# Co-Workers/Applicants to jobs you had who had completely unrealistic ideas of how the job worked **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 5, 2019, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723 "2019-09-05T07:45:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/21 "2019-09-05T17:40:03Z")
Actually two people at once. I work in a warehouse where we basically take trailer-truck loads of boxes and break them down for the various post offices in our region. Think of it as a Siberian box mine. We had one young man take the basic job there and after a couple weeks he brought a note from his psychologist saying that handling boxes was causing him stress and could he please be assigned to a job that didn’t require it. :smack: Even the boss of the whole operation has to jump in. Everyone no matter what their titles handles some level of boxes every day. So you want to remain a floor worker (all you are qualified for) and not touch a box? Kiss off! And the sad part is our HR actually tried to force the issue dictating he be assigned to the gaylord dumper where he only had to push boxes and not actually touch them. Didn’t work – his real issue was a rotten upbringing and a bum counselor but -------- it was interesting to watch. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/22 "2019-09-05T18:06:41Z")
I was an idiot. I had a job in college working for the Engineering department. I was good with typing and proofreading, but one day somebody asked me to make 15 copies of something and collate it. Do what? I had to look it up. “Collate.” The crazy thing of course is that, absent that instruction, I would have collated it, as a matter of course, just because I know no one wants 15 pages of page one, stacked on top of 15 copies of page two, etc. But I had never encountered the word. (I looked it up because I didn’t want to look stupid, because I was a smart college student.) Welp that’s what I learned in college. A couple of weeks later I learned that you could actually make the copier do the collating. There was a button that said, “COLLATE.” I had probably seen that button and wondered: “What does THIS do? Hm…” ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/23 "2019-09-05T18:07:32Z")
My brother in law was interviewing someone to work for his lake management company. This person was in his early 20s, living at home. Some of his better answers… Where do you see yourself in 10 years? “I’m going to be retired when I’m 30.” During our peak season, the hours are longer; (during the ‘off’ season, a day’s work is shortened). “I need to be able to work out at 9:00 AM every morning.” ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/24 "2019-09-05T18:09:29Z")
Hijack: what’s a lake management company? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/25 "2019-09-05T18:15:51Z")
> [@JcWoman](#): > > I admit to being one of those “why isn’t it a holiday” people once. The job in question included 24x7 on call support work and mine once fell on Easter. I got paged out that day (actually, twice I think, it was common to get paged out 2 or 3 times a day in that job). Monday when I came to work I pinged the HR team as to whether I would get holiday pay for working on Easter. (I didn’t, only the standard weekend call-out pay.) Anyway… My father had an employee who asked if they got the Monday after Easter off, because “Easter falls on a Sunday this year”. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/26 "2019-09-05T18:16:45Z")
> [@Enright3](#): > > During our peak season, the hours are longer; (during the ‘off’ season, a day’s work is shortened). “I need to be able to work out at 9:00 AM every morning.” I worked summer jobs as a landscaper when I was a kid. One year I worked with a bodybuilder who didn’t want to carry anything heavy because “I gotta lift tonight.” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/27 "2019-09-05T18:48:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Another story about somebody who had trouble with the subject of days off. And yet another. This wasn’t me and it wasn’t exactly a job: it was several of the privates doing their military service with my brother. At the time, Spain was slowly closing the service down. “Remember how we’ve often said that the military service is a drag, but that for many people such as Great-grandpa it was a great opportunity, got them out of the village and all that stuff?” Yeah… “Well, turns out there’s still a lot of people who benefit from being dragged out of their home town! As you know, St John’s Eve [midsummer] is a big thing in many places, but St John’s is a holiday only at the town level. A lot of my platoon-mates are from Barcelona…” So they… they thought it was a holiday and that you’d get it off? You don’t even necessarily all of you get the day off for holidays! “Not only that, but when we explained that it wasn’t, a dozen of them wanted to ‘go see the captain right now and get him to give us the day off’! We managed to get them to cut that out but it took a while. Some of them couldn’t even do the math of ‘going to see the captain to demand a holiday with your rifles and all counts as mutiny and that carries a minimal sentence of 12 months and we only have 6 left of service, you’d be in for twice as long as you’ll be if you stop this and you’d be spending it in the cooler!’ What? The? Fuck?” ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/28 "2019-09-05T18:54:33Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Hijack: what’s a lake management company? Oh, they schedule the meetings with the fish, make sure the algae has submitted the proper TPS reports, check to make sure maintenance has provided clean sheets for the lake bed. You know, the usual. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/29 "2019-09-05T18:57:31Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I remember another one. We had a Latin teacher who used to complain, endlessly, about how he had to “develop his curriculum” for AP. He seemed to sincerely believe that all the rest of us had a Big Book that we assigned chapters out of and the students just answered questions at the end. ALL of us design our curriculum. And I went looking, and found him a bunch of canned AP Latin curricula he could work from–AP Latin has a super-supportive community–and he rejected every one for various reasons. But he continued to hold that he, and only he, had the terrible burden of having to figure out how to teach these children. One of the things that makes me sure that it’s a Good Thing my mother never got a job as a teacher in a real school\* is that she thinks any teacher who develops any material beyond what’s in The Book is just working too hard. She was surprised when I mentioned that The Book isn’t chosen by God and the decree brought down from Heaven on the wings of seraphim: teachers choose them, and they must be able to justify why that particular book and not a similar one. - She did a year in a one-room school after graduating from Normal School, but the job came with the graduation. Her two other teaching jobs were in “academies” helping people prepare the local equivalent of the GED. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/30 "2019-09-05T19:01:14Z")
We were looking for a new director for a major field research/education station. This place had over 40 employees, researchers coming in from all over the world, a wide variety of wet and dry lab facilities, flume chambers, molecular biology lab, major and minor research vessels, a massive seawater system, etc. It also ran university level undergrad and grad courses for 8 months of the year, and had accommodation for 80 students (in addition to accommodation for visiting researchers). The appointment is a tenured faculty position at the level of Dean of Science. Responsibilities include running the entire place, supervising the management team, running your own research lab with graduate students and post-docs and obtaining tens of millions of dollars in annual grants from various levels of government to keep the place operational. We had a guy apply who had run a fishing lodge. Grade 10 education. He was convinced that the job was basically like running a hotel (he had seen the dorms and cafeteria), and he was more than qualified. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/31 "2019-09-05T21:08:05Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > We also had a person who was only employed at my job for a month, mainly because after a month of normal job hours (40 hours a week) and being an overall great employee they suddenly requested to only work 32 hours a week. Now she was a single mother so if they had requested it so they could care for their child that would have been accepted, however they simply stated they wanted to only work 32 hours a week “to force my ex to pay me more in child support”. After that was denied she quit the job presumably to find somebody to accommodate that request. I’ve known a few people that requested fewer hours to stay under the poverty level and get insurance through the state/welfare. My back of the envelope math says she could work 20 hours a week and get really good insurance through the state or work an extra 20 hours per week, take home the same amount and get a high deductible plan through us. For the moment, lets assume she gets everything done that we need her to get done. There’s not a whole lot of incentive for her to work those extra hours and it saves us a ton of money as well. Between not paying part of her insurance and not paying her an extra 20 hours per week, it reduces our costs by nearly 30k per year. ---
**Author:** ![pendgwen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3da27b/32.png) [@pendgwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pendgwen)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/32 "2019-09-05T21:47:56Z")
Can I expand this to students with unrealistic expectations? I run the Emergency Medicine rotation for medical students. Had one guy ask if he could work only days. Um, no. Not only should common sense tell you the the ED is a 24/7 experience, the course description says that nights and weekends are required. Besides which, if you’re looking for a days only specialty choice for your career why is EM on your list at all? ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/33 "2019-09-05T21:59:51Z")
Being an office of the Federal Government, redundant employees are typically shuffled to another part of the agency that needs them rather than terminated. One of these reassignments I helped train needed _every little thing_ explained to him _multiple_ times. _In writing_ because he’s deaf. It got to the point where some of us started to suspect that he was using his disability and religion (Hindu) to get away with shit. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/34 "2019-09-05T22:17:10Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > Being an office of the Federal Government, redundant employees are typically shuffled to another part of the agency that needs them rather than terminated. One of these reassignments I helped train needed _every little thing_ explained to him _multiple_ times. _In writing_ because he’s deaf. Doesn’t the in writing requirement make it easy, though? Every time he asks that something be explained again, just copy and paste the earlier explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/35 "2019-09-05T22:18:25Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > I’ve known a few people that requested fewer hours to stay under the poverty level and get insurance through the state/welfare. My back of the envelope math says she could work 20 hours a week and get really good insurance through the state or work an extra 20 hours per week, take home the same amount and get a high deductible plan through us. > For the moment, lets assume she gets everything done that we need her to get done. There’s not a whole lot of incentive for her to work those extra hours and it saves us a ton of money as well. Between not paying part of her insurance and not paying her an extra 20 hours per week, it reduces our costs by nearly 30k per year. I had one guy who literally did not want to come to work. He had his own business and he said he could make more working a day there than he made working a day at his job. So he figured it was a better use of his time to spend every day at his business and never show up for his job. He agreed that under those circumstances it was reasonable that we wouldn’t pay him his wages. But he wanted to officially stay on the payroll so he could keep his insurance benefits. ---
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/36 "2019-09-05T22:22:14Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Not Halloween, but another “you gotta be kidding me” holiday, maybe St Patricks Day. Until quite recently, state workers in Massachusetts had St. Paddy’s Day off. Only it was called Evacuation Day. Unfortunately they have now done away with this charming practice. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/37 "2019-09-05T22:22:54Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Doesn’t the in writing requirement make it easy, though? Every time he asks that something be explained again, just copy and paste the earlier explanation. We didn’t have that technology 20 years ago. 😉 ETA: we didn’t even have software which could rotate faxes that our computers received upside-down. ---
**Author:** ![Swampwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Swampwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swampwolf)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/38 "2019-09-05T22:29:23Z")
I was managing a Video Game store when The Season rolled around, and we hired a double-handful of seasonal employees. Mostly high-school students, some better than–no, they all sucked. Didn’t realize that in order to have a job, you needed to show up, didn’t know that when you showed up, you had to work, etc. One stood out. Not being able to find anything else for him to do, I asked him to return cases to the wall, in alphabetical order. He asked – keep in mind, he was a senior in high school, 18 years old – if “R” came before or after “V.” After answering, I jokingly reminded him there was a song about it. His response? Oh, after the letter “M,” I just hummed it. After that, he was our greeter until he ghosted us. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/39 "2019-09-05T22:36:44Z")
In a prior life, I worked for a manufacturing company doing sales support for their Russian offices (four reps and a country manager in Moscow, one in St. Petersburg, and one in Novosibirsk). It was the mid-1990s, and doing business as a Western company in Russia was interesting in the best of circumstances, but we didn’t have the best of circumstances. Finally the country manager talked the head office (my boss) into letting him hire an admin assistant. He found someone who looked great on paper. Too good, in fact, for the salary they were offering, especially for someone with fluent English (my boss had insisted on fluent English, although he would basically never need to talk to her directly and everyone else on the Russian team was at least semi-bilingual, as well as several of us in the head office). Well, we quickly found out why this new assistant had been job hunting in spite of the shortage of fluent English speakers then. She spent half of her U.S. product training week trying to figure out how to register for the Visa Lottery. And when she got back to Moscow, she started doing things like not coming to work because of the snow. In Moscow. In the winter. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723/40 "2019-09-05T22:43:09Z")
A small defense for the people who don’t know which holidays you get off: the set of “standard” federal holidays is about half days that are commonly celebrated by lots of people (Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, July 4th), and half randomish Mondays to honor an important individual or group that are not widely celebrated as events (Columbus Day, Labor Day, MLK’s birthday, etc.) If you’ve never had a job that has paid holidays, it’s not at all obvious that you’d get Columbus Day off but not Halloween. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/co-workers-applicants-to-jobs-you-had-who-had-completely-unrealistic-ideas-of-how-the-job-worked/839723.md?page=3)