they got in trouble for, and who had which disease and whether or not they were expected to survive, that type of thing. I also wasn’t allowed to tell people I’d transcribed reports on them, so I didn’t, and it was rather strange to ride in an elevator with someone whose medical history I knew better than they did themselves (this happened regularly.) When I went to work as a contract transcriptionist for a company out of a state in the central U.S. (I live in the Pacific Northwest) I vastly preferred transcribing reports on people I would never meet, that had been dictated by providers I also would never meet.

    Reply ↓
  222. TVkilledtheradiostar*

    Television: There are laws around how many minutes of commercials you can have per hour. However if you are watching a show and get shown a video saying watch our other show at this time later today/tomorrow. That is called a promotion. As long as its for that specific channel/network it is not counted as a commercial so television channels can pad out extra time with as many of them as they want.

    We also have longer promotions that can be anywhere from 45 seconds to 5 minutes. They usually showcase 1 or more of the channel/network’s shows. They are called fillers and that’s exactly what they do – fill time. They also don’t count towards commercial times.

    So if you think your TV breaks are really long. That’s why!

    Reply ↓
  223. Myrin*

    I’m an archivist and while I definitely spend a lot of time in the archive itself, I also talk to a lot of people. A lot. There are times where I spend half of my work day on the phone with various people, or interacting with the general public, or having appointments with people who want to donate stuff, or plain meetings with my coworkers.
    It’s definitely not the kind of job where you can just vanish indefinitely between rows of papers and never interact with anyone like some media might have you believe.

    Reply ↓
    1. BeckerCheez*

      Chiming in as an archivist — our closed stacks are not dusty. Dust can be damaging to rare materials, so we do deep cleans one or twice a year. My employees and I spend a lot of time interacting with people every day. We talk with our coworkers, our researchers, donors, and community members. It’s very rare that we do deep dives into the rare materials unless we’re tracking down an answer to an ornery reference question.

      Reply ↓
  224. SocialHell*

    You’d be SHOCKED at how frequently social media managers are subjected to pornography in the course of their day. I have seen things that make me blush on the regular and have had to apologize to coworkers multiple times for accidentally showing them super disturbing content that just happened to show up on my screen because the brand was tagged in it.

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    1. Little Bobby Tables*

      Can confirm this. I have no idea how the business model for some of those spammers work, but I presume that the fewer people are into what is depicted, the more places you have to post it to make money. I moderated a Facebook group that had a problem with some spammers posting some pretty unspeakable images.

      Reply ↓
    2. NothingIsLittle*

      Oh my gosh, the number of bot DMs we got! Not something I want to have come up when I’m trying to show my coworker a message about their subject area!

      Reply ↓
  225. TVkilledtheradiostar*

    Bookstores: I used to work in a bookstore as a teen. Publishers will recall books but we only sent back hardbacks. If the book is one of the smaller mass market books – they wouldn’t want the actual book back. Instead we had to rip the covers of the book off and send that in to them in order to be credited for the book. The rest of the book was just thrown out.

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  226. Paris Geller*

    I skimmed the comments and saw lots of great ones from other librarians, but from the public library realm: Your library pays so, so much for ebooks & e-audiobooks. I promise you the reason they don’t have that book you’re looking for on their ebook platform is not because they don’t want to carry it, but ebook/e-audio money does not go far AT ALL. We pay far more for digital content than consumers do. Publishers set the licensing models, and it’s not uncommon for publishers to price new ebooks at a $60 for two year licensing model (which means patrons will only have two years of access to the book before it expires, and then we either repurchase it or it’s gone from the collection). E-audio can be as much as $109 for a single license. This means we often have to prioritize the most popular titles and can’t offer the same variety we can in our print collections.

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    1. Lady Danbury*

      And templates! Sometimes it’s just a specific clause that I want to add to a contract and there are certain websites that are a treasury trove of examples from real contracts probably drafted by lawyers making far more than I do. I usually skim several to narrow down the style I prefer and then modify accordingly.

      Reply ↓
    2. Coverage Associate*

      At a firm, also google. In fact, partners ask, Have we googled this? Though that’s usually for factual allegations, not legal authority.

      Reply ↓
  228. JustaTech*

    In biopharma FDA inspections are almost entirely paperwork exercises.
    This shocked me when I first started in biotech, but then I realized that you can clean up a plant or lab pretty quickly if you hear the inspector is coming. But what you can’t do is spontaneously generate 3 years worth of maintenance reports one every single piece of equipment, or the Certificate of Analysis for every single one of your supplies, or every single product complaint you’ve ever gotten and the investigation that went with it.

    And if you aren’t keeping your paperwork in order, what does your production facility look like?

    So inspectors start with the paperwork before they do any tours (unless they’ve gotten a complaint/ whistleblower, in which case you are *screwed*).

    Reply ↓
    1. Academic Physics*

      Same for internal and state compliance for my research lab. Additionally, our university asks us to do it twice as often as the state requires, I assume so they can spot when someone isn’t doing it correctly before it becomes an issue.

      Reply ↓
  229. Just a teacher*

    I am a teacher of the deaf and I DO NOT SIGN! 85% of children with hearing loss use hearing technology to listen and talk (it is even higher for adults). My job is to help their brains make sense of sound and learn to process language so that they can learn and attend school with typically developing kids.

    Reply ↓
    1. Cube Farm for One*

      Yes! As an ASL interpreter from the 1980s, the swing to cochlear implants and improved hearing is amazing. Controversial at the time, in the end the lives of these children are far more open to the world than a strict Deaf culture allows.

      Reply ↓
    2. Mid*

      Have you ever found that to be detrimental? It seems like it would be akin to working as an ESL teacher with no experience in the commonly spoken language (so in my area, Spanish. All ESL teachers are expected to have at least conversational fluency in Spanish or another language.) Why do you not use ASL?

      Reply ↓
      1. Just a teacher*

        I specifically work with students whose families have chosen spoken language. It is not like an ESL student because the students don’t use ASL, so why would I? I use the language of the family and the children, which is spoken English.

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      2. NothingIsLittle*

        Seems to me closer to immigrants speaking their local language, not native language, at home and then learning in the local language at the school. Yes, a culture is being lost, but that’s the decision of the family, not the business of outsiders.

        Reply ↓
        1. Just a Teacher*

          The families use spoken language, the children use spoken language, the school uses spoken language, and the therapists and teachers use spoken language. The families have been informed about all language and communication options, and they believe that using the spoken language of their home and community is what is best for their child.

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  230. tango*

    I work in insurance. I think people would be surprised by how many things can affect your policy that you don’t necessarily have any direct control over, at least not in the way you think. For instance, in car insurance, your specific vehicle has what’s called a risk factor ID that impacts not only your premium, but your eligibility to renew and/or reinstate in the event of a cancellation for nonpayment. If we end up terminating our relationship with your insurance agent, you may not be able to get a new policy with us for at least a few years since you’ll be deemed nonrenewable through no fault of your own, just based on the agency writing too much “bad business.” (I have personally pushed back on this one but I don’t have any actual power to change this – I just think it’s wildly unfair, even by insurance standards.)

    There’s also a whole department devoted to investigating suspicious claims and you’re VERY unlikely to be able to get one over on them. One of the most common types of fraudulent claims is “oh, my car got hit and run while it was parked somewhere!” when in reality the insured was in an at-fault accident and just doesn’t want to admit it. If the damage is expensive enough, they will invest in having someone forensically recreate the scene to determine if the reported damage could have been caused in the way the claimant describes.

    Reply ↓
    1. Coverage Associate*

      And that’s just personal lines insurance!

      In California and many states, the premium rates are approved by the state, and there’s very little wiggle room for one company to offer a lower price. They can increase your deductible or lower your coverage so your payments are lower, but they can’t just charge you 25% less a competitor charges.

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    2. Cube Farm for One*

      I did catastrophic workers compensation fraud management. It was amazing that people thought they could drag their injuries into work and call it work related. Not our first rodeo. We’d seen it all including injuries from hookers and over drinking declared as work related.

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      1. ABC123*

        And fraud on the employer side too. Sure your roofing company has one roofer (110% of salary as premium) but 35 “admin assistants”…Enjoy your felony criminal investigation.

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    3. Winnie the Pooh*

      There was a news article about someone in California who claimed that his car was damaged by a bear and that he had video footage. The insurance company hired a biologist who confirmed that it was a person in a bear costume. The bear costume was described as “ill fitting”.

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    4. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

      Also life insurance! I worked in life insurance for a few years, paying out claims. That field is so, so regulated. We had to pay out to the beneficiaries EXACTLY the way the insured listed them on the policy; I once had a huge claim where the policy holder had said his beneficiaries were his “children and great-grandchildren”, skipping his grandchildren- yes, it probably was inadvertent, and yes, the agent should have caught it, but that was the way I had to pay it and no amount of yelling at me and telling me that we just didn’t want to pay bc all insurance is a scam, etc, was going to change that. There’s not a lot of wiggle room in life insurance; if the policy is paid up and there is a legit death cert, that policy has to be paid to someone (sometimes to the unclaimed property department of the deceased’s state of residence), and there are penalties if the company doesn’t pay out in a timely manner.

      Reply ↓
  231. tiny potato*

    I’m a psychotherapist. People assume that the hard part of the job is listening to people’s trauma. It isn’t. People’s trauma is not going to shock me. And therapy school had a great deal about use of self (i.e. how to manage/care for my emotional needs and their interface with the client’s so that I can be of benefit to the client).

    No. The hard part of the job–not joking here, the part that I have uncontrollable emotional responses to, that seriously makes me contemplate ditching the field and going back to my previous career–is The Goddamn Paperwork.

    Reply ↓
    1. Not the trauma*

      I moved to a private practice recently that doesn’t take insurance and I was shocked that there is practically no paperwork besides our notes. No intake reports, treatment updates, nothing. On the other hand now I spend hours a week emailing with parents, schools, etc. (and of course don’t get paid for any of that time). At previous jobs, clients didn’t even have my email address, which was really nice…

      Reply ↓
  232. Coverage Associate*

    Everybody hates insurance companies and lawyers, but you have no idea how much insurance is keeping the world spinning.

    Innocent party in a fender bender and you get a check for the repairs with no lawyers involved? Insurance. In some states, even if you’re the at fault party.

    Making corporations pay for the fires they start? Insurance.

    Making Al Queda literally pay for 9/11? They’re still working on it, but insurers.

    Innocent party in an accident and get nowhere with the at fault party until you hire a lawyer? Still insurance.

    And, get one of those emails that your personal information was compromised in a data breach, so here’s a year of free credit monitoring? You guessed it.

    And a lot of things that legislators are afraid to touch, insurance companies will set underwriting standards that the industry has to meet, basically creating private regulation. Topics include commercial drones, commercial drivers, lots regarding the safety of trans oceanic shipping. The list goes on.

    Reply ↓
    1. tango*

      That’s so true and a great way of looking at it! The company I work for was actually founded by someone who used to work in consumer advocacy, which might sound weird until you think about what insurance actually is and does.

      Reply ↓
  233. EggyParm*

    I work in advertising research on the qualitative side of things (think focus groups, 1:1 interviews, following people as they shop or perform activities, etc). Here are my tidbits I think people would find interesting:

    * Many agencies have a “morality” clause where you can choose to avoid accounts that conflict with your personal beliefs. I got a lot of shade for taking on tobacco (I know, I know!) but the bonuses were great.

    *I worked in political advertising research for nine years (I’ll caveat this was pre-Trump) and we would get the temperature of people’s opinions down to the literal word on debates. This was all fed back into the campaign and you’d see more or less of the same word in future speeches depending on well those words performed with the target demographic. You might see “unity” more in speech given with mothers in the audience and then “efficiency” in a speech to manufacturers. I personally was impressed with how specific and tailored politics was at the time.

    *Clients pay us for research but often ignore the outcomes if they aren’t want the higher-ups are expecting. A popular grocery chain once told me to delete any mentions of “coupons” as their CEO didn’t believe in them. It is mind-boggling to me but alas, they are the client and I must simply smile and nod.

    *We pay participants well. Typically, we pay $120-250 for 60-90 minutes of your time to participate in a focus group and we’re always looking for opinionated, engaged participants. If you’ve ever wanted to try being in a focus group just google “focus group” and your city and you’ll likely find a local recruitment agency. You’ll be put on the mailing list and can fill out a survey to join. Mothers and people in tech are in high demand.

    *I think a lot of folks see advertising as a glamorous career and I do think the creative side can be fun. Researchers, however, go where the demographics are. I’ve spent more time in suburbs than I can count because that’s where brands want to see spend.

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  234. Indolent Libertine*

    Professional symphony musician. People think I should be happy to do what I do without being paid, because after all it’s just “playing” and somehow in their minds it sullies the final product if I care about pay or working conditions. People are often surprised how much physical injury comes with the territory; we’ve all got close personal relationships with our physical therapists and bodyworkers, and NSAIDs within reach every second. Oh, and the professional-caliber equipment we need in order to get and keep our jobs? We buy (or borrow, if we’re lucky) and maintain and repair them, they aren’t provided by the institutions we work for. And in the string section, where I live, for a good instrument and a good bow for onstage plus a lesser set for outdoor concerts you’ll need to spend at least in the high 5 figures; if you’re a touring soloist, who has to have at least two truly top echelon instruments and three or four bows, it’s a lot more than that.

    Reply ↓
    1. C*

      People think I should be happy to do what I do without being paid, because after all it’s just “playing” and somehow in their minds it sullies the final product if I care about pay or working conditions.

      …do those people know how many years of training, hours per day, you have to go through to be a professional musician?

      Reply ↓
    2. Elitist Semicolon*

      There are ICD⁠-⁠10⁠-⁠CM codes to reference injuries from playing musical instruments and entire medical journals about them too! Performing can be really brutal on the body.

      Reply ↓
      1. allathian*

        If all these classical instruments were invented today most of them would probably be banned as unsafe for the user. Pretty much all of them require players to maintain uncomfortable positions while playing. Never mind the fact that most of them are loud enough to damage people’s hearing in the long term at least.

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  235. Emotional support capybara (he/him)*

    I work in the awards industry.

    The kids don’t want participation trophies. The kids straight up do not care.

    But their parents do. And a lot of our “participation trophy” orders come from parents who are mad that their Britynniees and Braeydaenns lost to kids who were… let’s just say NOT the Britynniee-and-Braeydann demographic.

    Also, fantasy football dudes? Are y’all okay? Because 75-90% of your imaginary football teams in any given season are named after porn stars or sex acts.

    Reply ↓
  236. Speak*

    I work as a Controls Engineer for a custom machine manufacture. What I tell people I do is program machinery like what you might see on shows like Modern Marvels or How It’s Made, since that is the easiest way to explain it and most people know about those shows.

    What I really do is figure out the complete electrical system from the smallest wire to the biggest motor on the machine. I figure out where I need sensors & work with the mechanical team to get them mounted in a way that doesn’t affect the product or some other moving part. Then I finally get to start writing the program, this includes the design of the operator screens. I often have to go to the customer’s site to make sure the interface with other machinery works, so I am often the only person from my company at site. That means to the customer I am the face of my company, and they will involve me in issues that are not related to what I am on site to work on. Sometimes the customer will also change their mind on how the machine has to work at the last minute, so I have to figure out if it is possible. This also means that I have to understand the mechanical side as well as the electrical side of the machinery and physically make modifications as needed. Once the machine is fully built, I have to write the manuals as well, or work with a technical writer if I am lucky, since I am the only person who knows how things actually work.

    What this means is that as a Controls Engineer with an Electrical Engineering degree, I also have to have the skills of a project manager, mechanical engineer, graphics designer, technical writer, and service technician. This is why in college we had to take a basic mechanical class, a technical writing class, and a humanities class like an art class in addition to the math, science, and electrical course work. It’s not something you realize till long after you are out of school.

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  237. Anne Shirley Blythe*

    Copyeditors and proofreaders can be overruled, even when text is flat-out grammatically incorrect or spelled wrong. (And free online dictionaries abound! Hell, start typing it into Google.) I’m not talking about poetic license in marketing and advertising. I’m talking academic and business writing. When you spot a typo, grammatical mistake, or awkward construction, it is quite possible the editor did not miss it, but was overruled. And these days, sadly, it is also quite possible there is no editor.

    Editors are often at the mercy of a writer’s ego. (No offense to all you reasonable and pleasant writers out there!) I have literally had experiences where a term was spelled or used correctly *everywhere else* in a file or on a website, but I had to leave the error because the person who made it didn’t want to admit fault.

    Right now, I have this situation with a STATE ORGANIZATION’S NAME that is correct everywhere else in the file and ON THEIR OFFICIAL WEBSITE. Fingers crossed.

    Reply ↓
  238. foureyedlibrarian*

    Medical librarian here:
    1. despite having the terminal degree in my field, doctors do not always think of you as an equal even though they literally could not even do research without me
    2. Library school is mostly theoretical and you learn more during internships or practicums. I didn’t learn how to search a medical database until my internship at a medical library.
    3. Like others have said, librarianship is a lot of data, spreadsheets, databases, technical jargon and technical skills, keeping up with emerging technology while also having people you have to teach what a browser is (some of these are doctors, people)
    4. You’re almost never completely staffed because of things outside the library walls

    Fun fact: Citation Managers like Zotero and Mendeley (these are free ones, which is why I specify them) integrate into microsoft word and can cite things for you both in text and in the reference list

    Reply ↓
    1. foureyedlibrarian*

      Also, despite what I said about being understaffed, libraries are an oversaturated field. 99% of the time you need some sort of internship or practical experience in the field before or while in library school while most of them are unpaid. Your salary will probably hover between the 30 thousands and maybe 70 thousands range.

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    2. Dr. Anonymous*

      Former librarian and now a doctor. LOVE our medical librarian. I don’t know the current tools and I know it’s harder to weed out the false drops than it should be. I appreciate what you do (and I was tech services anyway, never did reference).

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  239. drowning in paper*

    Health care social worker. A few things:

    -Sometimes the things that have the most impact are not the most impressive to donors. Something as small as helping someone print out their paystubs when they don’t have a printer at home, or translating a document they got in the mail that turns out to be a signup form for their job’s 401(k) program, which they’ve never had access to before. It’s become extremely difficult to get the kind of “wins” that leadership wants to show off to donors. The housing programs aren’t even accepting our English-speaking, US citizen patients – the resources for our mostly undocumented patient population are pretty much in the negative numbers at this point. As in, they might actually be punished for coming out of the shadows to seek them, if they even exist.

    -It does a lot of damage when providers overpromise on what the social worker can accomplish. It’s a disservice to tell the patient, especially an undocumented patient, that the social worker is going to get them housed or find them a job when the provider knows that isn’t true (or even if they don’t – why phrase it as a guarantee?!). I’m not saying not to refer, but “the social worker might know of some resources close to where you live” is much more honest, and ultimately more compassionate, than “the social worker will help you get your rent paid.” Those referrals end up serving the provider more than they ever serve the patient – the provider gets to kick the can down the road and say they “did something about it,” and the patient gets yet another example of the system building up their hopes and letting them down.

    -Not exactly surprising, but the systems that administer state benefits (in my state, at least) are hopelessly inefficient and error-prone. I can’t count the number of times they’ve approved one of our undocumented patients for full Medicaid, opening them up to accusations of benefits fraud, when the patient clearly marked that they were only applying for their US-born children. I’ve seen employment authorization cards miscategorized as green cards, social security numbers attached to the wrong people, approval notices for someone’s son when they were requesting a cancellation for themselves…the list goes on. It would be impossible for me not to empathize with the caseworkers, who are given gargantuan caseloads with few resources – but it’s a bit scary how chaotic these systems are when they deal with so much sensitive information. The funding cuts are going to make it even worse.

    I’m sure there are more, but this is what I have for now.

    Reply ↓
    1. PickleJuice*

      I’m a Community Health Worker at a Family Resource Center. I agree with everything you said, I would like to add that when people are given false hope by providers or someone else, it makes them less likely to trust the next person trying to help them. In many cases, I’m helping people to apply to get onto a waitlist. When someone comes in thinking that you have instant answers because their doctor told them you’d solve the problem, the reality is very discouraging, and many people walk away because it feels impossible.

      Reply ↓
  240. sparklepig*

    I’m a professional musician who runs a performing arts organization.

    The list of what I do on an average week, in order of volume (highest volume to lowest volume) is below:

    1. Answering emails
    2. Scheduling meetings
    3. Going to meetings
    4. Making budgets
    5. Sourcing venues and doing site visits to venues
    6. Communicating with other musicians (emails).
    7. Planning music for performances.
    8. Making sure other musicians have what they need for performances.
    9. Moving large instruments.
    10. Traveling to concerts.
    10. Playing actual concerts.
    12. Practicing my craft (by the time I hit this point on the list, I’m often out of time).

    Reply ↓
  241. Minou*

    Pre-pandemic, I was a full-time professional camp counselor, which in and of itself is a career that most people don’t think of. There is a body that sets standards for the camp industry called the American Camp Association (U.S. based, obviously), and camp programs can apply to be accredited. I want to direct people to the ACA’s “Find a Camp” page which allows you to screen for alllllll kinds of specialty camp programs by location, budget, gender, interest, religion, etc. I won’t try to share a link here, but if you google “American Camp Association find a camp” it should be the first hit. This is a great resource that not a lot of people are aware of.

    Reply ↓
    1. anon teacher*

      As a fellow Camp Person, I think the existence of the ACA and accreditation for summer camps would be a big surprise to a lot of people.

      Reply ↓
  242. WynkenBlynken&MaryTodd*

    I work as a children’s librarian and can report the following: 1.) At least 80% of my colleagues are childless and 2.) almost none of us had any classes or substantive training in early childhood development in our librarian degree programs…even though that’s the population we’re expected to spend the most time serving. I’m a parent and understand children well, but sometimes I have to bury my cringe listening to what my peers say to or expect from youth. We children’s librarians also fall into one of two camps: partying/tattoo-getting/lots of cussing outside work vs the quiet homebodies you’d expect in the field who spend their time off playing animal crossing or Legos/amassing pet turtles/eschewing personal grooming and modern fashion.

    Reply ↓
  243. LittleWig*

    Criminal barrister.
    We may look fancy in our gowns and wigs, but we’re not paid the big lawyer money. Today I represented someone in court; I got their case papers the night before, spent a couple hours reading them. I left my house at 7am to be at court for 9, and spent the next three hours going over the case with the client, negotiating with the prosecutor, and doing the hearing. I then spent another hour debriefing the client and writing up paperwork.

    My train fare was £62. I was paid £50. Pre tax.

    It’s not always that bad of course! Most criminal barristers earn a good wage overall, but considering it’s one of the most competitive professions in the country, and costs tens of thousands to qualify into, a little more would be nice.

    Reply ↓
    1. Anne Shirley Blythe*

      You all look very imposing as well as fancy in the British dramas that air across the pond! :)

      Reply ↓
  244. Eleanor Rose Svelte*

    Ugh, I’m so late to this and it may not be so secret, but – in political fundraising, most people do believe in “the cause” to some extent, but if a candidate or cause loses, we’re maybe not completely disappointed because losing is good for business. People give more and more readily when there’s an obvious, defined threat. I’m on the progressive side of things, and I was definitely disappointed on Election Day, but my agency is making an absolute killing right now because every group has ramped up fundraising and people are responding, thus generating more volume (and thus more agency profits). People I know on the other side have indicated that their fundraising numbers fell sharply post-election but they’re starting to pick up.

    I should add that 1) my agency is reputable and well respected, and we raise money for groups that put it to good use – but we do profit and we do some pro-bono work (I know, it’s all maybe hypocritical or ironic or something) and 2) raising even a billion dollars in no way guarantees a victory, so don’t get your hopes up

    Reply ↓
  245. Legal Piranha*

    Legal field – how much Law Work is done by people other than the attorney. My attorney is a senior partner in the firm and he has a team of four support staff/paralegals doing the bulk of the day to day work. He does very important stuff, but it’s very much not economical for the client if he’s drafting his own discovery responses, following up on records and document requests, setting up his own conference rooms, things like that. His time is billed much much more highly than the rest of us and we’re perfectly capable of doing most of it, so it’s better for the client if we’re the ones spending our time on it. He does a lot of the complaint writing, because he’s the one who knows what legal arguments he’s going to use, but we’ll even put together the bare bones of them, like the parties, the facts of the case, stuff like that.
    Most of his time is spent in meetings, mediations, and things like that, the poor fool. I’d lose my mind

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  246. NotWeirdWeirdButLikeExcitingWeird*

    In K–12 educational publishing, most “authors” of the books are basically only reviewers, if even that. Depending on the edition. And the subject matter. At one point, the “author” may have generated some content, and publishers do the updating etc. But mostly the books are created by writers and editors, sometimes following an outline the author approved, or finishing an entire product and then maybe the authors will read it. Some notorious authors haven’t even bothered to look at their later editions. As long as the residuals keep coming in.

    There are exceptions. But I guarantee that a lot of those books were written by vendors who got the job through the lowest bid. And it shows. Plus clients want ALL the testing, which can be generated by unpaid interns for pennies.

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  247. iglwif*

    Copyediting and publishing secrets:

    * There’s no such thing as a perfect book (or journal, or magazine, or whatever).
    * When you spot an egregious error in a published book, it is very possible that the developmental editor, line editor, copy editor, and proofreader all missed it, AND it is equally possible that one or more of these people pointed it out but the author stetted it (perhaps multiple times).
    * A book cover is a marketing piece. In trade publishing, authors usually have very little input into the cover design, although the publisher doesn’t want the author to hate it.
    * The marketing copy for a book is often written well before the book manuscript is finished, because marketing a book (which includes sending metadata to places like Amazon) begins loooooong before publication.
    * Printing books isn’t cheap, but it is not the reason books are expensive! (1) Many books are now printed digital rather than offset, which makes printing much cheaper and reduces the difference in unit cost between printing tens of thousands of copies and printing hundreds of copies. (2) Producing good ebooks is also not cheap, especially for books that have other elements in addition to body text (images, figures, tables, notes, indices …). (3) Most of the cost of producing a book is what we call “first-copy costs” — the costs that don’t vary based on how many copies are printed or even, sometimes, how many different formats are produced.

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  249. DeryckEleven*

    While surgeons would often charge more for larger breast implants, they all cost the same price for them to purchase within that style (eg a saline implant model X 200cc vs saline implant model X 400cc). Saline is sold in 1 liter bags and they can’t save the unused amount, so it doesn’t really matter if they use 400 mL or 800 mL total to fill both implants.

    Reply ↓
  250. Sandangel*

    I used to work in retail. The Back doesn’t contain an infinite doodad generator. If we’re out of stock, we’re out of stock.

    Sorry to be the one to break it to you.

    Reply ↓
    1. Chirpy*

      THIS!!!

      And even if the distribution center is only a few hours away, it doesn’t mean we can restock by the end of the day. They have to receive the item from the manufacturer, allocate the item to one of the dozens of stores, put it on a pallet, then on a truck, and the truck is probably stopping at several other stores. Then, it has to be received in, pallets broken up by department, and each department has to work their own freight while answering other customer questions, cleaning, and doing multiple other tasks.

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  251. Travel Woman*

    The travel industry. DO NOT book anything through an online travel agency like Viator, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, etc. Use them to do research but then book directly through the tour company, hotel, airline, etc. You can see the name of the company offering whatever it is you are looking to book, so do a Google search for their website and book directly through them. These online travel agencies are killing small businesses with the commissions they take from each booking. It varies from 25% – 50% and they are always coming up with ways to try to take more. You will also get much better care taken of you if you book directly.

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    1. tango*

      True! I used to work at a hotel. The third-party booking sites will also have inaccurate room listings and their customer service will straight up lie to you. We’d have people swear up and down that they “talked to us on the phone” and then would give a name that didn’t match any of our employees. Eventually we’d find out they had spoken to a phone bank somewhere that has never seen our hotel and would just tell them whatever they wanted to hear to get their money. In one memorable situation – we had a few accessible rooms that featured things like a walk in/roll-in shower and removable shower head, extra space for a wheelchair to maneuver, extra peephole at wheelchair height, etc. We took a call once from a woman who had booked two of these rooms, having been assured by someone at a third-party booking site that these pretty standard accessible rooms also had features like a fully adjustable hospital-style bed, and other very specific things she was needing because her mother had just been released from the hospital after a major surgery. The memory has faded with time, but I remember thinking that some of these things were so wildly improbable to find at your standard mid-range budget chain hotel that she must have just been listing her requirements and the rep just said “yeah, sure” to all of them. We even called a few other hotels in the area and none of them had anything close to what she needed. She called us a few times in hysterics wondering what to do, and I always felt terrible, but we really couldn’t help her.

      Reply ↓
      1. Travel Woman*

        Yes! The number of times we have been screamed at because the people were given wrong info by the third party booker is insane. And then they don’t understand that we are the local company, not the company they booked through. All of those third party booking companies should come with a giant warning.

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  252. Al*

    I’m a lobbyist for a disease nonprofit organization in a state. I get a lot of negative comments, understandably, about my profession. What I think people get incorrect is that lobbying, generally, isn’t always some big, evil, corrupt, power wielding corporation. A lot of us are employed by nonprofit organizations, and there are a lot of organizations that do lobbying activities that positively impact your every day life.

    We are also beholden to very strict ethics laws in our state, and I can potentially lose my license or be sent to jail for failure to comply. I can’t give anything of value to any state employees. Yes, that sounds like a good thing and I understand it. I have good friends who work in the Capitol, and I can’t give them a wedding present for example. My boyfriend is a state employee (for an agency completely irrelevant to my work), and likewise I can’t buy him a dinner, granted that can change if he proposes and becomes my fiance :)

    Now, that isn’t to say that there aren’t some organizations in each state that wield too much power. These are usually the organizations that are doing PAC/campaign activities. And those do exist. But 501c3 orgs are prevented from those activities, granted there are some that will have a separately incorporated 501c4. I can go to a campaign dinner, but I am not allowed to talk about my position at all and have to be there in an entirely personal capacity.

    I think the other thing that people don’t know is that your story actually matters to a lot of lawmakers. Now, there will always be issues that are going to be an automatic “no” from lawmakers based on their party affiliation. But there are a lot of opportunities. One of the things we are working on is eliminating the income eligibility for a respite program, and received a huge amount of support on both sides of the aisle. A lot of that is due to people speaking up about why it was important to them. Your story matters, it is powerful, and it does make a difference especially on the state side.

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    1. Flora*

      As a registered lobbyist myself for the 501(c)3 environmental nonprofit I work for, yes! “Lobbyist” is a much broader category than the average person thinks, and believe me, you want us doing our jobs (and we take ethics and legal compliance very seriously).

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  253. Turtlewings*

    I work in the library field. People think you need to love books for this job, and have the idea of a librarian as a shy, quiet person. In reality — at least when working in a *public* library — liking people is more important than liking books. A shy, quiet person who hates dealing with the public will be miserable. I know because I AM a shy, quiet person who likes books much better than people, and I was completely freaking miserable at a public library. (Two or three of them, actually.) I now work at an academic library in a non-public-facing role, and that suits me much better.

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  254. Fluff*

    Doctors (medical kind).

    1. People think we are smart and brilliant about everything. Nope, nope and nope. I am always amazed when someone looks at the doc in the crowd to “help fix the electrical plug” or know something about law or anything else.

    2. Doctors know how insurers pay / how much stuff costs. We have no idea and it changes all the time. The drug that was preferred is suddenly not. The codes may be changed after we are done with the patient’s medical record.

    3. The medical language is different than the billing language, even though they use the same words. “Urosepsis” medically means they are so sick with a certain type of bacteria in the blood the pt needs the ICU. The same word “urosepsis” in the billing language means simple UTI. Like, outpatient urinary tract infection. Learning the differences takes up brain space. The disease listed on your bill is not actually the medical language even if it looks like that – it is probably the ICD term.

    4. Many of us do not want to be introduced as a doc when out and about outside the hospital. It often makes it harder to make friends. Bummer. Neurospicey here.

    5. Docs are great at all things with needles and nursing. Nope. You want your nurse to do the shot, IV, etc. OR skill has nothing to do with it. I totally want to slap pts up and down the hallway when they do the “I want the doctor to do it.” I could do it. You do not want me too. Trust the expert. Nurses! BTW, nurses are just as vital as the docs. We are nothing without them.

    (adding my other role in another post)

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  255. Fluff*

    Other job – medical informatics.

    Electronic medical records were designed for billing and coding – not the medical part. A lot of my work is trying to optimize the medical care stuff into a system that is designed for the billing over anything else.

    It is fun to problem solve though and go deep into the code to figure out how to do stuff safely. I freaking love human machine interaction and usability. Informatics is much more than just what is on the screen and the system.

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  256. Mad Scientist*

    Engineering – Being good at and/or enjoying math is NOT as necessary as people think for most engineering jobs, and it’s definitely not the most important quality for being a successful engineer. At my last job, a kid visited for a day to shadow one of the project managers, and he said he wanted to be an engineer because he likes math. He was disappointed when the PM told him “Actually, we have Excel and calculators now, and it’s pretty rare that we need to do math without those tools.”

    Yes, you obviously need to understand the equations you’re using and you shouldn’t be TERRIBLE at math as an engineer, but skills like creativity, communication, etc. are equally if not more important than basic math skills. And if you’re the type of engineer who does any drafting / drawing, you definitely need to have a good eye for design!

    Reply ↓
  257. wilma flintstone*

    If you are a fashion buyer for retail stores, your job isn’t fashion, it’s math. So much math. How much to negotiate with the maker, how much margin, how much of each piece (down to the size/color) to have distributed to each store based on prior sales history. (EG: no size 0s in certain states, no plus sizes in Beverly Hills. Bright colors in FL? Yes. In Manhattan? Triple up on black.)
    And then, once the stuff is in the store, how much you have to see sold to make your Plan. And then, how long before the first markdown can be taken. And then, how long before the second markdown. And how long must it sit in the store before it can be removed for something that might sell better. It’s nothing but numbers on spreadsheets, all day long. And a calculator handy wherever you go.

    Reply ↓
  258. OMAudrey*

    I’m in an industry like landscaping, construction, planning, etc that involves bidding a job before getting the OK to go ahead. I was shocked at how objective these estimates could be! My boss has been in the industry for 50 years, and is really good and seeing what the client is going to be like to work for. It’s amazing how many times he adds a few hundred dollars to the quote just because he know the person is going to be hard to communicate with/finicky/hard to please.
    If he has someone he doesn’t want to work for, he’ll charge them a ridiculous rate so they’ll go somewhere else or he’ll do it for the ridiculous amount.

    It helps that he’s otherwise very honest with his pricing and does a great job otherwise, but it never occurred to me that this was a thing and I’m very aware that when I get an estimate for something they’re evaluating me just as much as I’m evaluating them.

    Reply ↓
    1. Strive to Excel*

      Yup. I’ve heard this called the “walk away” price, or the “happy price” – ie, what’s the price where I’ll be happy.

      It’s not just an eff you. A hard to please client means a lot more time. It means maybe instead of one day doing final touchups you do two or three rounds. That means you have to get a crew kitted up and drive out there, maybe to only do an hour or so of work. Or you have to get a project manager out there. Or you have to spend your own time or your finance person’s time arguing over a contract. It’s a real slog.

      Reply ↓
  259. Christina*

    I think non teachers might not realize how challenging it can be for us to create substitute plans. It doesnt matter how serious and sudden the illness- you could be vomiting from food poisoning or feverous from the flu, you have to somehow type detailed instructions so that a complete stranger can come in that day and do your job. And sometimes that stranger has little or no teaching experience! I teach multilingual learners in K-5 and my sub plans for 1 day can be 7 typed pages. I can’t think of another industry where if you need to be absent it is necessary to write a “How to Be Me for a Day” report.

    Reply ↓
    2. Also a teacher of multilingual learners.*

      My first year teaching, I got pneumonia and was out for a month– way past my accumulated sick days, and there was no sick leave bank.

      After my two weeks’ sub plans were used up, my department head came to my apartment to tell me to write more sub plans and sat there while I wrote them, even though by that point I wasn’t being paid. She brought me student work to grade too. I had a fever of 103 and could only sleep sitting up, but at least I had papers to grade.

      Reply ↓
  260. Christina*

    I think non teachers might not realize how challenging it can be for us to create substitute plans. It doesnt matter how serious and sudden the illness- you could be vomiting from food poisoning or feverous from the flu, you have to somehow type detailed instructions so that a complete stranger can come in that day and do your job. And sometimes that stranger has little or no teaching experience! I teach multilingual learners in K-5 and my sub plans for 1 day can be 7 typed pages. I can’t think of another industry where if you need to be absent it is necessary to write a “How to Be Me for a Day” report.

    Reply ↓
    1. Not teaching anymore*

      Yes! So many times, I’ve gone in sick because it’s easier than writing sub plans and figuring out how to adjust the rest of the calendar.

      I was in the hospital, in scary early pretem labor, trying desperately to keep the babies inside; my department head was still texting me trying to come up with a plan for the next day and where all the papers were.

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    2. anon teacher*

      God, yes. It’s a little easier at the HS level, where I can (theoretically) expect (most of) my kids to read an assignment and do it independently, but elementary? especially early elementary? ahahahahaha NOPE.

      Reply ↓
      1. Not a Vorpatril*

        Big High Schools, in particular, tend to be a little forgiving because multiple teachers can be teaching the same thing, so you can (theoretically) piggy back off of what they have done. But it still sucks, and most students have been trained by elementary to just slack off and do nothing with a sub, so 90% of the time I have to assume it’s a burned day and reorganize accordingly.

        And even that is not as easy as people might expect! I teach math, and due to the content that is required per my state, I generally have a fairly regimented schedule. Sure, I can cram some things together to get through a unit faster, but the students will suffer and do a lot worse when that happens.

        Reply ↓
      2. JustaTech*

        I can’t tell you how proud my classmates were of ourselves one day our senior year of high school when our English teacher was out unexpectedly and rather than all just flit off we stayed in the room and discussed the section of Hamlet we’d just read.
        We felt *so* grown up!

        (Very small private school with maybe 15 people in the class.)

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  261. avatar*

    The stainless steel finish on appliances is actually less expensive to use in manufacturing than the white stucco metal. Advertising convinced consumers to pay more for something that actually costs the manufacturer less to make so there’s higher profit for them.

    Reply ↓
  262. Oh January*

    Former industry: Software As A Service, client side. When you use a company’s referral program and it doesn’t go through, literally all the person helping you had is an excel spreadsheet of “valid emails.” If you don’t match, I can’t issue you the referral bonus, or the SAAS company can lose their contract. In my company, there was no way for us to get additional information or clarification. We just got an unadorned excel sheet once a month.

    Reply ↓
  263. Dinwar*

    Field geologist here. Most of what we do is playing with water. Your first 2-5 years will be spent sampling wells. And most people have NO IDEA how many groundwater wells there are.

    You also need to be good at writing. I’ve got a sibling in literature, and I’ve published at least an order of magnitude more documents than they have. If you can’t write and can’t edit you’ll stay a field grunt your entire life. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something to consider.

    Washing dishes is a vital skill. You have to decon equipment, and take equipment blanks to prove you deconned it adequately. My time as a cook, which included a LOT of dishwashing, ended up being really good training. As did washing dishes for my family growing up.

    Maybe the most surprising thing is how accurate the old movies are. Like, the way the scientists talk in “Jaws” and movies of that era is pretty accurate. Modern movies lack that realism in how we communicate. The most accurate part of “Indian Jones” is him chasing the hat. I have a hat like that; you don’t want to know the risky stuff I’ve done to retrieve that hat.

    Reply ↓
    1. Fluff*

      Yes to the hat! I have hiked many kilometers to retrieve a hat that was blown off way high on a mountain cliff in Utah and in Europe (OK, I ll use the strap).

      A good hat is like a unicorn.

      Reply ↓
  264. Little Bobby Tables*

    NASCAR never really kicked its moonshine habit. Many shops have a few bottles in the break room.

    Reply ↓
  265. Mostly Payroll*

    I’m in accounting, and it’s amazing how many of my colleagues over the years have been terrible with their personal finances despite being great at their jobs and totally on top of the company’s money. Bad at savings, not contributing to a 401k, not keeping a budget or tracking spending, you name it. I’m no exception, sadly, but I’m getting better!

    Reply ↓
    1. Can't Pass Again*

      I’m an accountant in public and I also think most people would be shocked at:
      a). how silly a lot of accountants are (like heavy senses of humor, love to crack jokes).
      b). how many of us aren’t actually that good at math, just good at excel.
      c). how crazy the parties can get (folks hanging off the metaphorical chandelier).

      Reply ↓
  266. HannahS*

    Resident physician (Canada):
    If you’re seeking care at an academic hospital–i.e. the big ones affiliated with universities that get all the big funding–the doctor you speak to overnight has possibly been awake for 23 hours of their 26 hour shift, and makes less than minimum wage. When I did my internal medicine rotation, I calculated that my wage was about 4.50 CAD an hour.

    At least now I’m senior enough that I make about as much as a non-management civil servant (working 30% more hours.)

    Reply ↓
  267. Old Bag*

    I work at a personal injury firm and I think people would be surprised to know:

    1) We hardly ever go to trial. When I say hardly ever, I mean between 50-60 attorneys across seven offices in three states, there’s been maybe one trial in the last three to four years.

    2) Yes, we’ve won massive 7-8 figure settlements. But most of them are in the four to low-five figure range.

    3) There’s this mythos in law of attorneys working late into the night every night under uncaring and brutal management, barely able to afford a rat hole apartment their first few years out, drowning in student debt, terrible work life balance, alcoholic, and hating their jobs and their lives (attorneys are infamous online for discouraging anyone from going into law and painting it as The Worst Job Ever and going to law school as the Biggest Mistake of Their Lives). I am sure some attorneys have that experience. I have known some who did. But literally no one here does.

    It’s 5:08pm as I type here on the east coast and literally not one attorney has been in the office for at least an hour. They are not at a deposition (altho this is what we always tell anyone who calls for them when they are not here). It’s raining, so they aren’t playing golf either. They may be at the bar downstairs in the lobby, but they are just as likely to be home wrangling kids. Many of them work from home at least two days a week. We have one who comes in one day a week and spends the rest of his time completely out of state at his Very Rural cabin on many acres where he hunts and fishes — altho he’s also been here over 20 years, so he’s kind of earned it. Nobody is an in-denial-alcoholic, suicidal, bankrupt, hates their lives, hates being an attorney, or thinks law school was a terrible mistake. A handful are in substance misuse recovery programs and have been for years, where it’s basically part of their lives now and not at all obvious.

    We had one attorney who was very obviously alcoholic for a number of years and was given infinite chances and assistance before he finally had the plug pulled on his employment. Contrary to the rep of being heartless, his managing attorney actually cried. Yes, a whole grown ass man-attorney had undeniably teary eyes because he had to fire an alcoholic colleague due to one too many times of showing up to meet clients completely shitfaced.

    People are chill here. No one screams and swears at other people. There’s not a set schedule, but once a month or so one of the attorneys will pay for a catered lunch for the ENTIRE support staff (about 200 of us). It’s all quite civilized and happy. And no one sleeps with each other at holiday parties, which are held during the workday for exactly three hours (3-6pm) with free uber service home as a preventative measure against that sort of messiness.

    I fucking love my job.

    Reply ↓
  268. Free Meerkats*

    Sewer work field.

    Contrary to what you see on TV and movies, sewers are mostly 8-12″ pipe, not giant tunnels you can walk through. Sure, there are some of those, but they are typically in very old cities (Paris) or cities that get infrequent, but massive rainfall (Las Vegas) and are mainly storm drains.

    Sewage doesn’t stink like you imagine. Mainly smells like dirty dishwater most of the time. Though in my 40+ year career as someone who regulated industrial users, I can smell a sewer and tell if there’s a restaurant (and I can usually say what kind), plating shop or industrial laundry upstream.

    No alligators – except maybe the Southeast where they are endemic. Back when I worked for the City of Phoenix, the sewer system had either spiders, cockroaches, or crickets; they had their respective territories and pretty much never mixed.

    The water discharged from a treatment plant is almost always cleaner than the water body it’s being discharged into. Which is good, because with few exceptions on the coasts, the effluent from a treatment plant is part of the influent of the next water treatment plant downstream. 41% of the US land area is in the Mississippi River watershed, and pretty much every city, town, and village in it discharges to that watershed. By the time you get to Louisiana, there isn’t any water left that hasn’t been through a wastewater treatment plant.

    Reply ↓
  269. Woodsy*

    Well, I’ll chime in on a pretty obscure set of jobs: seasonal outdoor workers. Everything from river guides, climbing instructors, ski patrol to government workers such as rangers, firefighters, trail crew, campground patrol and other (truly) fun jobs. We’re all pretty interchangeable.

    We were doing gig work before it had a name… .

    Needless to say, they pay zilch — probably in the $15/hr range for most of them. There’s no benefits: no retirement, 401k etc.; pay is low enough that you qualify for Obamacare subsidies (a lifesaver, literally, when it started), rarely do these jobs lead to permeant jobs. Since many of these jobs are in resort areas with huge rents, you stuff 10 people into one house or apartment, if you can find one.

    The problem, of course, is the jobs are great! The employers know this and can keep wages down, not provide housing, benefits or any path to permanent work because of the worker’s dedication & love for the jobs.

    I was pretty lucky in that I started in 1970 as a firefighter, then as an LE backcountry ranger. But, though wages were low, I could work 5 months, get overtime on fires, and pay for 2 quarters of college & living expenses because tuition was low ($60/quarter at a CA university). After finishing school, I worked summers & fall as a ranger, then winters doing snow surveys, backcountry hutkeeper or whatever came up.

    I was part of a cohort of backcountry rangers starting at about the same time. All of us were able to do, essentially, the same and pretty much all of us were able to buy houses in the early 1980s. We all worked about 40 – 50 years before body parts began to fail (again, yay Obamacare!!!! Worker’s comp was useless for all our decades of physically demanding work).

    But that’s no longer possible. Today, pay can’t come close to paying for college and certainly not buying a house. So today’s seasonal might work 5 years at most before moving on. You lose a lot of skills and the equally important institutional knowledge of knowing an area. So, knowing where avalanches have historically occurred, what rapids require what set-up

    This is especially critical for wildland firefighters where I’d guess (and it’s only a guess) 60%+ are seasonal. Many make less that $15/hr their fires two years. Not only is the federal government decimating their ranks with firings, but the pay hasn’t risen in decades. It’s classified as a non-skilled job. You can, literally, make more at McDonald’s and not endure the smoke, flame, and grueling dangerous work of a fire line. Years ago I worked with an injured smoke jumper who JUMPED OUT OF AIRPLANES to fight fire and made $8/hr. That was just crazy and I wasn’t being paid much more.

    But, again, there’s the adrenaline and esprit of being on a fire crew!

    So, I dunno, just throwing this in that when you visit a national park or forest, or see the pictures during those huge wildfires of guys and women in blackened yellow shirts and helmets, working to keep your homes or park safe, consider the true cost of that work and vote out politicians who talk about useless government workers.

    Reply ↓
  270. Styx-n-String*

    I work in pharmacy. It’s not a secret, but the thing that seems to baffle and confuse so many patients is that WE ARE NOT YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY. We don’t set your copays, we don’t decide what’s covered and what’s not, and we can’t make them cover something if they don’t want to. Every day someone gets mad at me for decisions their insurance made, and can’t or won’t accept that I can’t do anything about it. if you want to argue about it, call your insurance company.

    We also can’t make your doctor send in a prescription that you want. That’s for the lady that demanded I be fired yesterday because her doctor didn’t send in a prescription for over-the-counter mucinex…

    Reply ↓
  271. mcmxci*

    I work in the admissions department at a university – I was so sad to learn that many if not most of the applications that are submitted for Masters / Doctoral programs are never even opened. For PhDs especially, faculty just look at a list of all the applicant names, find the names of people they know, give those people an offer and ignore all the rest. It feels so unethical that we accept application fees, and people put in so much time and effort into their application / personal essays, and then it’s never even given a glance.

    Reply ↓
    1. Academic Physics*

      Ooh, that’s so interesting.

      At least where I was a few jobs back I know that they read every PhD file that had over the cutoff GPA and (I know this dates me) the field specific GRE score, but I agree if it’s a smaller place where you’re being accepted to work with just one professor then sadly that makes sense to me.

      Reply ↓
    2. linger*

      At my last org, a panel of instructors interviewed every grad school applicant, and the default was to accept applicants where possible. But ultimately, you could only get accepted if an approved supervisor agreed to supervise your proposed topic.
      Thus, applicants had a huge advantage if they had done the prep work of
      (1) identifying a potential supervisor on staff (preferably, someone who’d already published in a similar topic area);
      (2) contacting that person in advance to discuss (and negotiate and revise) their proposed project, so that the potential supervisor (or, some alternative supervisor they then contacted as being a closer match) was in a position to agree and defend that decision to the other instructors.
      All of which greatly advantaged existing students and/or candidates living in the area, and especially tended to work against candidates applying from overseas.
      If you just sent in an application blindly and picked a name at random from the list of supervisors, you’d still have a chance to make your case, but you’d have to prove you really knew your subject, and you’d still have to be ridiculously lucky to get accepted by anyone.
      (In the latter case, there were a couple of us — foreigners with less specialized fields of expertise — who were more prepared to consider interesting proposals on their merits. It did not endear us to the other instructors in the programme.)

      Reply ↓
  272. Accent Grave*

    I am an academic librarian, and pretty much all the other academic librarians I know are secretly wild: anarchists, hard partiers, etc. Not a buttoned up horn-rimmed cat lady among them.
    Also, we get shushed by the students more often than we shush the students.

    Reply ↓
    1. Accent Grave*

      Also, sadly, we don’t get to sit around and read books all day like people sometimes think we do. I get “it must be so calm and chill!” and it’s really, really not.

      Reply ↓
  273. Fine Free*

    I work in libraries. Eliminating library late fines virtually always ends up being cheaper than continuing to charge them. People generally get upset when they hear the local library is doing away with late fees because their first impulse is that people will be ‘getting away’ with something, but if you look at the numbers the staff time and resources used to collect late fees eclipses the money brought in, or at best breaks even. Add in the increase in sour interactions with patrons, the decrease in library usage and circulation (esp among children, who’s parents are we more likely to curtail checkouts over late fees), the disproportionate effect on poor patrons, and cuts into staff time that can be used to have programs for the community, and most systems realize that fines are a losing proposition.

    However a bunch of libraries would like to do away with fines but cannot because local governments/the public/local newspapers/etc generate a backlash. So if you hear about your local system considering going fine free, go speak in favor at your city council meeting and email the directory of the library/and library board members in support.

    Reply ↓
  274. So Anon for This*

    I work at a government pension fund. Boring, right? Not hardly! If I had known how exciting a pension fund can be, I would have started years ago.
    We see actual and attempted fraud, and guard against it on a daily basis. I’ve personally caught two instances, and I’ve only worked there three years. We see family drama among our pensioners, with relatives fighting over who gets their money when they pass. Sometimes before they pass. We’ve seen a lost child and his mother show up at a funeral. We see former spouses coming to get some of the pension money.
    Basically anything you’ve seen on the soap operas, we’ve seen it among our clients at least once.
    Who would have thought? :D

    Reply ↓
    1. Grasshopper Relocation LLC*

      I wouldn’t have thought of it, but it makes sense, given that yr job involves money and death.

      Reply ↓
  275. I'm a Ghost!*

    Trade publishing “secrets”:

    – The New York Times bestseller list is… not exactly a scam but also not wholly honest. They’re opaque about what they “count” as a bestseller and often Bookscan numbers (accessible and reported sales figures from retail locations) will show books on the list that are in the “wrong” spot or shouldn’t be on the list at all. It’s a mess.

    – More trade review outlets (the one that give out those quippy blurbs, sometimes as a “starred review”) are becoming pay-to-pay, either explicitly (we won’t review a book unless you pay us) or implicitly (we won’t *say* we won’t review your book unless you buy ads through us, but…), which can be really frustrating because some (but only some!) awards and honors use starred trade reviews as a way to decide which titles they’ll consider.

    – There are millions of books published every year. M I L L I O N S. Not printed. Not sold. Just PUBLISHED.

    – Authors, I’m so sorry. Your editor has definitely read your book. The rest of your team may not have. When a division is responsible for publishing one, two, three hundred books *in a season*, there’s just no time. (And yes, reading manuscripts is WORK and yet always falls after hours in unpaid nights and weekends. Always.)

    – Everyone thinks they want to be an editor. Everyone. Mostly because they don’t know what other jobs there are in publishing. There are so many. (But the vast majority of folks are *required* to live within commuting distance of NYC and paid dramatically under market value for their skills compared to other sectors. So don’t take this as starry-eyed encouragement.)

    – Publishing is small small small small. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon? No. Two degrees. Max.

    – Authors are people, too, for better or worse, and while some are some of the nicest, most wonderful people, others are infamously bad. (Pour one out for any poor grunt who had to work with James Patterson or Daniel Handler.)

    Reply ↓
    1. some author*

      I realized the rest of the team wasn’t reading the book the first time I was asked to write a synopsis. There could be only one reason for doing that.

      Reply ↓
      1. I'm a Ghost!*

        Ha, if we don’t have time to read everything published, we CERTAINLY don’t have time to read every random manuscript an editor brings to acquisitions. If you think we’re slow in responding now, boy oh boy.

        Reply ↓
    2. NothingIsLittle*

      I went to school for publishing and learned pretty quickly that I couldn’t handle the egos! I still love editing for fanfiction, but talking to someone who can’t admit when they’re wrong drives me straight up a wall… so I ended up in academia. At least they’re more familiar with formal argument styles?

      Reply ↓
  276. Anonymouse*

    I would be fired for treating a lab mouse or rat the same way my sick baby was treated. It’s literally illegal to do some of the things to a lab animal that clinical staff do to human infants.

    Reply ↓
  277. Kathy (not Marian) the Librarian*

    Librarians don’t read all day. In fact, we rarely get to read for fun at work. If you do see us reading a book, it’s probably work related.

    Reply ↓
  278. Bob*

    A lot of the people working in the “woo woo magic” health sector know certain systems are nonsense (homeopathy for example) but simple work on the customer knows what they want, here’s what the beliefs claim.

    Reply ↓
  279. Warrant Officer Georgiana Breakspear-Goldfinch*

    The amount of spam you see on social media and your email? Is a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the garbage sloshing around on the internet. So much spam gets cleaned up before it even gets to you.

    Reply ↓
  280. some author*

    As an author: Of my 12 published books, ten of them from major publishers, there are only two titles that I’ll get money from if you buy a book. And the money I’ll get is 49 cents.

    But I’ll still chew flames and spit fire if you download a “free” (i.e. pirated) copy online.

    Reply ↓
    1. allathian*

      With audio books it’s worse, can be less than a cent per download, depending on the sales model of the subscription service. For audio books the narrator can get a higher rate per download than the author, which is why some authors have started narrating their own books.

      Reply ↓
  281. Anon for This*

    My company and a lot of similar organizations were founded as propaganda fronts by the CIA. They fully divested from us many decades ago now, and we do run completely independently of them and with a mission that increasingly diverges from the government’s priorities anyway, but it’s still interesting when we come across old boxes to see what lurks around from the early years.

    Reply ↓
  282. Boof*

    Physician (oncologist) and researcher here – I don’t think most people (patients, basic science researchers, anyone who isn’t literally doing it) quite understands how much of a gap there is between what can be done in the lab, and what can legally/institutionally/financially be done to an actual person. For example; sure you can test a tissue sample for expression of a protein for research! But, can you take a patient sample, check it for something that isn’t an approved (by the FDA; by CLIA for new york state; perhaps by insurance too if they’re being asked to pay for it) companion diagnostic with appropriate positive and negative controls, and use any of that to make clinical decisions or put in the health record outside of a clinical trial (that has been IRB reviewed etc etc)? No, no you cannot.

    Reply ↓
  283. CanadaGoose*

    From my previous life as a dietitian doing one on one analysis and nutrition counselling: some of those very specific, official-sounding targets for exactly how much of ___ nutrient you “need” is/was based on just one or two studies of less than 20 undergrad men, conducted over weeks rather than years. Do you, person sitting across from me, need the same amount as those men seemed to? Probably not!

    Reply ↓
  284. NonEuclidean Librarian*

    Librarian here. We put books in the garbage. Every day. Learning when and how to do this is a significant part of the MLIS and it’s sometimes a complicated process that involves statistical analysis.

    Reply ↓
    1. dulcinea47*

      I wouldn’t say it’s a significant part of the MLIS. Pretty much everything in library school was a vague overview, not training.

      Reply ↓
    2. BeckerCheez*

      I oversee a preservation tech at an academic library. Sometimes it is more economical to throw out a book and order a new one rather than for my tech to repair a book. We have to take into consideration the book’s cost versus the time it will take for my tech to do the repair. Since the tech is paid per hour, if the cost to do the repair exceeds the cost of the book, into the trash it goes. You better believe we took time to try to salvage hundreds of dollars worth of medical books when they got soaked from a broken sprinkler head!

      Reply ↓
  285. Anon attorney*

    Attorney here. I (and virtually everyone I have ever worked with) have no interest in padding your bills or ripping you off. I want to solve your problem efficiently, bill you, and move on to the next case because I enjoy fixing stuff and I also have actual ethics.

    The actual reason your bills are high include:

    – you don’t listen to me and argue with every bit of advice I give you because your friend’s cousin’s hairdresser’s lawyer in a different state said X and I said Y so I must be wrong
    – you won’t accept advice until it’s given to you by a man so I have to get a male partner to repeat it
    – you call me to talk about things we’ve already discussed or which I can’t help you with because I am a lawyer and not a social worker, psychotherapist, financial planner, realtor, interior designer, physician or drinking buddy
    – you are incapable of making a single decision about your case without fourteen phone calls to talk about the same thing
    – you change your mind continually so I have to redo work
    – you like to email me, read my reply and then call me to discuss the email exchange again just to make sure I understand
    – you change everything I write because ChatGPT says something different or you don’t like Oxford commas

    Also, everyone asks what to wear to court for trial, don’t be embarrassed about it

    Reply ↓
    1. Elan Morin Tedronai*

      From a bunch of awful courtroom videos I’ve seen on YouTube, I’d venture to think that I wouldn’t make a bad impression showing up in a button down, jeans and sneakers… Correct me if I’m wrong though.

      Reply ↓
    2. Delta Delta*

      There could be a whole thread of things people misunderstand about lawyers. I’ll add one:

      – No, I don’t know “the law on____.” If you call me out of the blue, and say, “hey, Delta, what’s the law on (insert random subject here)” I have no idea what you mean or what you want. If the question is, “I hate my neighbor so can I light his lawn on fire?” just ask me that (the answer is “no, you can’t do that, and don’t do that”).

      Reply ↓
      1. goddessoftransitory*

        Oh, man, that used to drive me crazy when I watched Perry Mason episodes in reruns! One, attorneys don’t usually actively investigate murders, and two, as a criminal defense attorney he shouldn’t be giving advice on wills or taxes!

        Reply ↓
  286. Katie*

    I work on a farm.

    So much of my job involves poop. Unbelievable amounts of poop. When people apply to work at the farm they all think that it will involve riding horses, making flower bouquets etc. Those are the things we do in our off hours. Really we just need people who will shovel poop.

    Horses will constantly try to find new and interesting ways to kill themselves.

    We make bouquets for farmers markets. So many flowers get thrown out at the end of the week it can make you cry. Really high end focal flowers get dumped in the compost.

    Bouquets are less about your sense of style or floral design and more about how fast you can make them.

    Sometimes the flowers are over a week old because they just chill in a cooler until we can use them.

    No one makes money farming anymore. You need to be a big corp. with thousands of acres and government subsidies to make a living. But if you get into this you’re doing it because you love it.

    Reply ↓
  287. XYZ456*

    Public Safety

    Most people would probably beg surprised how much of the country is covered by volunteer fire/ems/hazmat/search and rescue organizations. LE and 911 dispatch is paid pretty much everwhere, but it is a different story for the other services. With the diminshing number of volunteers, it is becoming a real issue in some places.

    If you need to call 911. Please, please, know where you are even if it means having to take a second before you call. The technology is getting better, but it isn’t all the way there yet, and can fail.

    Saying the emergency is “at the warehouse” doesn’t help when the warehouse is 100,000 square feet + parking lots and outdoor space with multiple entrances, etc. Same goes for “on the highway”, when there are at least 5 limited access highways in the jurisdiction and plenty of other roads people call highways colloquially.

    Reply ↓
    1. Annie*

      I imagine a lot of this is because people sometimes just don’t know any better.

      Wouldn’t be even better to tell people to visit or bookmark a website that will tell you exactly where you are, e.g. my-location.org or where-am-i.co ?

      Reply ↓
      1. JustaTech*

        There’s a CPR class going on upstairs of me right now and what they’d tell you is, know your home address, your work address and the cross streets of any other place you spend a lot of time (like a park or playground).
        That’s where you spend the most time so that’s where you’re most likely to be during an emergency.
        (I don’t know about those websites, but I do know that at my office my phone will occasionally appear to be in the middle of a body of water or the middle of the freeway due to issues with the cell signal.)

        Reply ↓
  288. Elan Morin Tedronai*

    I’ve got a couple.
    1. Quality Assurance/Control (QA/QC)
    It’s possible (and actually quite easy) for a company to pass certification but fail safety breaches very soon after. This is because most audits are done based on sampling, and I’m sure you know how to make sure that your best items are the ones inspected, or that the best people are on site answering questions. In my own (modest – all of 3 years!) experience I’ve seen records that were obviously doctored or noncompliant machines that were still operational shut down and “serviced” on the day of the audit. Through a certain amount of CYA I’ve been able to keep myself clean and point the fault back to the auditee if something goes wrong – yet by that time it’s already too late.

    2. Nonprofits
    I’m sure I’m generalising, but from my own experience: The people working in this sector are usually those who cannot hack it in the corporate world, mostly either because of health concerns or attitude problems. Because of this, the culture in nonprofit agencies is often to work around these concerns – which as you can imagine leads to the many, many cultural problems often highlighted on this site.

    3. HR
    HR is often the coal mine canary – the higher the turnover in HR, the more screwed up the company is. This is because there is often a HR presence in any kind of company meeting, and they often take an active role in telling management what can and cannot be done. Because of this, they are also privy to information that won’t always be publicly available, so if you see a sustained negative behaviour change in your HR rep, or if 20% of the team suddenly isn’t around anymore, update your resume.

    Reply ↓
  289. AP*

    I work in academic research (entry-level staff researcher). You know how Donald Trump said the US government is spending money on making mice transgender? Some people claim that he meant to say “transgenic”–I think he meant what he said. There is quite a bit of federally-funded research that involves modifying the sex characteristics of mice in some way. One way to find out how sex hormones work is to give a female mouse testosterone or a male mouse estrogen (it’s not a great model, because mice don’t have a menstrual cycle, but we can learn some things). I’m not directly involved with this research, but one of my lab’s collaborators surgically removes her mice’s ovaries, so sometimes at parties I tell people that my job is making transgender mice.

    To be clear, I am a transgender man from a family with a history of reproductive cancer, and I think this is awesome and we should be funding more of it.

    Reply ↓
  290. Office Gumby*

    Not my day job thankfully, but…
    The day-to-day of a professional indie author (one whose primary source of income comes from writing novels).
    Less than half your day is spent actually writing. The bulk of your day is spent in marketing, research, outlining, planning, etc. (Oh, to just be able to sit down and crank out a book, nothing else…) Marketing alone takes up most of the non-writing time. It’s hard, because there’s no One True Marketing Plan that is efficient. Only half your marketing is working at any one time, and you don’t know which half. Amazon ads? Facebook ads? BB deals? Tiktok? Mailing List? Permafreebies? There are entire author groups dedicated to talking about what is and isn’t working for marketing your books. What works for one person isn’t going to work for another, even if they write the same kinds of books.

    Reply ↓
  291. HelloWorld*

    Careers in software engineering would be bad for people in the Autism spectrum. Developing software is a team activity nowadays.

    There was an era that some people mainly worked by themselves on a very specific area of a software product. This trait made all the career counsellors suggested folks in the spectrum to major in computer science.

    Nowadays, software products are huge. No one knows absolutely everything. People collaborate and teach other about what they know. They discuss different approaches and trade-offs for the business needs.

    Reply ↓
    1. Pocket Mouse*

      It sounds like you are not autistic and are making assumptions about what autistic people are good and bad at based on stereotypes past or present. Please don’t! You can make the same point about your industry without doing that – and probably a better “secret” would be to share that all those career counselors were wrong and autistic people are perfectly capable of thriving in a collaborative environment. :)

      Reply ↓
      1. Annie*

        Or even that recommendations from career counselors can be based on old stereotypes, other outdated information, or even what their uncle’s best friend’s daughter is doing and not necessarily best for the counselee.

        They may also not be fully informed of what supports expand which career options in which ways — do they even know enough to say that calendar reminders can be used to remind people to do the Normal People Social Things the same way people use them to remember birthdays, anniversaries, etc. and that expands options potentially to almost any non-client-facing job?

        Reply ↓
    2. C*

      Careers in software engineering would be bad for people in the Autism spectrum. Developing software is a team activity nowadays.

      Here’s a little secret about autistic people: we actually communicate great with each other. We run into problems talking to allistic folks.

      If a team is made up of 9 autistic people and one allistic person, it’s the last one who’s not going to fit and and will have trouble collaborating appropriately.

      Reply ↓
  292. Annie*

    What career opportunities or industries would you recommend instead for someone whose social dyslexia, limited verbal vocabulary, etc. makes “normal people” jobs difficult or impossible aside from “take a look at how your special interests can be creatively monetized”?

    Reply ↓
    1. Little Bobby Tables*

      A job where the focus isn’t on people. Some examples:
      Cook, although if in a restaurant setting you will need to deal with characters who mainly communicate in full volume profanity.
      Mechanic – the service advisor will handle the customer interaction.
      Machinist or factory technician.
      Farming, landscaping, or similar outdoor work.

      Reply ↓
  293. Nightengale*

    my very field is a secret

    I’m a developmental pediatrician – we are pediatricians additionally trained to care for children with developmental disabilities. There were 758 of us in the US at last count.

    No one has heard of us and we are constantly mistaken for psychiatrists, psychologists or general pediatricians. Or other professionals are constantly referring my patients to psychiatry even though we am also trained in complex medication management.

    Although the real secret about my field is just how much fun it is taking care of neurodivergent kids and helping their families understand them better!

    Reply ↓
  294. No Admissions*

    Following up on Chaotic Neutral’s comment about Aviation (which I completely agree with) I thought I would add a bit more I picked up while working in this area.

    Most aerospace technology is *really* old. For example, a basic 7X7 plane has a ton of actuators, which is just a slightly fancy name for a part that moves something on the plane (like a control surface). It’s basic stuff that is highly reliable, which contributes to safety.

    Certifying a commercial plane is extremely expensive and takes a long time – so long that when technology changes it’s often just too costly to update. Parts suppliers have to commit to maintaining the planes as long as they are in service. This can be challenging when the plane was certified with a computer chip that has been out of production for more than a decade!

    When the flight attendant tells you to pull firmly on the tubing to start the flow of oxygen in your mask, that pull is triggering the chemical generation process that *produces* the oxygen (some people assume it’s stored, but usually not for passengers).

    Finally, as most crashes occur at takeoff and landing, I have my wallet and mobile phone on my body during those times in case I need to evacuate. This does *not* mean that planes are not far safer than other travel! I just like to be prepared, and those two items could make some things easier for me without slowing the evacuation down for other passengers.

    Reply ↓
  295. Chirpy*

    Retail workers aren’t all high school kids working for spending money. Most are adults ages 20-50, working full-time jobs. High schoolers can basically only work from 4-8 pm because of school.

    Many retail workers have college degrees. Many have families to support with this job, despite being almost always under paid. The job is physically and mentally demanding. It is not “low skilled”.

    Reply ↓
  296. Philanthropy*

    I entered philanthropy thinking that wealthy donors would all be entitled jerks just looking to find ways to avoid paying taxes. Or egomaniacs who want their name on a building and people thanking them.

    Turns out the vast majority I work with are really good people who truly care about helping others. And a lot of them want to give anonymously because they don’t want recognition or thanks.

    Reply ↓
  297. Grasshopper Relocation LLC*

    The people who evaluate drug safety in clinical trials, at least at the stage where the data is being packaged and analysed, don’t always know what the drug treats. This is because they always look at the exact same variables (content of drug in the blood after certain amount of time, subject’s blood pressure and so on) when evaluating whether the drug is safe.

    Reply ↓
  298. Again Sarah*

    I’m a contract business analyst, and have worked across different sizes of company, different industries, in different departments, for years.

    Without exception, the first conversation I have with someone when picking up a new project is “This business/department/team is totally unique, you won’t have come across anything like us before!”

    Then we go through the exact same list of issues and problems, because even if one is an accountancy team and one is the IT department, people are people everywhere.

    Reply ↓
  299. A teacher*

    Many if not all teachers have spent a lot, A LOT of time thinking about precisely how they will get between a semiautomatic weapon and their students. Where they will hide students, what they can push against the door, whether students can safely go out the classroom window (if the window even opens), what can be used as projectiles and defensive weapons. But at the end of the day? Rehearsing mentally in the hopes that when push comes to shove we will be able to throw ourselves between the kids and the gun and buy them a few more seconds to escape.

    And it’s…well it’s not FINE but it’s something I’ve done my best to prepare for? But it makes it pretty damn hard to hear about how much teachers are just out to brainwash/destroy the children in our care.

    Reply ↓
    2. Anonymouse*

      My sibling is a teacher and I have been on the receiving end of a rant about their plans for just that situation. I hate it so much, but my hatred for it is kept to myself, because they need the support. They did not sign up for this; they signed up to work with kids, to teach, to make lives better that way, not to be a bodyguard to 20+ children if worst comes to worst.

      I’m sorry our country has failed you and others in your position. I hope nothing bad happens to you or those in your care.

      Reply ↓
  300. Alice in Blunderland*

    Restaurant professional here:

    -No, cooks don’t spit in food/pick up food that’s dropped on the floor and still serve it! I’m always amazed by how many people believe this in their bones. Of course I can’t vouch for every cook at every restaurant, but in my fifteen year career working both as a cook and front of house in many different types of restaurants I have literally never, not once, seen either of these things happen

    -Restaurants are essentially selling real estate, not food. You are renting your table. We make money by renting as many tables as possible during any given service. So if you’re enjoying your food and drink and continue to order during your time at the restaurant– great! If you have finished your meal and are just sitting at the table for a long period of time when the restaurant is busy, that really hurts the restaurant.

    -If there’s something wrong with your food, please say something! We are in the hospitality business and we really, really want you to have a good experience. It’s really frustrating when something goes wrong that could have easily been fixed and the guest doesn’t mention it to us. It’s even more frustrating when that guest then goes online to complain about it instead of speaking up.

    -Because this comes up a lot: yes, we know you could have bought a steak at the grocery store and cooked it at home for a lot less money. That’s really not the point of a restaurant, is it? The point is that someone else took the time to purchase the steak, to cook it perfectly, and to deliver it to you without you having to lift a finger. Someone else made sure the lighting in the place was sexy, your drink was refreshed, and the bathroom you used was clean. Someone else washed your plate when you were finished eating. THAT’S what you’re paying for, all of it.

    I could go on and on, but please do feel free to @ me in the comments with any further restaurant questions/gripes!

    Reply ↓
    1. goddessoftransitory*

      Tariffs are hitting the restaurant industry HARD. Grains and veggies come from all over the world and resourcing is very difficult, especially in the bulk amounts most places use. When a restaurant is out of a “basic” ingredient, it’s likely because getting more is being held up.

      Liquor laws are not suggestions. When we deliver beer and wine, yes, we need a picture of your ID and it has to match the name you gave us. Yes, even if you are fifty seven years old. Yes, the State Liquor Board does indeed keep close track of this.

      If you are out of our delivery zone, we cannot do it “just this once.” Very occasionally someone will be literally across the street and we can arrange it with the store, but five or more miles is not “barely” outside. The driver and the rest of the orders stacking up have to account time wise not only for getting to your house but all the way back to the store, and it throws delivery times off for hours.

      Reply ↓
  301. Seekyou*

    Social media manager here. US Gov’t leaders and politicians don’t write their own social media posts or manage their accounts. There’s a whole team and communications strategy behind it. So if you are outraged by a post, it was most likely researched, crafted, and created specifically to do that.

    Reply ↓
  302. Heffalump*

    No doubt you’ve seen those little balls of fried doughnut dough sold as “doughnut holes.” The implication is that you form the doughnut and the “doughnut hole” out of the raw dough at the same time.

    It doesn’t work that way. For some years I worked at a company that made commercial doughnut-making machines. You form the doughnuts using a “cutter,” and there are different kinds of cutters, depending what kind of doughnut you want to make. If the cutter makes doughnuts, then there’s no separate “doughnut hole.” If you want to make doughnut holes, then you use a different kind of cutter, and you get just doughnut holes, no doughnuts.

    Reply ↓
  303. Lobbyist for Good*

    As a registered nonprofit lobbyist working in a state legislature, I think people would be shocked to learn just how easy it can be to pass law at the state level in many states.

    All you really need is small group of dedicated advocates who understand the chaos of most state legislatures. Most legislators are poorly paid, part-time, lack staff, or at worst all three of these things. It is honestly not that hard to get a meaningful bill passed in many states.

    Most state legislatures only meet for a few months a year and you may need to dedicate all our time for those couple months but truly all it takes is a small group of dedicated people who know what they are doing.

    Reply ↓
  304. AceyAceyAcey*

    I’m a professor in higher education. The vast majority of us have never had any training in teaching, or have only had small amounts of training in how to teach. Also, in some US states we are mandatory reporters of abuse to minors, seniors, people with disabilities, etc., and yet we’ve had little to no training in that either.

    Reply ↓
  305. Quill*

    Windows 95. Chemistry and microbio labs run all their machines on windows 95 with the internet turned off because stuff that’s new updates (and breaks compatibility with the six thousand dollar machine it’s hooked up to) and stuff that’s not quite that old wasn’t compatible with the machines when they were bought in 2001. If you are of the generation that knows their way around the file storage of windows 95 you will become de-facto tech support at all your laboratory jobs.

    Reply ↓
  306. LR*

    Independent film -outside of movies you have to watch for work, lots of people don’t watch many movies in their downtime (myself included!).

    On the flip side, if you’re at all connected to acquisitions you could easily need to watch 6 2-hour films in a row during a festival or market. It’s intense!

    Reply ↓
  307. Dawn*

    Teachers often don’t get to go to the bathroom during the workday. We cannot leave our classes, so if you’re the only adult in your classroom? You can’t leave the kids, so you suck up and deal. If you read teacher advice forums, you will find threads about how to manage menstruation as a teacher if you can’t access a bathroom for hours at a time during the day. There is a lot of “wear dark pants” in case you bleed through.

    One year, I had a half-hour for lunch and was in a satellite building without running water so had to walk into the main building for lunch. By the time I walked in and heated my lunch, I did not have time to use the bathroom and also get winter gear on for recess duty right after lunch so I just … didn’t use the bathroom during the workday that year. My body was so trained to ignore its own signals by year’s end that I’d sometimes go eleven hours without realizing I hadn’t peed since 7AM that morning at my house.

    Reply ↓
    1. Question*

      Is this mostly at the lower grade levels? When I was in high school the teachers could step out during class changes and would either lock the door to the classroom or ask a hall monitor or security guard or teacher who didn’t have a class that section of the schedule to supervise.

      Reply ↓
  308. Technically (not) Writing*

    Technical writer here!

    For software documentation specifically – we notice all of the little inconsistencies in the design of the product when it comes to UI naming. You have no idea how common it is to see multiple different naming conventions, e.g., “Log in” vs “Sign in,” across the same application (including “Login” used as a verb incorrectly). It’s also common that a single functionality has multiple different names. We can point these inconsistencies out, but they are not always changed. Industry standard is to match the UI regardless of these inconsistencies.

    We hear a lot of “no one reads the user guides,” but people will always complain if there is no documentation. Your customer service reps will thank you too.

    Reply ↓
  309. Old Lady with a Scalpel*

    Medical examiner here. You would not believe how many people die alone. In their homes. Unnoticed. For days. Weeks. And a lot of that is because they cannot afford basic healthcare.

    Reply ↓
  310. Doctor Scorpio*

    Tax industry clerical worker:

    Those “scary AM radio adverts” are not your friend, they’re fearmongering about the IRS, and the company making them won’t actually do anything useful.

    Reply ↓
    1. 12345*

      Yep. I love the ones that mention criminal charges. The IRS doesn’t file criminal charges for not filing a personal tax return. If they are considering that you did something really wrong and need a lawyer not one of those companies

      Reply ↓
  311. HBJ*

    People know that stuff at tourist traps is somewhat fake. But you might be surprised just how fake. If you’ve ever been to a gold panning experience, your little bag of dirt is just plain ol dirt that gets reused. The company buys raw gold flakes and then sprinkles a tiny bit into the top of each bag, then shakes the bag a little to hide it. And if you were the lucky one to find a gold nugget? You weren’t lucky. You were chosen. What happens is the MC/tour guide is with your group on the ride in. And they are keeping an eye out for someone who looks like they are effervescent/bubbly/loud/excitable/etc., someone who is likely to give an over the top, excited, loud, crazy reaction to finding a nugget. Then, while the panning is going on, the MC will wander over and offer to “help” that person with their technique. They’ll take the pan for a second to demonstrate and sneak the nugget into the pan while they’re doing so. And then the person “finds” the nugget.

    Reply ↓
  312. Pharmanon*

    Worked in pharma for over 10 years. Much like the person who worked in health insurance, many of my colleagues care about the patient who is getting the treatments we’ve developed. Most of us aren’t solely motivated by profit, we got into this field to help others with our unique skills. It’s true, there is less of that in pharma marketing, and even less in sales, but it exists even in those departments. And, please realize, sales/marketing make up a lesser percentage of our company’s workforce that you might think. I can remember big burly guys from manufacturing with tears streaming down their cheeks, listening to a patient tell them about how their life changed with the medication they were making. (my eyes weren’t dry either).

    Reply ↓
  313. High school teacher*

    I had the fun experience recently of being interviewed by a writer researching for a fictional project. She wants to write a comedy about teachers so she asked me to talk about anything in my job that might surprise people. The thing she could not believe was how school budgeting works (at least this is how it works in my big liberal district).

    Every spring, the district tells our school how much money we have for next year. If there are cuts then the whole staff gets together to decide whose job is going to be eliminated. Yes, if you are the unlucky one, you have to sit there in the school library with your coworkers while they decide that you are going to lose your job.

    Reply ↓
  314. Just plane crazy*

    Public libraries in the United States are often not the delightful places you recall from childhood. As more and more social services are cut, libraries are increasingly expected to pick up the slack with employees who, unsurprisingly, trained to work with books and computers. They have become shockingly violent places to work with rampant drug use, sexual harassment, and admins trying to make it all work with ever-less funding all while being a battleground for the latest culture wars. I left the career I loved after just five years after collecting my third death threat. I just wanted to help people find information and use technology, you know?

    Reply ↓
  315. Amphigorey*

    I’ve been a retailer for ten years. I own two specialty bra-fitting boutiques. The most common sizes we sell, by far, are E, F, and FF, across band sizes. (Those are UK sizes: the US equivalents are DDD, G, and H, usually.) We carry 180+ sizes (yes, there really are that many!), from 28 – 50 and AA – LL.

    Most people aren’t in the right bra size because the vast majority of retailers don’t have a good size range. It’s as if shoe stores only sold small, medium, and large shoes. Of course people aren’t wearing bras that fit if the ones that would aren’t available! We fit a LOT of people into a size they never imagined for themselves. 34C to 32F, for instance, is really common. Or 36DD to 30GG.

    What this means is that almost all bra retailers, the ones that carry A – DD, cut off the bell curve right before the peak. Even places that go to US H miss a lot of people – they are missing the whole right side of the bell curve.

    Reply ↓

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